published in the April, 2009 Rock Creek Free Press
Two California men who call themselves Citizen Investigation Team (CIT) have compiled impressive video evidence that the plane seen flying towards the Pentagon on the morning of September 11, 2001 could not have caused the death and damage at the Pentagon, nor the damage to five light poles outside the Pentagon.
Frustrated with the inability of 9/11 researchers to do anything other than speculate about what really happened that day, Craig Ranke and Aldo Marquis decided to take matters into their own hands. They have repeatedly flown in from southern California, canvassed the area near the Pentagon on foot to find people who saw a plane just prior to the fireball, and then quizzed these eye-witnesses extensively on camera to establish exactly what they saw, when they saw it and where they saw it from.
Their research is summarized at their website, as well as in four DVDs containing interviews with 13 people who attest that they saw a plane fly to the north of the Citgo gas station on Pentagon property, not south of the Citgo station as required by the official story.
CIT had each witness draw the flight path they saw on a map; the compilation from all the witnesses is shown below. The yellow lines clustered together towards the top of the map are from the witnesses, the straight blue line angling up from the bottom edge of the map is the official flight path of the plane, as described by the National Transportation Safety Bureau (NTSB).
Taken together, the 13 witnesses deliver a devastating blow to the official story about the Pentagon attack. Five 40 foot, 247 pound light poles were knocked down that day, and if the plane flew north of the Citgo station, it could not have knocked down those poles. The west side of the Pentagon was damaged as if it was hit by a plane heading north, with the zone of destruction angling north. If the plane flew to the north of the Citgo station before hitting the Pentagon, it would not have caused this kind of damage.
CIT’s evidence is compelling for a number of reasons. Three of their witnesses are Pentagon police officers who were on duty at the time of the attack. Most of the others were government employees at their jobs, and their presence at that place and time can be verified. This stands in sharp contrast to the witnesses who claim they saw the attack from their cars, as their presence on the road cannot be confirmed.
CIT’s witnesses are quite sure about what they saw. Sergeant William Lagasse, an officer with what it now known as the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, was fueling his patrol car at the Citgo station when the jet flew past him. He has stated that he is “100% sure” that the plane flew to the north of the gas station, that he would “bet his life on it.”
There is a remarkable degree of congruence in the witnesses’ accounts. They are not 9/11 researchers and none of them seemed to be aware that they were describing a flight path at odds with the official story, thus they had no reason to be less than forthcoming. Each was interviewed separately, yet their stories are quite similar.
CIT includes each interview in its entirety, without editing. Although this makes for a long video, it pre-empts any accusations of misinterpreting or leading the witnesses. We have the advantage of seeing the witnesses’ body language and hearing their tone of voice. We get a glimpse into their personalities and character, and are given the maximum amount of information possible with which to assess if they are telling the truth. I found the witnesses credible and convincing.
After thousands of hours of painstaking investigation and analysis, Ranke and Marquis have concluded that the plane seen by so many people did not hit the Pentagon, but flew over the building at the same time that pre-planted explosives caused a huge fireball and thick, black smoke, obscuring the fact that the plane was still in the air and flying away.
Several of CIT’s witnesses mentioned a second plane that came along three minutes later, but media reports immediately after 9/11 talked about a second plane “shadowing” the attack plane. The belief that there were two planes in very close proximity serves as a useful fiction to confuse anyone who saw the plane fly over the Pentagon as the fireball exploded. Rather than concluding that the plane never actually hit the building, observers would almost certainly conclude that they had seen the “shadowing” second plane.
All of CIT’s witnesses also believe that the plane they saw hit the Pentagon, although this cannot be possible. This fact has been used to dismiss CIT’s work as irrelevant, but it’s not a compelling argument.
Less than an hour earlier, America had been treated to the sight of 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.
The most riveting segment in the CIT footage is of the interview with Lloyde England, a taxi cab driver who was photographed numerous times just after the attack. In all the photos, England and his cab are on Route 27, on the bridge going over Columbia Pike. The front windshield of his cab has a big hole in it and the cab is at a stop and straddling the lanes. A broken light pole lies nearby.
England’s story is that he was going 40 mph when he felt the jet go over head, and then the light pole came smashing through his front windshield. He says he then skidded sideways to a stop, and that a stranger stopped and helped him remove the light pole from the windshield, and then left without ever giving his name, or even speaking a word.
England’s story is suspect because photos show the hood of his sedan untouched and gleaming like a mirror, although his front windshield was destroyed. England is quite clear that it was not the smaller section at the top of the light pole that impaled his windshield, but the big, 40 foot, 247 pound pole. He contends that after it pierced his windshield, with perhaps five feet of the top end of the pole inside the cab, that the other 35 feet stuck straight out into the air, not touching the hood of the cab.
The question is, with the windshield destroyed, what held the pole up the in air? CIT drove with England to his property in the country to inspect the cab. They hypothesized that perhaps the narrow end of the pole had pierced the back seat or floorboards of the cab, holding it in place and not allowing it to touch the hood of the cab. But their inspection showed that there was only an insignificant rip in the rear seat, and no damage to the floorboards. Although the dashboard was damaged, no part of the hood, including the edge near the windshield, showed any damage.
What makes the story even more incredible is that England claims that as he was removing the pole from the windshield, he fell down, but managed, even as he was on the ground, to keep holding the pole in the air. Remember that the pole is 40 feet long and weighs 247 pounds, while England appears to be about 65 years old.
Pressed to explain how it can be that the pole never touched the hood of the sedan, England said only “The car speaks for itself.” Unfortunately for England, the car seems to be saying that his account can not possibly be true.
In addition, with 13 witnesses saying that the plane went no where near those light poles, it seems clear that something else caused the damage to England’s windshield.
The video with England validates CIT’s practice of keeping the camera rolling as much as possible, even during casual conversation, as the most damning statements from both England and his wife came out spontaneously and unexpectedly. While Ranke and England’s wife were chatting at the Englands’ home, Ranke told her that they had determined that the jet never hit the Pentagon, but kept on going, and, amazingly, she agreed! The audio is hard to hear and she then refused to say more, but her meaning was clear. Mrs. England, who works for the FBI, also said that she knows why her husband’s car was not impounded as evidence, but wasn’t going to tell.
England spontaneously offered this damning statement: “You gotta understand something. When people do things and get away with it, you…eventually it’s gonna come to me, and when it comes to me, it’s gonna be so big, I can’t do nothing about it.”
CIT also kept the camera running during the 90 minute drive to see England’s car, and captured a few very interesting statements on tape. Although England speaks generally and indirectly, in the context of a conversation about the attack at the Pentagon, his meaning is clear.
England: I wasn’t supposed to be involved with this, this is too big for me, man, this is a big thing. This is a world thing happening, I’m a small man…I’m not supposed to be involved in this. This is for other people, people who have money and all this kind of stuff.
Ranke: Your point that these people who have all the money…
England: This is their thing.
Ranke: This is their event.
England: This is for them.
Ranke: Meaning they’re doing it for their own reasons…
England: (with conviction) That’s right. I’m not supposed to be in it.
-----------------------------
Ranke: They must have planned it.
England: It was planned.
-----------------------
England: You know what history is? It’s not the truth. It’s “his story.” Has nothing to do with the truth.
As someone who has been researching the 9/11 story for two years, and has experienced mockery, abuse and denials from the government and media, it was a thrill to hear someone who was directly involved in the cover-up to admit on tape that it was a big event, a world event, planned by rich people for their own reasons.
Incredibly, once Ranke explained that 13 witnesses had all placed the jet at the north side of the Citgo station, on a trajectory that could not have knocked down the five light poles, England changed his story and declared that he was not where all the photographs show him to be, but actually well north of Columbia Pike – where no light poles were knocked down.
Ranke showed England numerous photos of himself, his damaged cab and the downed light pole on the bridge over Columbia Pike. Even faced with incontrovertible evidence of his exact location, England resolutely maintained that pictures don’t always tell the truth and that the accident with the light pole had taken place much further north.
After watching the 90 minute video of the interview with Lloyde England, the man is completely discredited. Ranke points out that England may well be a victim himself, in that he may have been forced to tell the story of the pole impaling his windshield. But his story is so incredible, and his protestations that he was not in the location where multiple photos and videos place him to be on that day are so absurd, that Lloyde England’s account now stands as perhaps the most vulnerable point in the edifice of lies that constitute the official story of the attack on the Pentagon.
The entire body of work from CIT is a testament to the tremendous power of dedicated citizen journalists to uncover the truth behind a government story. Using thousands of dollars of their own money and thousands of hours of unpaid time, Craig Ranke and Aldo Marquis have performed a significant public service. They have created a body of work that definitively shows the government story about the Pentagon to be a lie.
CIT’s next move is to consolidate their research into a more concise format that edits all the lengthy interviews into a single 60 minute video called “National Security Alert.” The video will have no music or other artistic flourishes, which will make it suitable for informing government or media figures. Within the next 30 days, they expect to go live with a new website at CitizenInvestigationTeam.com
That site will have a link for free downloads of their new video, plus detailed information on how citizens can use the video to get action, including a series of steps to take if authority figures don’t respond.
Ranke and Marquis will be returning to the DC area to present a four hour conference in tandem with Pilots for 9/11 Truth. The free conference is sponsored by The Wisdom Fund and will be held at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) conference center in Arlington, from 10 am to 3 pm, on Saturday July 11.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Sheila Casey is a DC based journalist. Her work has appeared in The Denver Post, Reuters, Chicago Sun-Times, Dissident Voice and Common Dreams. She blogs at http://www.sheilacasey.com
Take a step back and realize what each theory is on the surface:
A. There are about 13 witnesses who saw a plane flying north of the Citgo station (and who believed or deduced it crashed). However, the plane must have flown over, according to CIT, because there is ONE witness to that: Roosevelt Roberts who was inside the building at the moment of the crash (or detonation?).
This is basically the theory put forward by two man: a fly-over scheme backed up by about 13 witnesses.
B. There are about 100 witnesses who saw a plane crash into the building. This theory is also backed up by physical evidence: the plane debris, the FDR, the RADES data, the poles, the DNA-reports, the passenger belongings, the air traffic control communication tapes... you name it.
This is the story put forward by other investigative parties: a plane flying into the Pentagon, backed up by lots of physical evidence and about 100 witnesses.
Now why would anyone choose the former theory (not even considering the anomalies, which the former theory probably has even more than the latter)?
Posted by: IAMRMC | October 25, 2009 at 06:07 PM
The E ring that was hit wasn't top brass offices area. Does someone know what kind of offices or services this particular section was housing?
Thanks for your replies.
Posted by: agent orange | September 19, 2009 at 09:54 AM
You are an absolute fool. It's all one big conspiracy, lol.
Posted by: john | July 23, 2009 at 05:39 PM
I mean, this is just hilarious. I've heard some wonderfully creative theories in my time, but this is one of the best! As for a 'shadowing' plane - that's got to be my favourite bit! Ever tried flying an aircraft at that altitude over a populated area? Hahaha! Great story.
Posted by: Dan | July 23, 2009 at 06:17 AM
"So are you calling Roosevelt Roberts a liar?"
That's hilarious, Craig. Aldwin labelled Lloyde England a MASS MURDERER and you're getting all bent out of shape because your flyover witness' account makes absolutely no sense?
Who corroborates seeing the "flyover" plane over lane 1 of Pentagon South Parking, where it should have been right over the top of Levi Stephens head?
NO ONE.
Posted by: bobloblaw | July 17, 2009 at 09:00 AM
Thank you for your investigative journalism
Posted by: MG | April 10, 2009 at 01:25 PM
i did view it, every ridiculous leading question, and most of the mind numbing 90 min with the cab driver (i refuse to believe anyone can watch it without fast forwarding.) i find it amusing you also pick and choose who is a liar and who isn't but criticize me for doing the same.
forgive me if i choose to believe mountains of scientific evidence, and accurate eye witness accounts over 2 guys with no credentials and an agenda. i have said before that i dont fully believe the govt. account of what happened, i think they have lied to cover up their own incompetence and negligence.
i did want to ask what you are doing to free the men who by your account have been wrongly imprisoned for committing these acts of terrorism. if your story is true, they should be set free immediately.
thanks for the discussion, though i wish you hadn't given up so easily, it has helped pass the time. i am glad you get to be a part of something the rest of us 'official story zealots' are ignorant too. you are a true skeptic, ready to use whatever evidence best fits your ideas no matter how ludicrous it is.
thanks
Posted by: really bored | April 08, 2009 at 08:06 PM
Gary,
So are you calling Roosevelt Roberts a liar? What did he have to gain from lying to the Library of Congress about this commercial jet at about 50 feet altitude immediately after the explosion? Or did he simply hallucinate it like you are suggesting happened to all the north side witnesses?
If you think going to the jref forum for rebuttals is "research" you are sadly mistaken. You have no clue what you are talking about and it shows. I am finished with you as it's pointless to have a "debate" with an official story zealot who refuses to bother viewing evidence in full that he is furiously arguing against. I suggest you take any questions you have about the evidence to CIT direct on their forum but I also suggest that you actually view it first so you don't look as pathetic as you have here.
Posted by: FalseFlagBurner | April 08, 2009 at 02:41 PM
roosevelt roberts claims would require the plane that he saw fly over the pentagon to take an almost impossible path. of the more than 100 witnesses interviewed by both CIT and other outlets they have ONE witness to a 'fly over'. and many of the witnesses who had no line of sight to the impact would still have seen any plane that flew over the pentagon.
as far as the statements being consistent with previous statements made in 2001, what about recorded interviews with william lagasse and chadwick brooks that prove that to be false. and do we even have to talk about maria de la cerda, whose claims even CIT admits aren't that great, and couldn't even see the citgo from her vantage point. we also won't talk about other CIT 'witnesses' like scott cook from 'how they pulled it off'who CIT had to admit made statements that were "so blatantly false" they couldn't have even been considered a mistake.
why not tell the accounts of father steven mcgraw, or penny elger who had a piece of flight 77 land IN HER CAR after striking a light pole? the piece is now in the smithsonian. CIT dismisses people like this as part of the propaganda, along with any other eye witness who disputes their findings, without offering any other proof.
finally how do you explain hundreds of first responders, and almost 8000 other people who were at the sight in the days following not coming forward with seeing anything that matches their story? i am sorry but believing in these people is as ridiculous as the claims they make
Posted by: gary | April 08, 2009 at 11:56 AM
I just read Barbara Honneger’s account and it’s absolutely jaw-dropping! The clocks actually did stop between 9:30 and 9:32 a.m. (the time of the explosion), even though the official time of Flight 77’s “impact” was given as 9:37. Five minutes is a huge difference on something like this. Here are two official photos to corroborate it, one from the US Navy, another at the Smithsonian:
http://www.news.navy.mil/view_single.asp?id=2480Pentagonclock_BBC
http://www.americanhistory.si.edu/september11/collection/record.asp?ID=19
Also, eyewitnesses identified the smell as cordite, not jet fuel, right after the explosion.
Plus the fact that it was the financial management & audits section that was destroyed, which included all the records needed to investigate the missing $2.3 trillion announced by Rumsfeld the day before. Just a coincidence?
I challenge "gary/bored" and others to spend a few minutes reading this paper. Thank you, Barbara Honegger. You're a brave patriot.
http://physics911.net/pdf/honegger.pdf
Posted by: Joe | April 08, 2009 at 10:26 AM
Barbara, thanks for writing and letting me know about your work. I will check it out. Sounds like you were way ahead of most of us in figuring out what was going on at the Pentagon.
Posted by: Sheila Casey | April 07, 2009 at 06:30 PM
The missing Elephant in the Room in this excellent article, as well as the work of CIT, is the failure to mention or cite my (Barbara Honegger's) seminal published work on the Pentagon attack, which is the 'other half' of Ranke and Marquis' conclusion in this piece "that the plane seen by so many people did not hit the Pentagon, but flew over the building AT THE SAME TIME THAT PRE-PLANTED EXPLOSIVES CAUSED A HUGE FIREBALL AND THICK, BLACK SMOKE, obscuring the fact that the plane was still in the air and flying away... 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."
Be fair and give credit where credit is due. My "Pentagon Attack Papers" has long marshalled the evidence for the inside-the-bldg. explosives, which, by the way, went off just after 9:30 -- way before the 9:47:46 official alleged 'impact' time. CIT as well as Ms. Casey should cite that paper, which forms half of "CIT's" findings and which can be read as the link under my entry at www.PatriotsQuestion911.com as well as many other web sites, including S.P.I.N.E. Its evidence and findings also form the core of the section 'Reports of Bombs' in Ch. 2 on the Pentagon attack in David Ray Griffin's most recent 9/11 expose book
The New Pearl Harbor Revisited.
Barbara Honegger
barhonegger@aol.com
Posted by: Barbara Honegger | April 07, 2009 at 06:20 PM
bored gary,
Wrong.
CIT presented the interview with Roosevelt Roberts Jr who saw the plane flying away immediately AFTER the explosion. You would know this if you had bothered to view the evidence.
Many of the witnesses presented by CIT, like Roosevelt, were interviewed by the Library of Congress or the Center for Military History in the first weeks after the event saying the exact same thing. You would know this if you had bothered to view the evidence.
It's quite true that the unanimous independently corroborated north side claim is mutually exclusive with their BELIEF in an impact.
However most of the witnesses could not see what the plane did when it reached the building many hundreds of feet away even though they had a perfect view of the plane as it passed right by them treetop level only dozens of feet away on the north side of the gas station.
The fact that the impact and north side claims are mutually exclusive means that everyone MUST choose which to believe.
If you illogically accept their impact belief/deduction over the fact that they all actually WITNESSED the plane on the north side you are accepting mass simultaneous hallucination over mass deception.
Do you really think that is logical?
What is more likely?
Simultaneous mass hallucination or deliberate deception?
The choice is 100% clear for true skeptics.
Posted by: FalseFlagBurner | April 07, 2009 at 04:56 PM
This article would be hilarious if it wasn't so sad.
Posted by: Darren | April 07, 2009 at 02:57 PM
false, ,mostly i have continued these posts out of boredom, and i love to argue. you are right, i haven't watched the interviews. they are a waste of time. the methodology and the logic these 2 guys use is completely flawed.
a plane never hit the pentagon
these witnesses say the plane was on a path that would have made it impossible
these witnesses also ALL say the plane hit the pentagon
CIT say that they a wrong on this account because the previous statement makes it impossible
CIT has no interviews with witnesses to support the "flyover"
their own witnesses prove the opposite.
also: they interviewed a lot more than 13 people. what did everyone else have to say?
the interviews took place 7 years after the event.
originally i was arguing 9/11 conspiracies in general, and this article.
CIT are the only ones being 'intellectually dishonest'
Posted by: gary/bored | April 07, 2009 at 02:45 PM
gary,
You have not even bothered to view the evidence that this article is about.
Therefore you are not in a position to make a determination one way or another.
The fact that you are attempting to argue against information that you are complete uneducated on exposes you as intellectually dishonest.
You should think long and hard about what motivates you to keep coming back to this article and replying utterly failing to bother even viewing the information you are replying about.
Your incredulity about the cab driver does not refute the evidence that proves the plane did not hit any light poles.
Posted by: FalseFlagBurner | April 07, 2009 at 01:39 PM
its wonderful that everyone is so eager to prove what happened on 9/11 but where is the how and why? how could a government that continually shows how terribly incompetent it is pull off an operation that would require the cooperation of hundreds of individuals, and multiple agencies? how do they convince that many people, lots of them fairly ordinary citizens with nothing to gain, to go along with the murder of thousands, and then all remain silent after the fact?
and why the hell would they use a plan as complicated as this? i have seen many claims as to the reasons 9/11 happened (an excuse to go to war for oil etc.) and all of them could have been accomplished with much easier plots that would cast less doubt on an official story.
and don't give this condescending crap about how because i don't agree with you then i am not thinking critically, and i am going on faith, i am in denial, blah blah. i have looked at the evidence, and at this point i dont see enough to overcome the biggest questions as to how and why this happened. but your right, the 65 year old cab driver and his FBI employed wife had to be in on it. most likely at the highest levels. the fact that his story is so incredible and inconsistent doesn't mean its unreliable, it is proof he is involved. he couldn't just be a liar.
Posted by: gary | April 07, 2009 at 08:33 AM
posted by gary - "there are ridiculous explanations on both sides (remote controlled 747's?)."
Obviously you are commenting and rejecting something you have not even bothered to look into, if you do not even know what aircraft were allegedly used in the 9-11 OFFICIAL STORY.
Posted by: SPreston | April 07, 2009 at 12:41 AM
gary,
Ok just as I thought. From your response it's clear you have not bothered to view any of the evidence discussed in the article that this post is about.
You have dismissed logic, critical thinking principles, and true skepticism simply because of your predetermined bias regarding what you have already viewed in the past that has nothing to with what we are discussing.
Of course eyewitness testimony can be unreliable but that is why the scientific process of independent corroboration is so important.
That is how we know when eyewitness testimony is accurate and when independently corroborated enough times, it can and quite typically does become proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
That's what this evidence is and your insistence on arguing against information you haven't viewed reveals you as the "conspiracy theorist" who makes up his mind what to "believe" based solely on faith DESPITE the evidence.
Thanks anyway and I'm sorry to hear that you prefer to live in denial rather than objectively view information that may challenge your belief.
Posted by: FalseFlagBurner | April 06, 2009 at 10:58 PM
Harry,
You have it half correct.
The evidence proves the plane flew north of the citgo and therefore did not hit the building or the light poles but there is ZERO evidence for ANYTHING (small plane OR missile) hitting the light poles or building.
The cab driver's impossible account and lack of evidence for anything hitting the poles means that scene was staged and the damage to the building was likely caused solely with pre-planted explosives just like at the wtc.
Please read this article regarding the missile disinfo theories:
http://www.thepentacon.com/nomissile.htm
And read this for a complete light pole hypothesis:
http://z3.invisionfree.com/CIT/index.php?showtopic=25
Posted by: FalseFlagBurner | April 06, 2009 at 10:50 PM
Do I have this correct? The plane flew north of the Citgo, but did not crash into the building, it flew over it and continued on its way. A missile or some other flying vehicle knocked down the light poles and did crash into the Pentagon.
Posted by: Harry | April 06, 2009 at 09:15 PM
sorry, that last post was a response to falseflag, not jeff. sorry man
Posted by: gary | April 06, 2009 at 06:54 PM
Excellent investigative work! Although eyewitness testimony in itself may not as reliable as other types of evidence, it is absolutely necessary, particularly where a witness is self-contradictory or contradicts the physical evidence: then we know someone's lying.
Only these independent investigators inquired properly as law enforcement ought to have done long ago. The intentional ignorance on the part of law enforcement speaks loudly about who planned and produced 911.
If only the public had listened to decades-long Pentagon researcher Barbara Honegger and *her* eyewitnesses within the Pentagon from the outset, there would be little doubt or confusion concerning what really happened at the Pentagon on 911. Convict Rumsfeld, Cheney et al.
Posted by: RigorTruth | April 06, 2009 at 06:25 PM
jeff i think that 8 years of viewing evidence is plenty of time to view all the evidence. and lets not forget that study after study show that eye witness accounts are usually unreliable, which is why criminal cases need much more than that to be prosecuted. to say that there is no evidence against the "conspiracies" is disingenuous at best.
i am sure that the government is lying about much of what they say, i just believe it is for different reasons. both sides cherry pick facts to fit their cause and dismiss the rest. the article does so with the 13 witnesses who saw the flight paths. believe they saw the paths, but don't believe they saw the planes hit the buildings. the accounts themselves prove how unreliable eye witnesses can be.
what i 'feel', or what i find 'plausible' is not evidence, it comes from the evidence, just like what you 'feel' and think is 'plausible' don't the 'conspiracy theorists' always say to question everything? do they mean everything but them?
Posted by: gary | April 06, 2009 at 05:59 PM
gary,
Whatever you "feel" happened or whatever seems more "plausible" to you is not evidence. The evidence proves that what you were told happened is a lie. It is not reasonable to dismiss this evidence without viewing it in full otherwise it makes YOU the conspiracy theorist.
Citizen investigators have risked their lives and done all the hard work to provide YOU with hard evidence direct from the mouths of the people who were there and witnessed the event first-hand.
Their accounts independently and unanimously match and they prove a deception.
The least you could do is view the evidence in full before rushing to judgment.
You said you have looked at "both sides" but have you viewed all of the first-hand witness testimony referenced in Sheila's article in full?
Reaching conclusions based on nothing but incredulity is not scientific nor does it adhere to true skepticism or critical thinking principles.
Posted by: FalseFlagBurner | April 06, 2009 at 05:08 PM
jeff
i was very open minded towards a conspiracy in the beginning and have only recently become closed minded. i did look at both sides, and they both have glaring inconsistencies.
i think in weighing both sides, i have the hardest time believing that the masterminds behind any conspiracy were able to convince the hundreds of people across multiple government agencies (including, apparently, a 65 year old cab driver in dc)that would be necessary, to participate in the murder of 3000 people, and to maintain their silence for 8 years now. there are a hundred easier scenarios that could have produced the same results, like multiple car bombs for instance.
there are ridiculous explanations on both sides (remote controlled 747's?). I feel like the most plausible is that 9/11 was a product of gross negligence and incompetence on the part of those in charge of protecting us, and the cover ups exist to save their a$$es.
Posted by: gary | April 06, 2009 at 04:52 PM
Jim Washburn,
Sheila answered your question, CIT does have a recorded first-hand witness account from a Pentagon police officer who saw it flying away.
You can listen to Roosevelt Roberts' account in part 2 of this presentation:
http://www.thepentacon.com/northsideflyover.htm
But the accounts of a "2nd plane" served the purpose of cover for the flyover very effectively.
Plus don't forget, the Pentagon is right next to Reagan National Airport so there are low flying jets right next to and over the building every few minutes all day every day.
http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a327/lytetrip/Pentagon/flyover%20movie/042.jpg
Just because someone saw a plane flying away doesn't mean they would automatically associate it with the attack because planes are CONSTANTLY flying away from the Pentagon and this is a very common sight.
Posted by: FalseFlagBurner | April 06, 2009 at 04:24 PM
posted by 9/11 Was An Inside Job - "How did “hijacked” AA-77 fly all around the Eastern U.S., 45 minutes after the WTC was struck by 2 other “hijacked” airliners, without it being intercepted, pursued, or even observed/photographed by NORAD/Air Force?
How did flunky Hani Hanjour fly all the way back from Ohio/Kentucky, and why/how did he make those incredible acrobatics to hit the tiny, renovated section of the Pentagon?
How did they obtain DNA (delicate organic material) for 63 of 64 passengers when the seats, luggage, and most all of the airplane were supposedly vaporized in a fireball @ 530 mph?"
All great questions, but I especially like these three. Indeed, how is a multi-trillion dollar defense/attack war machine so easily stymied by an alleged ordinary commercial aircraft and why would a suicidal rookie pilot wish to fly like an aerobatic fighter pilot into a difficult 1st floor area on the opposite side, when he only had one attempt?
And how did fragile dna survive all that alleged heat from burning jet fuel? The alleged fireball inside the building supposedly blasted out the Exit Hole through the C-Ring wall, in the lastest incarnation of the official cause, and somehow 'passenger' dna was deposited out in the A&E Drive, where there was no sign of burning jet fuel?
It appears the 9-11 Pentagon OFFICIAL STORY is actually a fantasy tale.
Posted by: SPreston | April 06, 2009 at 04:18 PM
That was a splendid article Sheila. Obviously you did a good deal of research before preparing your article. We Americans desperately need more real journalists like you.
GOD bless you.
SPreston
Posted by: SPreston | April 06, 2009 at 03:43 PM
Heidi, I really have no idea what happened to the people on flight 77. I'm sure they are dead. But how or when they died? I have no information about that.
I can only go by the facts that we do know. There is no evidence that a plane hit the Pentagon, and lots of evidence that it did not, such as that reported in this article.
Posted by: Sheila Casey | April 06, 2009 at 03:40 PM