rense.com

The 9/11 Mystery
Plane (Part II)
Did the US Military Fudge the 9/11 Timeline?
911 Mystery Plane Part I

By Mark H. Gaffney
5-7-7

In a recent article, I presented compelling evidence that an E-4B, the US military's most advanced command and control platform, circled over the White House at the time of the September 11, 2001 attack.[1] Officially known as the National Emergency Airborne Command Post (NEACP, pronounced knee-cap), the E-4B's more common name is the "doomsday" plane. This paper will expand that discussion and will ultimately argue that the military fudged the time of the pentagon crash to conceal the presence of the E-4B.
 
As in any wartime situation, the day of September 11 2001 was marked by tremendous uncertainty and confusion. Although a total of four commercial airliners were involved in the attack, the FAA processed numerous false reports of other hijackings, well into the afternoon. By one account New York City firemen at the World Trade Center also received a false alarm about a third suicide plane.[2] There was a bomb scare at the FAA's Boston Air Traffic Center, as well as a false alarm about an approaching suicide plane that prompted the evacuation of the building.[3] An evacuation also occurred at another FAA facility on Martha's Vineyard when a large white plane was sighted near the tower. [4] Unfortunately, this low-flying plane was never identified. There were also evacuations at Reagan National Airport in Washington and at Cleveland Airport. There was even a reported threat to Air Force One, which delayed President Bush's return to Washington.[5]
 
Numerous anomalies associated with the collapse of the Trade Center and the Pentagon attack remain controversial nearly six years after the attack because the official investigations failed to explain them. To this day there is widespread uncertainty about the actual chronology of events, i.e., exactly what happened on 9/11, and when. A glance at Paul Thompson's invaluable book, The Terror Timeline, shows that the official narrative as presented in the 9/11 Commission Report is at best a partial record, and at worst a complete fabrication, since what it leaves out often conflicts with the official story.[6] Moreover, Professor and Theologian David Ray Griffin's 2005 book The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions is even more troubling, because it exposes numerous flaws in the official investigation, including cases of deception. Griffin's critique should be considered a necessary companion volume to the final report, and together with Thompson's book makes for essential reading. Both are indispensable resources for anyone trying to understand the events of September 11. Fortunately, Thompson's timeline, which attempts to be comprehensive, is also accessible via the internet.[7]
 
 
The official 9/11 narrative has undergone two revisions, both major. The military announced the first just a week after the attack. The 9/11 Commission unveiled the second in its final report, released in July 2004. In his companion book Griffin argues persuasively that both revisions were attempts to salvage the official conspiracy theory. Before I proceed, allow me to briefly review how both of these revisions came about: Two days after the attack, on September 13, 2001, General Richard Myers, acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that NORAD failed to get fighters in the air until after the Pentagon strike.[8] This admission by Myers caused huge problems for the US military, because its failure to respond looked like a deliberate stand-down; which, if true, was treason. A week later, on September 18, 2001, the military attempted to shield itself from such criticism by announcing a revised timeline, essentially blaming the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for the breach of security on 9/11.[9] The Pentagon claimed that NORAD was unable to respond in a timely manner because it did not receive notification from the FAA about the hijacked planes until too late. As the months passed, however, cracks began to appear in this revised timeline. The problem was that even with the delayed notification NORAD arguably still had sufficient time to scramble fighters and intercept two and possibly three of the hijacked planes. The 9/11 Commission Report, published in July 2004, acknowledged this problem,[10] then announced a second revision of the timeline. According to this latest story, the FAA wasn't merely tardy, no, it failed completely. In other words, the FAA neglected to notify NORAD that Flights 175, 77 and 93 had been hijacked until after the the planes had crashed. This gross incompetence on the part of the FAA was bizarre, to say the least, since the FAA simultaneously showed remarkable professionalism and skill by grounding nearly 4500 planes in about three hours, all without a single mishap. In fact, the FAA's emergency shut down of the entire US air traffic system on 9/11 was unprecedented in the annals of US aviation.
 
The latest revision was largely based on new evidence in the form of certain NORAD audio-tapes, which the government had withheld for many months. However, thanks to a court order the tapes were finally made available to the panel late in the investigation. Based on its review of these tapes, the commission surprised everyone by announcing a completely new element in the story, the so called "phantom plane" scenario. The 9/11 Commission Report asserts that at 9:21 AM on September 11 the FAA mistakenly notified NORAD that Flight 11 had missed the World Trade Center and was flying south en route to Washington.[11] The report further states that the F-16s scrambled from Langley AFB at 9:30 AM were sent aloft not to intercept Flight 77 (or Flight 93), as the military had previously claimed, but for the purpose of intercepting this phantom Flight 11 somewhere near Baltimore.[12] These new disclosures were a major change in the official story, and were deeply embarrassing to the pentagon because they directly contradicted the earlier testimony by generals and other military officers, which made no mention of any phantom plane. Indeed, even during his final appearance before the commission in June 2004 General Larry Arnold stated that "We scrambled those aircraft [the Langley fighters] to get them over Washington, D.C., to protect Washington, D.C."[13] Moments later, Arnold had to be coached by panel members regarding the phantom plane. The general's inability to recall details that as a NORAD commander he should have known caused shock and outrage among panel members. The Washington Post subsequently reported that some of the commissioners and their staff were convinced that the pentagon had deliberately deceived them.[14] During its final meeting the panel even discussed referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation. However, the panel's outrage never made it into in the 9/11 Commission Report, nor is there any mention of deception. The report blandly informs us that the generals' previous testimony was merely "incorrect."[15]
 
Although much has been made of this loss of face by the Pentagon, "what is really going on," as David Ray Griffin has correctly pointed out, "is that the military is briefly suffering a little embarrassment, experienced primarily by a few scapegoats [i.e., General Arnold], for the sake of the new story, which, if accepted, permanently removes the suspicion of guilt for treason and murder from everyone in the military."[16] A closer reading of the report shows that its main objective was to exonerate the Pentagon brass of responsibility for the breach of security on September 11. Yet, the report suffers from a deeper weakness, which is fundamental: Even if we wish to believe the official story and the newest timeline, this means we must accept that the Joint Chiefs deliberately deceived the nation and the panel for nearly three years. The entire chain of command kept quiet, as well, hence, was complicit in this deception. While it's usually assumed that if the generals lied it was to conceal their own incompetence, why would they expose themselves to the treasonous charge of implementing a stand-down by overstating "the FAA's ability to provide....timely and useful information," if the FAA were responsible all along?[17] This makes no sense and should increase our skepticism about every facet of the official narrative. There is also a further problem: If the FAA was guilty of gross negligence on 9/11, why was no one held accountable? In the months following the attack not a single FAA official was dismissed, demoted, or even reprimanded. Why not? Did the Bush administration refrain from demotions and dismissals because this would have begun a legal process of discovery and appeal involving the scrutiny of relevant documents and the release of evidence, which had to be avoided at all costs? The Origin of the Phantom Plane Story
 
The phantom plane story certainly had the effect of letting the US military off the hook. Was it a device contrived for this purpose? It's curious that one of the most muddled portions of the 9/11 chronology, on a day marked by confusion, was the time period between 9:21 AM, when the FAA notified NORAD about the phantom Flight 11, to 9:38 AM, when Flight 77 allegedly smashed into the pentagon. Let us now examine this part of the official narrative, in the hope of shedding some fresh light on it.
 
Although the 9/11 Commission Report fails to explain how the phantom plane story originated,[18] Michael Bronner disclosed more details last summer in a much-ballyhooed article in Vanity Fair, "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes."[19] Bronner is a former producer of 60 Minutes, and also helped produce the recent film United 93 (not to be confused with the 2005 Discovery docudrama, The Flight that Fought Back.) For reasons that have never been explained, the US military granted Bronner exclusive access to the same NORAD tapes that the 9/11 Commission obtained only after a lengthy court battle.[20] The tapes provided the grist for Bronner's article, which defends the official narrative as presented in the 9/11 Commission Report. Although Bronner asserts that "the truth is all on tape," as we will see, there are solid reasons to question his arguments and conclusions. Let's start with the phantom plane issue.
 
As part of his research, Bronner interviewed Colin Scoggins, who on September 11, 2001 was the military liaison at the FAA's Boston Air Traffic Center, where much of the action occurred. Scoggins told Bronner the phantom plane story began as a misunderstanding during a teleconference "in the flurry of information zipping back and forth...[and]... transmogrified into the idea that a different plane had hit the tower, and that American 11 was still hijacked and still in the air."[21] Although the 9/11 Commission Report doesn't mention Scoggins by name, it was he who placed the crucial call to NEADS at 9:21 AM informing the military that Flight 11 was heading for Washington.[22] Recently, when I conducted my own interview with Scoggins, he confirmed that the FAA tracked Flight 11 continuously until just north of the World Trade Center, when the plane dropped below 2,000 feet and was lost to radar.[23] However, according to Scoggins the FAA never tracked any phantom plane between New York and Washington. In his article Bronner tagged Scoggins with the responsibility for the mistaken report, but Scoggins told me he merely relayed what he overheard during the conference call. More details emerged during our interview and subsequent email exchanges. Scoggins thinks someone at FAA headquarters dropped a "call sign" during the teleconference, meaning that during the discussion about hijacked planes someone failed to mention a flight number, leading to a mix-up.[24] (The FAA headquarters is located on Independence Avenue in downtown Washington.)
 
Numerous individuals from various agencies were on the line, that morning. Scoggins doesn't know exactly who or how many people were listening. The conference call may well have included staffers from the Pentagon and NORAD, which, notice, if correct, would mean that the military overheard the FAA discussion, and therefore, by 9:21 AM must have known about at least one of the other hijacked planes, in addition to Flight 11. This would contradict the official story that the military was in the dark. Scoggins doubts this interpretation, but it's certainly possible, because the Pentagon and NORAD were usual participants in FAA conference calls. Maj. General Craig McKinley, who was at the Pentagon on 9/11, confirmed as much in his testimony before the 9/11 Commission in May 2003.[25] The fact was also confirmed by the FAA's Deputy in Public Affairs Laura Brown in a May 2003 memo to the 911 Commission, in which Brown sought to clarify the FAA's role. Her memo states that "Within minutes after the first aircraft hit the World Trade Center, the FAA immediately established several phone bridges that included FAA field facilities, the FAA Command Center, FAA headquarters, DoD [the Department of Defense, i.e., the Pentagon and NORAD], the Secret Service, and other government agencies."[26] The 9/11 Commission discussed Brown's memo during its hearings. Commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste even read it into the record.[27] Yet, her memo is never mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report. Why not? Is it because the FAA memo contradicts the official story that the US military was not in the loop on September 11? Of course, it is possible that the FAA staffer who dropped the call-sign was referring to one of the other suspected hijackings that turned out to be a false alarm. But anyone who seriously doubts that the military was in the loop should check out David Ray Griffin's latest book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking, which presents an enormous amount of additional evidence. Griffin thinks the FAA initiated a phone bridge with the military much earlier, in fact, as early as 8:20-25 AM, and he is probably correct.[28] As I proceed I will touch on some of this evidence.
 
Pushback? Or Obfuscation?
 
Michael Bronner made another serious charge in his article: He claimed that the operational commander of NORAD's Northeast Sector (NEADS) was unable to deploy his fighters over Manhattan on September 11 because he encountered resistance from the FAA. With both WTC towers in flames, as Bronner tells it, the NEADS mission-crew commander Lt. Col. Kevin Nasypany was insistent about immediately moving his F-15s into position over New York to protect the city. The planes had finally been scrambled from Otis AFB, near Cape Cod, and were in a holding pattern over the Atlantic. However, at this point, according to Bronner, NEADS received "pushback" from FAA controllers who were afraid that NORAD's "fast-moving fighters" might collide with commercial passenger planes, hundreds of which were "in the area, still flying normal routes." To drive his point home Bronner adds that FAA controllers had "the final authority over the fighters as long as they [were] in civilian airspace." While Bronner is correct that New York air traffic controllers initially hesitated to allow NORAD fighters into New York City airspace, Bronner exaggerates this delay, which according to Scoggins was no more than 2-4 minutes.[29] There are excellent reasons why the FAA controllers were not unduly concerned about a mid-air collision. Lower Manhattan is not a flight corridor for commercial air traffic, nor was it on September 11. Three international airports service greater New York City. Two of them, JFK and La Guardia, are well to the east of Manhattan, and the third, Newark Airport, is located in New Jersey, west across the Hudson. None of the flight corridors or holding patterns for these busy airports intersect the borough of Manhattan at any point.[30]
 
Furthermore, the Manhattan airspace under 3,300 feet is doubly restricted in the vicinity of the World Trade Center due to the obvious hazards posed by tall buildings. The dangers have been known since at least 1945, when an Air Force B-25 pilot lost his way on a foggy night and smashed into the 78th-79th floor of the Empire State Building. The following year another plane crashed into 40 Wall Street, the tallest building in the financial district at that time. To prevent such fiery disasters in the future the FAA long ago designated this airspace as a "no fly zone." Aside from police traffic, the only exceptions to the ban were by special permit. For which reasons the risk of a midair collision over Manhattan on 9/11 was close to nil, as both NEADS and the FAA surely must have known. Nor is it likely that a commercial pilot would have knowingly violated this ban in the midst of an unparalleled aviation disaster. In addition to risking his plane, crew and passengers for no reason, such a pilot would have expected to encounter a fighter intercept himself within minutes and, later, severe disciplinary action, probably including the early termination of his career.
 
As we know, of course, there were no fighter intercepts on 9/11. The two F-15s scrambled from Otis AFB ended up in a holding pen south of Long Island. The pilots later explained that while they waited for orders they watched the ominous plume of smoke billowing from the WTC, conspicuous from 70 miles away.[31] Their orders never did come. The pilots only learned about the second strike when they called their commander for an update.[32] In the end, they took the initiative themselves, an admission that is deeply buried in a footnote of the 9/11 Commission Report. [33] At 9:13 AM the pilots "told their Boston Center controller that they needed to establish a Combat Air Patrol (CAP) over New York." Which they finally accomplished at 9:25 AM, much too late to make a difference.[34]
 
 
Given all of this, Bronner's charge that the FAA obstructed and delayed NEADS on 9/11 is extremely dubious. The real question is why NEADS did not scramble the fighters from Otis much sooner, in which case the F-15s would have arrived in time to intercept Flight 11 and Flight 175. All of the evidence suggests that FAA controllers were begging for fighter protection. Colin Scoggins told me he made as many as 40 calls to NEADS on the morning of September 11 trying to get fighters in the air. During some of these calls he attempted to persuade NEADS to scramble fighters from bases that were not officially on alert, such as the Pomona base, near Atlantic City, which is much closer to New York than the NEADS alert base on Cape Cod (Otis AFB). Pomona is the home of the Air National Guard's 177th fighter wing, and I was astonished to learn that the base actually had fighters in the air at the time of the attack. Two F-16s from Pomona were practicing bombing-runs over an empty stretch of New Jersey pine barrens, and could easily have been rerouted to Manhattan in just minutes.[35]
 
But NEADS ignored Scoggins' request. The 9/11 Commission Report mentions his call, but distorts what actually happened. The report states: "the [Boston] Center also tried to contact a former alert site in Atlantic City, unaware it had been phased out."[36] This is hogwash. Scoggins was well aware the Pomona base was not officially on alert. But he was rightly undeterred by this formality, which, under the circumstances, was irrelevant. Given that a hijacking was in progress just a few miles up the coast, the fighters from Pomona, already airborne, could and should have been mustered without delay. While it is true they were unarmed, this should not have been a consideration, since the military protocols in effect required scrambled fighters to follow and track hijacked planes. Shooting them down was a last resort. Scoggins still believes that if NEADS had utilized the fighters from Pomona they might well have foiled the suicide attack. Whether or not hijackers were actually on board and flying the 767s remains controversial, but his point is well taken. The decision to scramble on 9/11 should have been made irrespective of whether the fighters were officially "on alert," and whether or not they were armed. The 9/11 Commission Report's misrepresentation of this call by Scoggins was a case of treasonous deception; and the same is true of Bronner's article, which was a carefully-crafted piece of misinformation. Unfortunately, ordinary citizens who know nothing about emergency protocols and no-fly zones probably found it persuasive. Although Bronner claims to have heard 30 hours of NORAD tape, according to Scoggins most of those hours were "dead time," that is, empty tape. Scoggins thinks Bronner heard only snippets, about 10 of which are mentioned in his article. Indeed, the information that NORAD made available to Bronner was highly selective: only a fraction of the 100-300 phone calls made on the morning of 9/11, not to mention FAA recordings and in-house tapes recorded by American and United Airlines. For which reason we should be wary of the picture Bronner paints. Only a comprehensive review of all of the recordings and radar data from 9/11 can reveal what actually happened.
 
Andrews Air Force Base is another facility that NEADS could have mustered on 9/11. Just minutes away from the White House by air, Andrews is the home of Air Force One and is the port of entry to and from Washington for US presidents and diplomats. Indeed, the base has a long tradition of servicing and defending the nation's capital. Although Andrews was not one of NORAD's officially designated alert bases on 9/11, at least two combat-ready fighter units were based there, including a DC Air National Guard (DCANG) squadron of the 113th fighter wing. The 113th's mission, as stated on the Andrews website, was to provide "capable and ready response forces for the District of Columbia."[37] On a separate page the DCANG squadron boasted about providing "combat units in the highest possible state of readiness."[38] The 321st Marine Fighter Attack Squadron was also based at Andrews, and flew the sophisticated F/A-18 Hornet.[39] Nor was Andrews the only response-capable facility in the area. The Patuxent Naval Base in Maryland also had fighters. In fact, Former Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger told FOX News on September 11 that "The city [Washington] is ringed with Air Force bases and Navy bases, and the ability to get defensive planes in the air is very very high."[40] But not on the morning of September 11. During a national security teleconference convened that morning by Counter-terrorism Czar Richard A. Clark, General Richard Myers explained that F-16 fighters from the DCANG squadron at Andrews had finally been scrambled.[41] The general didn't mention that the Secret Service had rousted them, not the Pentagon.[42] The F-16s arrived over Washington even later than the fighters from Langley, much too late to matter.
 
This story also has a postscript. Soon after the attack, 9/11 truth investigators discovered that someone had scrubbed the DCANG web page from the internet, along with its mission statement about "providing combat units in the highest possible state of readiness."[43] Luckily, however, several months before the attack someone archived the page, which can still be viewed on line[44] A number of 9/11 researchers, including Mike Ruppert, Paul Thompson and David Griffin, have already told this story; but the alteration of the Andrews website, involving the destruction of evidence, is so important it bears repeating.
 
NEADS fails in its mission: to track planes
 
During our interview Scoggins also provided more details about another important matter that the 9/11 Commission failed to explain. Although the FAA's Boston Center tracked Flight 11 continuously on radar, for some reason NEADS was unable to locate the hijacked plane. Scoggins told me he gave them "nav aids," which are commonly used reference points, and even precise latitude and longitude coordinates, but to no avail. Lt. Col Dawne Deskins, who was on the receiving end of his call, told FOX News exactly what Scoggins told me: "He [Scoggins] gave me the latitude and longitude of that track...but there was nothing there."[45] At the time, Flight 11 was moving at 600 mph and should have been conspicuous on radar, according to Scoggins. But NEADS never did find the plane. This strange lapse haunts Scoggins to this day, because it never should have happened. The problem was not the transfer of information. NEADS received the precise coordinates. The NORAD/FAA interface was a practiced routine, and it functioned on 9/11. NEADS' failure to locate Flight 11 on radar is a genuine anomaly, and getting to the bottom of it should have been one of the 9/11 Commission's top priorities.
 
Yet, incredibly, the 9/11 Commission Report barely mentions the issue. It appears that instead of doing its job, i.e., digging for the truth, the commission meekly accepted the military's various explanations, without a word of protest. General McKinley, for example, told the panel that "We are dependent on the FAA."[46] During the same hearing General Arnold told them: "Our resources were extremely limited in many cases, because we initially could not even see what the FAA could see..." There was also the lame excuse about antiquated radar equipment. During his October 2001 testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Ralph Eberhart described NORAD's command and control systems as "70's and 80's technology"[47]; and Michael Bronner echoes this latter theme in his Vanity Fair article. Indeed, he amplifies it in melodramatic fashion, and I'm going to quote a passage verbatim because the issue is so important. Bronner: "Radar is the NEADS controllers' most vital piece of equipment, but by 9/11 the scopes were so old, among other factors, that controllers were ultimately unable to find any of the hijacked planes in enough time to react. Known collectively as the Green Eye for the glow the radar rings give off, the scopes looked like something out of Dr. Strangelove and were strikingly anachronistic compared with the equipment at civilian air-traffic sites."[48] This is pure obfuscation. While it's true that NEADS was using older hardware on 9/11, Scoggins told me the military's radar was more than adequate. According to Scoggins NEADS could see everything the FAA saw, and more. NEADS' failure to locate Flight 11 on radar had the serious consequence of slowing down the military's response, because Col. Robert Marr, NEADS commander, was reluctant to scramble his Otis fighters without a target. Was this the intended outcome?
 
The Actual Path of Flight 77
 
Scoggins placed yet another important call on that fateful morning. At 9:36 AM he notified NEADS about an unidentified plane six to eight miles southeast of the White House. Scoggins was again merely relaying information from the FAA's Washington headquarters. Yet, the call sparked a frenzy. NEADS immediately redirected the Langley fighters to the capital. As we know, of course, only moments before, NEADS had discovered that the F-16s were not en route to Baltimore, where they supposedly had been sent to intercept Flight 11 (the phantom plane). No, in fact, they were in a holding pattern over the Atlantic. The fighters did not finally reach Washington until a few minutes before 10 AM, much too late. (Fighters from the DCANG unit based at Andrews arrived moments later.) Scoggins told me that after the Pentagon strike he assumed, like everyone else, that this unidentified plane he reported at 9:36 AM was Flight 77. He was also under the impression that it made a pass near the White House. Scoggins is not alone in this view. Even today, many people think Flight 77 flew over Washington before striking the Pentagon. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer actually gave rise to one of these stories, which were widely reported in the media.[49]
 
 
This cannot be correct, however, because the National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) flight path study, which was finally released in August 2006, shows that American Airlines Flight 77 never crossed the Potomac River.[50] If you will glance at a map of the Washington DC area you will see that the Potomac lies directly south of the White House. This means that the unidentified plane reported by Scoggins, 6 to 8 miles SE of the White House, was over Maryland at the time, hence, could not have been Flight 77. According to the NTSB flight path study, Flight 77 approached Washington from the west. However, at the last minute it veered south and completed its now-famous downward spiraling loop over Alexandria; after which, it came around and smashed into the Pentagon.
 
 
 
 
The NTSB study, based on Flight 77's recovered flight data recorder, is extremely important, because it shows that Flight 77 never came closer to the White House than the pentagon itself. What, then, did the FAA "see" over Maryland at 9:36 AM, if not Flight 77? As I've shown in a previous article, another aircraft, an E-4B, the so called doomsday plane, was also in the air over Washington at the time of the 9/11 attack.[51] The FAA may well have been tracking this other plane. The E-4B is equipped with a military transponder and therefore has the capability to transmit in code unreadable to the FAA. For which reason the E-4B would have appeared only as a blip on primary radar; and so, would have been indistinguishable from a hijacked commercial-sized plane with its transponder off; and as we know, Flight 77's transponder went off at 8:56 AM. It's no wonder Scoggins later assumed this plane was Flight 77. Did Ari Fleischer also confuse the two planes for the same reason? Fleischer probably received his information from the Secret Service, which had a direct feed to FAA radar.[52] The Secret Service was probably tracking the same plane that the FAA was seeing. This would explain Fleischer's emotional statement to the press that Flight 77 passed near the White House. Of course, only a comprehensive review of all of the radar data can ultimately determine if this is correct.
 
Three Eyewitness Accounts
 
The NTSB's flight path study is also important for another reason: It corroborates several key eyewitness accounts from 9/11 that were excluded from the official narrative. Let us examine them: During a 2002 MSNBC special, NBC news anchor Tom Brokaw interviewed several air traffic controllers who described what they saw on September 11. One of them, Todd Lewis, was on duty at Dulles International Airport. Here is a portion of the MSNBC transcript:
 
Mr. LEWIS: Well, it -- it [Flight 77] was heading right towards a prohibited area in downtown Washington. And that -- that covers the Capitol and the White House. We then called the White House on the hotline to let them know....Then, it turned south and away from the prohibited area, which seemed like a momentary sigh of relief.[53] [my emphasis]
 
Notice, this testimony by Todd Lewis accords with the NTSB's flight path study. Moreover, his story is corroborated by another account that appeared in USA Today.[54] According to this report, Chris Stephenson, chief air traffic controller at Washington's Reagan National Airport, received a warning call from the Secret Service at 9:30 AM that an unidentified aircraft was approaching Washington from the west at high speed. Stephenson quickly checked his scope and located the plane on radar, about 5 miles west of the city. He then looked out the window and actually saw Flight 77 approaching. He watched it turn south and make a 360 degree looping spiral, descending all the while. The plane came back around and passed out of view behind some tall buildings in Crystal City, which is immediately south of the Pentagon. Next, he witnessed a huge fireball. Stephenson's account begins at 9:30 AM, 8 minutes before the official Flight 77 crash time of 9:38 AM. This time difference is extremely important, because both Stephenson and the official narrative cannot be correct. Obviously, Flight 77 did not require 8 minutes to complete a looping spiral and make its final approach. These last maneuvers surely took no longer than 1-2 minutes. Thus, we are talking about a discrepancy of roughly 6 minutes. Under the circumstances, this might as well be an eternity.
 
Chris Stephenson's account flatly contradicts the 9/11 Commission Report, which states that Flight 77 did not begin its famous looping turn until after 9:34 AM.[55] Yet, Stephenson's timeline is further supported by Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta's testimony to the 9/11 Commission. On May 23, 2003 Mineta told the panel that on the morning of September 11 he arrived at the PEOC (the Presidential Emergency Operations Center, located under the White House) at 9:20 AM. Vice President Cheney was already present. Mineta explained that about 5-6 minutes later he overheard a conversation between Cheney and a young man who came in to inform the vice president about an approaching aircraft. In the words of Mineta: "There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, 'The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out.' And when it got down to, 'The plane is 10 miles out,' the young man also said to the vice president, 'Do the orders still stand?' And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, 'Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?'"[56] As numerous 9/11 investigators have observed, Mineta's testimony is powerful evidence that a stand-down order was in effect. Certainly, at the very least, the "orders" were not that the plane should be shot down, which would have been standard operating procedure (SOP). The fact that some other unusual order was in effect raises questions about the role that a pre-planned military exercise may have played in the 9/11 attack. As we know, at least 10 such drills were in progress on September 11. My point, however, is that this conversation between Cheney and the young man, which Mineta says took place at 9:25 - 9:26 AM, is consistent with what I am proposing: that the Pentagon strike occurred 5-6 minutes before the official crash time of 9:38 AM.
 
Notice also that the accounts of both Stephenson and Mineta mention a warning call from the Secret Service. The fact that Vice President Cheney was being kept apprised of the status of Flight 77 strongly suggests that the military was also tracking the plane. Yet, all of the above accounts, which are mutually corroborative, were excluded from the 9/11 Commission Report. Why? Well, obviously, because they contradict the official narrative.
 
Frozen in Time
 
Compelling physical evidence also supports what I am proposing. Among the oddities from 9/11 are two curious photographs of Pentagon clocks that stopped working at the time of the attack. One of these clocks was in the heliport office.[57] The other was inside the west wing.[58] It appears that the powerful shock wave that occurred at the moment of impact knocked the clocks off the wall, causing them to break. Notice the shattered glass in the following photo. One of the clocks stopped at 9:31:40 AM, the other at 9:32:30 AM. For the purposes of this discussion, I will round them off to 9:32 AM.
 
 
 
 
 
This important evidence was preserved by the US Navy and the Smithsonian Institution, both unimpeachable sources. From what I understand, until very recently one of the clocks was on display in the Smithsonian. Both of the photos may be viewed via the internet. One website mentions that "The airplane actually struck the Pentagon at 9:38 AM; apparently the clock was six minutes slow." Yet, both clocks stopped within a minute of the same time. Were they both running 5-6 minutes late? I think not. Remember, these were military clocks. Anyone familiar with the US military knows they do not run 5-6 minutes behind schedule. Being "on time" is an important part of military discipline. Indeed, it's one of the first lessons that grunts learn in boot camp. Judging from the photos, it appears that one of the clocks was battery-powered, a common type. We can't be certain about the other. It might have been battery-powered, or possibly it was an electric wall clock, and stopped when the power went off.
 
I am not, however, the first to challenge the 9/11 timeline based on this photographic evidence. Barbara Honegger, a military affairs journalist, discussed the frozen Pentagon clocks in her excellent 2006 article "The Pentagon Attack Papers."[59] Honegger starts with a germane story about another famous historical event that was similarly frozen in time: the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. In the aftermath of "the big one" the San Francisco Chronicle featured a front-page photo of a charred clock that stopped at precisely 5:12 AM, marking the fateful moment when the massive quake rocked the city. She writes: "a century after that devastating event the stopped clock serves as both the ultimate evidence and the symbol that captures it all."[60] Honegger makes an astute point: Will the Pentagon clocks one day be viewed in a similar way? I would argue, yes, though I suspect they will become even more famous.
 
In her article Honegger argues on the basis of the frozen clocks that the Pentagon attack commenced at 9:32 AM. She also cites additional evidence, including a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) "timeline document" from September 11 2001, which, according to her, states that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon at 9:32 AM.[61] Although Barbara was unable to produce this document when I contacted her, I was able to determine that she is correct. After an extensive search I found the original document posted at the National Security Archive, a website maintained by staff at George Washington University.[62] The site specializes in posting official 9/11-related documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The document, titled "Executive Summary: Chronology of a Multiple Hijacking Crisis, September 11, 2001," records the FAA's original timeline of the major events of 9/11. The entry for "0932" reads as follows: "ATC AEA reports aircraft crashes into west side of pentagon." Here, the double acronym ATC AEA stands for "Air Traffic Control Eastern Region." Amazingly, the 9/11 Commission Report actually references this FAA document in two separate footnotes, although, obviously, not for the purpose of corroborating the official Pentagon crash time of 9:38.[63] The FAA document, dated September 17 2001, evidently was released one day before the Pentagon announced its major revision in the official story. Judging by the scant amount of press attention it received, the FAA timeline soon disappeared into America's collective memory hole, where it has languished in obscurity ever since. Nonetheless, though long forgotten, the document is no less real, and is explosive evidence that flatly contradicts the official narrative.
 
Honegger also cites the testimony of a notable eyewitness. The soon-to-be Danish Foreign Minister, Per Stig Moller, happened to be in Washington on the day of the September 11 attack. When he heard a loud noise Moller looked outside, saw smoke rising from the Pentagon, and immediately checked his watch. The time was 9:32 AM, a time Moller subsequently reported in press interviews on his return to Denmark.[64] Honegger also mentions Alberto Gonzales, who on 9/11 was President Bush's legal counsel. On August 27, 2002 Gonzales gave an address at the Naval Postgraduate School in which he stated unequivocally that "the Pentagon was attacked at 9:32." Honegger works at the school and has a tape of the address. Although Gonzales' remark has long since been forgotten, it shows that even within the Bush administration the official timeline did not take hold for many months.
 
But Honegger seriously doubts that a commercial airliner hit the Pentagon. Evidently, she supports the view that conspirators staged a plane-switch. She thinks bombs were planted in the building, which caused the initial blast wave, although she doesn't rule out the possibility of a subsequent strike by missile or a smaller plane. Yet, as Honegger herself admits, one of the frozen clocks was found in the heliport office, a separate building located outside the Pentagon. This is significant, because if explosions occurred within the Pentagon the shocks surely would have been contained by the west wing's brand-new exterior blast wall; in which case, the clock in the heliport office would not have been affected. Moreover, if a separate bomb went off outside the building, near the heliport office, the explosion could not have been missed. Surely it would have been seen and reported by numerous passers by. If it happened in this way, where are these many witnesses? To my knowledge, there are none. Moreover, the flight recorder data shows that Flight 77 never flew below 20,000 feet, until its final approach, not even during the time it was lost to radar. In short, there were no interruptions in its flight path. Finally, the recovery of Boeing 757 parts from within the Pentagon[65] confirms this interpretation, and suggests that at least some of the anomalies, such as the small hole and the seeming absence of wreckage, may have been the result of a high speed impact against the Pentagon's exterior blast wall. Bear in mind that the west wing was no ordinary construction. This section of the Pentagon had just been outfitted with a 2 foot thick outer wall of steel-reinforced concrete. I would argue that the frozen clocks corroborate air traffic controller Chris Stephenson's eyewitness account of Flight 77's final approach; and are compelling evidence that Flight 77 hit the west wing at approximately 9:32 AM, a full 6 minutes before the official crash time. Assuming this interpretation is correct, how might we explain a discrepancy of this magnitude, which, in the context of 9/11, is a veritable lifetime?
 
Two Different Events?
 
As we know, the press initially reported that the Pentagon strike occurred at 9:43 AM. However, 7 days after the attack, on September 18 2001, NORAD announced a revised crash time of 9:38 AM, which the 9/11 Commission later reaffirmed. But if the strike actually occurred at 9:32 AM, why was the crash time in the original report (9:43 AM), so far wrong? Initially, as I puzzled over this, I attributed the huge 11 minute disparity to the confusion of events. I also discounted the possibility that the Pentagon had fudged the timeline. My reasoning was straightforward. Moving the crash time back by a minute or two, to say nothing of 6 or even 11 whopping minutes, made the generals look more guilty of a stand-down, not less. This made absolutely no sense. If the Joint Chiefs were bent on covering-up their gross negligence, even their complicity, surely they would have adjusted the crash-time forward, not backward. The same logic held for the 9/11 Commission. Although their phantom plane scenario proved embarrassing to the generals, as I've explained, the commission's main objective was to absolve the general staff of all responsibility. So, if the crash actually occurred at 9:32 AM, why would the panel ratify a later time, which made the generals look more guilty? Again, this made no sense.
 
This logic went out the window, however, when I learned about the E-4B. Whence, I began to suspect that the answer is counter-intuitive. The presence of the world's most advanced command and control platform over Washington on 9/11 not only brings clarity to the many ambiguous reports about Flight 77's trajectory, it also suggests a likely motive for a cover-up, and even points to the means by which this was achieved. According to one early and widely reported version of events, the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 missed the Pentagon on its first pass, then continued east across the Potomac River. The plane allegedly passed close to the White House, swung around, re-crossed the river, circled the Pentagon again, and finally smacked into the west wing. What is astonishing about this popular account, which attempts to support the official narrative, is that so many people took it seriously. No doubt, many still do. (See the diagram below.)
 
 
 
 
There are serious problems, however, with this version of events: If Flight 77 crossed the Potomac it would also have had to cross Reagan Airport's busy air traffic corridor, which follows the river. In which case, air traffic controllers at Reagan surely would have noticed the intrusion. What is more, on its return the errant plane would have intruded a second time. Indeed, Flight 77 would have flown directly over Reagan Airport. It would be hard to imagine a more conspicuous display. Assuming the controllers at Reagan were dozing on the job and somehow missed the first pass, it is just not possible that they missed the second. If it happened in this way, there would also be many additional eyewitnesses. So, where are these witnesses? As far as I know, they don't exist. Instead, we have the credible testimony, already presented, of air traffic controller Stephenson, who saw Flight 77 on radar, then looked out the window of the Reagan tower and watched the plane complete its final approach without ever leaving Virginia. Obviously, the early account illustrated by the above diagram was a hybrid attempt to explain both the Pentagon crash and the mystery sightings over Washington. But given that Flight 77 never crossed the Potomac, and also the powerful evidence that the mystery plane was an E-4B, I think we must conclude that these were two separate events.
 
The fact that the US military denies to this day that an E-4B circled over Washington on 9/11 suggests a likely motive for a cover-up: to conceal the E-4B's presence, hence, the role it played. Although the military brass could have minimized the appearance of a stand-down by acknowledging the actual crash time of 9:32 AM, in that case the generals would have had a lot of explaining to do. For instance, they would have had to explain what the FAA was tracking at 9:36 AM when Scoggins reported an unidentified plane 6 miles southeast of the White House, not to mention the various media reports of a large white plane circling over the White House and Capitol during the attack. Settling on a 9:38 AM crash time allowed the generals to exploit the ambiguous reports and the genuine chaos that prevailed on September 11. This analysis also brings clarity to the strange 9/11 account of Langley fighter pilot Major Dean Eckmann, who, according to the BBC, received a radio transmission at 9:33 AM while piloting his F-16 over the Atlantic. In Eckmann's own words: "They said: All aeroplanes, if you come within 30 miles of Washington DC, you will be shot down."[66] Who sent this order? Was this the E-4B, warning off all planes, military as well as commercial, in order to conceal its presence over the Capitol? Not surprisingly, the BBC news story is nowhere recounted in the 9/11 Commission Report.
 
Flight 77: Lost? Or: Crashed?
 
This analysis would also explain the 9:34 AM report that Flight 77 had disappeared from radar. The 9/11 Commission Report mentions this event, probably because it was too prominent to exclude.[67] However, as I will show, the official narrative distorts its significance, spinning the story to convey the false impression that Flight 77 was still airborne at 9:34 AM, when, in fact, it had just crashed. Let us now examine the verbatim wording of the official narrative:
 
"At the suggestion of the Boston Center's military liaison [i.e., Scoggins], NEADS contacted the FAA's Washington Center to ask about American Flight 11. In the course of the conversation, a Washington Center manager informed NEADS: 'We're looking­­­we also lost Flight 77.' The time was 9:34. This was the first notice to the military that Flight 77 was missing, and it had come by chance."[68]
 
 
Notice, the time of this report, 9:34 AM, is consistent with the alternative crash scenario I have proposed. Obviously, if Flight 77 struck the pentagon at 9:32 AM it would have been lost to radar. Therefore, the remark by the staffer at Washington Center at 9:34 AM about a missing plane is not in the least surprising. In fact, we would expect this. Yet, here we are led to believe that Flight 77 was still aloft and cruising at 9:34 AM when the FAA somehow lost the plane. Nor does the 9/11 Commission Report tell us why it disappeared: one of several reasons why the official narrative is just not believable. Evidently, the FAA's Washington Center had been tracking Flight 77 for some time. Yet, we are supposed to believe that the FAA failed to inform NORAD about the hijacking. Then, for reasons that are equally mysterious, the FAA somehow lost Flight 77 at 9:34 AM. The 9/11 Commission Report mentions this event a second time, possibly for emphasis. The second passage reads as follows: "[NEADS] was notified at 9:34 AM that American 77 was lost. Then, minutes later, NEADS was told that an unknown plane was 6 miles southeast of the White House. Only then did the already scrambled airplanes start moving directly toward Washington, D.C."[69] Notice, the text mentions the warning call made by Scoggins. Notice also the clever use of the passive tense, for added effect. The reader gets the impression that the bungler at the FAA was the active party. NEADS was merely the unfortunate victim of the FAA's incompetence. I would argue that the above passages are a cunning example of treasonous deception, carefully orchestrated for the purpose of leading the reader away from the actual crash time of 9:32 AM.
 
As we know, one of the NORAD audio-tapes was the original source of this 9:34 AM report. The tape was among those made available to Michael Bronner, who mentions it in his August 2006 Vanity Fair article. Indeed, Bronner actually includes a portion of the transcript of this conversation between NEADS ID techs Dooley and Watson and the FAA's Washington Center:
 
09:34:01 WASHINGTON CENTER: Now, let me tell you this. I-I'll-we've been looking. We're-also lost American 77- WATSON: American 77? DOOLEY: American 77's lost- WATSON: Where was it proposed to head, sir? WASHINGTON CENTER: Okay, he was going to L.A. also- WATSON: From where, sir? WASHINGTON CENTER: I think he was from Boston also. Now let me tell you this story here. Indianapolis Center was working this guy- WATSON: What guy? WASHINGTON CENTER: American 77, at flight level 3-5-0 [35,000 feet]. However, they lost radar with him. They lost contact with him. They lost everything. And they don't have any idea where he is or what happened.
 
The transcript provides more details. Notice, the FAA controller at Washington Center states incorrectly that Flight 77 departed from Boston, when in fact it departed from Dulles. Also, near the end he mentions, almost in passing, that Flight 77 was at 35,000 feet when it disappeared from radar. Seeing this, the average reader will probably conclude that Flight 77 was still at cruising altitude when Washington Center lost radar contact at 9:34 AM. But this would be a misreading of the transcript. Notice, Washington Center mentions that the FAA center in Indianapolis had been tracking Flight 77 earlier in the morning. The 9/11 Commission Report states that Indianapolis lost Flight 77 at 8:56 AM when the plane's transponder was turned off, and at this point reported that Flight 77 had crashed.[70] As we know, of course, Flight 77 did not crash at 8:56 AM.[71] According to the 9/11 Commission Report, this earlier loss of radar contact occurred for technical reasons.[72]
 
 
But here's my point: When the controller at Washington Center informed NEADS that Flight 77's altitude was 35,000 feet, he was not giving the plane's current altitude (at 9:34 AM), which he had no way of knowing without a transponder. No, he was merely restating the plane's last known altitude, data that was current some 38 minutes before, at 8:56 AM, when Flight 77's transponder went off. Yet, the above transcript is ambiguous enough to reinforce the false impression that the plane was still aloft and cruising at 9:34 AM. Is this why the Pentagon chose to release this particular tape: because it proved helpful in spinning the story and reinforcing the cover-up? No doubt, the military brass made the tape available for a reason, first to the 9/11 Commission, then to Bronner. And why Bronner? Well, as we know, it's long been standard practice for the US government and the Pentagon to shape and spin the news by feeding selected tidbits to anointed journalists. Some well-known reporters have built entire careers, not to say reputations, on their "privileged" access to "insider" information from official sources.
 
Conclusion
 
Based on all of the above, I believe that the US military announced the original 9:43 AM Pentagon crash time to conceal the presence of the E-4B over Washington. A week later, when the military revised the cover-up, they moved the timeline forward by as much as they dared. The 9:38 AM crash time should therefore be understood as a "best fit" that succeeded in masking the presence of the E-4B on the one hand, while minimizing the evidence pointing to a stand-down on the other. The fact that the evidence was still quite incriminating is a measure of just how important concealment of the E-4B was, from the standpoint of the Joint Chiefs. Otherwise, they would never have exposed themselves in this way. Notice, assuming this analysis is correct, it tends to rule out any possibility that the E-4B was conducting legitimate business on 9/11 when it circled over Washington. On this basis we must also conclude that the 9/11 Commission participated in the cover up. We know that the commission had access to the NTSB flight path study long before it was released to the public, because the footnotes of the 9/11 Commission Report cite this important document. Therefore, the panel surely knew that Flight 77 never crossed the Potomac. This knowledge alone should have led the panel to investigate the news reports and eyewitness accounts of the mystery plane over Washington, in order to resolve the ambiguous sightings. Of course, as we know, the panel did nothing of the kind. Their ratification of the 9:38 AM crash time allowed the ambiguous reports to stand, so crucial to the continuing cover up. Of course, given that a Bush insider, Phil Zelikow, stage-managed the 9/11 investigation and oversaw the preparation of the final report, none of this is so surprising. Indeed, there are questions about just how much access the various panel members had to key documents during the investigation. It's quite possible that none of them ever saw the NTSB flight path study, thanks to the role played by Zelikow.
 
In conclusion, it would appear that the official 9/11 narrative is a house of cards, a complete fabrication that a genuine investigation could expose in short order simply by plying key witnesses with the right questions. One prime candidate would be the Washington Center controller who spoke with NEADS ID techs Watson and Dooley at 9:34 AM on September 11. This controller should be able to set the record straight regarding the context of his/her conversation about the "lost" Flight 77, which would help to establish the actual time of impact. It would also be fruitful to interview the various commissioners to learn if they had a chance to actually examine key documents like the NTSB flight path study. Of course, without a new 9/11 investigation, we will probably never know the full story.
 
 
Mark H. Gaffney's latest book, Gnostic Secrets of the Naassenes, was a finalist for the 2004 Narcissus Book Award. Mark can be reached for comment at markhgaffney@earthlink.net Visit Mark's website at www.gnosticsecrets.com
 
NOTES
[1] Mark H. Gaffney, "The 9/11 Mystery Plane," posted at
http://www.rense.com/general76/missing.htm
[2] Interview with Deputy Fire Chief Peter Hayden, Firehouse Magazine,
April 2002.
[3] Interview with Colin Scoggins, March 11, 2007.
[4] email from Colin Scoggins, April 11, 2007
[5] The best account I've seen of this incident is by Webster Griffin
Tarpley, 911: Synthetic Terrorism, Progressive Press, 2006, pp.
179-283.
[6] Paul Thompson, The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day,
Minute by Minute, Reagan Books, 2004.
[7] Go to
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/project.jsp?project=911_project
[8] Senate Armed Services Committee, Chairman, U.S. Senator Carl Levin
(D-MI), Hearing On the Nomination of General Richard Myers to be
Chairman of The Joint Chiefs of Staff, September 13, 2001. Archived at
http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/mycon.htm
[9] Press Release, Directorate of Public Affairs, NORAD, September 18,
2001. Archived at http://www.public-action.com/911/noradresponse/
[10] The 9/11 Commission Report. Final Report of the National
Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, WW Norton and
Company, New York, 2004, p. 34
[11] The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 26
[12] While Col. Alan Scott testified that the Langley fighters were
scrambled to intercept Flight 77, NORAD Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold was less
clear about this in his remarks, and indicated that the intent was also
to intercept Flight 93. Transcript of NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST
ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES, Public Hearing, Friday, May 23, 2003.
For the transcript go to
http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing2/9
-11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-23.htm
[13] Transcript: 9/11 Commission Hearings for June 17, 2004, Thursday,
June 17, 2004; 2:01 PM. Posted at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49429-2004Jun17.html
[14] Dan Eggen, "9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by Pentagon,"
Washington Post, August 2, 2006.
[15] This phrase occurs numerous times. The 9/11 Commission Report.
Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the
United States, WW Norton and Company, New York, 2004, p. 34.
[16] David Ray Griffin, "9/11 Live or Fabricated: Do the NORAD Tapes
Verify The 9/11 Commission Report?", September 4, 2006, posted at
http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=2006091418303369
[17] The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 34.
[18] The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 26.
[19] Michael Bronner, "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes," Vanity Fair,
August 2006. Posted at
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/08/norad200608?
printable=true?tPage=all
[20] Subsequently, the transcripts were released and are currently
available for download at George Washington University's National
Security Archive, along with the National Transportation and Safety
Board (NTSB) flight path studies for flights 11, 175 and 77. Go to
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB165/index.htm
[21] "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes."
[22] Paul Thompson, "Complete 911 Timeline," posted at
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline.jsp?
timeline=complete_911_timeline&day_of_9/11=aa77 Also see The 9/11
Commission Report, p. 26.
[23] Interview with Colin Scoggins, March 10, 2007.
[24] email from Colin Scoggins, April 27, 2007.
[25] 9/11 Commission, Public Hearing, May 23, 2003.
[26] FAA Communications with NORAD On September 11, 2001, FAA
clarification memo to 9/11 Independent Commission, posted at
http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=2004081200421797
[27] NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES,
Public Hearing, Friday, May 23, 2003. For the transcript go to
http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing2/9
-11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-23.htm
[28] David Ray Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and
Distortions, Olive Branch Press, Massachusetts, 2005, pp. 186-188.
[29] email from Colin Scoggins, May 1, 2007.
[30] Reynolds Dixon, "The Flying Elephant: Evidence for Involvement of
a Third Jet in the WTC Attacks," Journal of 9/11 Studies, Vol 1,
Scholars for 9/11 Truth, June 2006, posted at
http://journalof911studies.com/
[31] Kevin Dennehy, "I thought it was the end of the world," Cape Cod
Times, August 21, 2002.
[32] "Moments of Crisis, Part I: Terror Hits the Towers," ABC News,
September 14, 2002.
[33]The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 459, note 120.
[34] The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 24.
[35] M. Kelly, North Jersey Media Group, "Atlantic City F-16 Fighters
Were Eight Minutes Away from 9/11 Hijacked Planes," posted at
http://www.prisonplanet.com/051203atlanticcityfighters.html
[36] The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 20.
[37] The Andrews web page has been archived. To see it as it looked in
September 2001 go to
http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/dcmilsep.htm
[38] The original page has been archived. Here's how it looked on April
19, 2001. http://emperor.vwh.net/9-11backups/dcandr2.htm
[39] The Andrews page has been archived. Scroll to the bottom:
http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/dcmil.htm
[40] Interview with Casper Weinberger, FOX News, September 11, 2001.
[41] Richard A. Clark, Against All Enemies, New York, The Free Press,
2004, p.12.
[42] General Arnold admitted this during his testimony before the 9/11
Commission. Transcript, NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON
THE UNITED STATES, Public Hearing, Friday, May 23, 2003 posted at
http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing2/9
-11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-23.htm
[43] Illarion Bykov and Jared Israel were the first to report this, in
November 2001. Go to http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/indict-1.htm
[44] Here's how the original page looked on April 19, 2001:
http://emperor.vwh.net/9-11backups/dcandr2.htm
[45] Steve Brown, 'Air Defenders Learn Lessons from September 11," FOX
News, September 8 2002.
[46] Transcript, NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE
UNITED STATES, Public Hearing, Friday, May 23, 2003 posted at
http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing2/9
-11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-23.htm
[47] FDCH Transcripts, Senate Armed Services Committee Holds Hearing on
Role of Defense Department in HOmeland Security, October 25, 2001.
[48] Michael Bronner, "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes," Vanity Fair,
August 2006.
[49] "Primary Target: The Pentagon," CBS NEWS, September 21, 2001;
Boston Globe, November 23, 2001; Daily Telegraph, September 16, 2001.
[50] To view a map of Flight 77's final approach to the pentagon or to
download the NTSB's flight path study go to
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB165/index.htm
[51] Mark H. Gaffney, "The 9/11 Mystery Plane," posted at
http://www.rense.com/general76/missing.htm
[52] Against All Enemies, p. 7.
[53] "The Skies in Lockdown," MSNBC, September 11, 2002.
[54] Alan Levin, "Voices from the Air Traffic World," USA Today,
August 12, 2002.
[55] The report states that at 9:29 AM Flight 77 was still 38 miles
west of the pentagon. According to the report it did not begin its
famous looping turn until 9:34 AM. The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 9,
notes 59 and 60; also p. 25, note 146.
[56] NATIONAL COMMISSION ON TERRORIST ATTACKS UPON THE UNITED STATES,
Public Hearing, Friday, May 23, 2003, posted at
http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing2/9
-11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-23.htm
[57] This photo is posted at
http://americanhistory.si.edu/september11/collection/record.asp?ID=19
[58] This second photo is posted at
http://www.news.navy.mil/view_single.asp?id=2480
[59] Barbara Honegger, "The Pentagon Attack Papers," in Jim Marrs, The
Terror Conspiracy, Disinformation Co., New York, 2006, p. 439.
[60] A photo of the frozen San Francisco clock is posted at
http://sfgate.com/greatquake/
[61] FAA timeline document, "Executive Summary Chronology of a Multiple
Hijacking Crisis," September 11, 2001.
[62] The FAA timeline (document #5) can be downloaded as a pdf file
from http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB165/index.htm
[63] The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 454, footnotes 40 and 41.
[64] "The Pentagon Attack Papers", p. 440.
[65] See Russell Pickering's site for a discussion:
http://www.pentagonresearch.com/757debris.html Also see
http://www.aerospaceweb.org/question/conspiracy/q0265.shtml
[66] "Clear the Skies," BBC, September 1, 2002.
[67] The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 27; also see pp. 33 and 34.
[68] The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 27.
[69] The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 34.
[70] The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 24.
[71] The plane's flight recorder data shows that Flight 77 never
dropped below 20,000, until its final approach.
[72] The 9/11 Commission Report, p. 25.


Disclaimer






MainPage
http://www.rense.com


This Site Served by TheHostPros