"Father
Stephen McGraw was driving to a graveside service at Arlington National Cemetery
the morning of Sept. 11, when he mistakenly took the Pentagon exit onto
Washington Boulevard, putting him in a position to witness American Airlines
Flight 77 crash into the Pentagon. 'I was in the left hand lane with my windows
closed. I did not hear anything at
all until the plane was just right above
our cars.' McGraw estimates that the plane passed about 20 feet over his car, as
he waited in the left hand lane of the road, on the side closest to the
Pentagon. 'The plane clipped the top of a light pole just before it got to us,
injuring a taxi driver, whose taxi was just a few feet away from my car. I saw
it crash into the building,' he said. 'My only memories really were that it
looked like a plane coming in for a landing. I mean in the sense that it was
controlled and sort of straight. That was my impression,' he said. 'There was an
explosion and a loud noise and I felt the impact. I remember seeing a fireball
come out of two windows (of the Pentagon). I saw an explosion of fire billowing
through those two windows.'"
-
"Pentagon Crash Eyewitness Comforted Victims http://www.mdw.army.mil/news/Pentagon_crash_eyewitness_comforted_victims.html
" MDW News Service, 28 Sep 2001
There's a big problem with this
account. McGraw says that the plane passed directly over his car at power pole
height but that he didn't hear anything until it was directly above. Totally
impossible if it was a 757. He says he had the window closed, which is like
wearing a t-shirt to protect against a machine gun. If a 757 was passing 20 ft
over your car, you would be deafened by it before you saw it. This account must
be subject to serious questioning to have any chance of being considered,
because in this form, it is totally impossible to believe that McGraw saw a 757.
So either the whole account is fiction, or embellished beyond credibility, or
what McGraw saw was actually a small plane or a cruise missile, which might make
it credible in terms of the noise factor. Note that the reference to American
airlines F77 was inserted by commentary, not directly attributed to McGraw. So I
checked the reference to see if there were any clues as to what kind of plane
McGraw thinks he saw. The reference turned out to be US Army - The Military
district of Washington site. The article containing McGraw's quote was written
by Paul Haring (Staff photographer for the Fort Myer Military Community's
Pentagram newspaper) for the MDW News Service (That's Military District of
Washington) and not posted till Sept 28. In this article McGraw is also quoted
as saying (and in Haring's article this quote directly follows the end of the
section quoted above, so he's just been talking about the explosion, and
impact)
"I remember hearing a collective gasp or scream from one of the
other cars near me. Almost a collective gasp it seemed."
Let me think
now... He was in a car with the windows closed, which explains why he was
totally oblivious to the noise of a 757 approaching his car at a height of about
20 ft, but as it slammed into the wall, precipitating an explosion and fireball,
he was able to hear a collective gasp from a nearby car. Hmm...or did they all
wait until the noise had died down, and then gasp in unison at a volume louder
than a 757? Media searches for Father John McGraw returned no matches. The only
matches on Yahoo were for references to Haring's article, which is posted on
behalf of the US army - an organization not noted for critically questioning
official stories. It is beyond question that McGraw cannot possibly be
giving a truthful, accurate account of F77 hitting the Pentagon. So either the
report is fiction, or else McGraw witnessed proof that whatever hit the wall was
not F77. The unlikely story about hearing the collective gasp tells me that this
account should be discarded, especially as it does not contain any redeeming
qualities to offset it's retrospective nature.
"'I glanced up just at the
point where the plane was going into the building,' said Carla Thompson, who
works in an Arlington, Va., office building about 1,000 yards from the crash. 'I
saw an indentation in the building and then it was just blown-up up-red,
everything red, ' she said. 'Everybody was just starting to go crazy. I was
petrified.'"
-
"Terrorists Attack New York, Pentagon
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-091201main.story
" Los Angeles Times, 12 Sep 2001
If she glanced up just at the point
of collision, then she can't have seen the object clearly enough to identify it.
She say's "the plane", which is fair enough, because you wouldn't expect anyone
in this situation to think that it was anything else. She can't possibly have
actually seen a plane, but understandably, in the light of everything else that
was being said, included this assumption in her quote. But was it a light plane,
a passenger jet, a military jet, a helicopter or a cruise missile? It obviously
wouldn't cross the mind of someone in that situation. So what Thompson claims to
have seen was an indentation and an explosion. It's not in dispute that they
occurred, but Thompson's quote is irrelevant to the question of what caused the
explosion. She does not say words to the effect that she saw a large passenger
jet fly towards the Pentagon and collide with the wall. I did an extensive
search to see if Thompson made any other reports, but the LA times quote was the
only reference to her anywhere.
The final witness of the 19 on the Urban
legends site.
"I witnessed the jet hit the Pentagon on September 11. From
my office on the 19th floor of the USA TODAY building in Arlington, Va., I have
a view of Arlington Cemetery, Crystal City, the Pentagon, National Airport and
the Potomac River. ... Shortly after watching the second tragedy, I heard jet
engines pass our building, which, being so close to the airport is very common.
But I thought the airport was closed. I figured it was a plane coming in for
landing. A few moments
later, as I was looking down at my desk, the plane
caught my eye. it didn't register at first. I thought to myself that I couldn't
believe the pilot was flying so low. Then it dawned on me what was about to
happen. I watched in horror as the plane flew at treetop level, banked slightly
to the left, drug it's wing along the ground and slammed into the west wall of
the Pentagon exploding into a giant orange fireball. Then black smoke. Then
white smoke."
· Steve
Anderson
http://www.jmu.edu/alumni/tragedy_response/read_messages.html
Director of Communications,
USA Today
Yet another "USA today"
worker. I checked the reference on this one and immediately discounted It. it's
not even a media report. It's an account from Anderson which is posted on a
pro-government style website, simply entitled "Sept 11." It's not a site
dedicated to research or analysis, and questioning of the official story would
definitely not be welcome there. The posting date was Oct 2. Another "USA today"
witness not considered worthy of interview by his own network (or any other).
Anderson's story is not published anywhere else. There are not even any second
hand references to him as being a witness. We have only this account, posted on
a less than critical medium, 3 weeks after the event. Even if this account
is truthful in it's intention, there is no doubt that if Anderson wasn't certain
what the object was at the time of sighting, he would have convinced himself by
Oct 2 that it must have been F77. This is why accounts should really be
published as soon as possible after the event, to have any credibility, before
people start to consciously or unconsciously change their story in line with
what it is that they're supposed to have seen, and before the media begins to
develop preconceptions about what people could or could not have seen.
Anderson's account doesn't come anywhere near meeting verifiable standards.
Nevertheless, I can't resist pointing out the obvious impossibility in this
account even if it was admissible. I don't know exactly where the "USA today"
office is, but lets say it's 1000 yards from the Pentagon, like Carla Thompson's
office. An aircraft flying at 400 mph, will cover that distance in about 5
seconds. Anderson said that he heard it pass over the building and initially
thought nothing of it. So in the next 5 seconds he had time to: Think that the
noise of the unseen aircraft was a plane coming in for a landing : weigh this
up
against his thought that the airport was closed : look down at his desk
for a few moments: have the plane catch his eye: look up and catch full sight of
it: have a dumbstruck moment where nothing registered: and still l have enough
time left to meticulously observe that "the plane flew at treetop level, banked
slightly to the left, drug it's wing along the
ground and slammed into the
west wall of the Pentagon." Try acting this out and see if you have enough time
left at the end to make such a detailed observation. And if the wing dragged
along the ground for 30 yards, he would have seen that for about 0.15 of a
second before the explosion.
What appeared at first reading to be 19
eyewitness accounts actually turned to out to be none. Thompson's glimpse of
what happened was so fleeting that it would fit with almost any scenario.
Timmerman asked us to believe in apartment blocks that come and go. The Winslow
report is almost certainly a fabrication, is too enigmatic anyway, and at very
best is almost certainly 2nd hand. Sucherman didn't claim to see a collision, or
describe the plane. The Walter reports are too contradictory, and in any case,
mostly say that he didn't see the collision. The anonymous testimony of "KM"
mentions only a "plane" which could refer to any type of plane, or a cruise
missile So that testimony wouldn't contribute anything, even if it was
admissible. McGraw has all kinds of problems, both with credibility and
verification, Anderson's is retrospective and impossible to take seriously
anyway, and Kizildrgri described nothing except a big boom. The other 10 didn't
even make it to a detailed analysis, because they didn't even give the
superficial impression of having witnessed the collision.
What has
emerged so far is a disturbing pattern of manipulative reporting and
fabrication. What has also emerged is that a suspiciously high number of these
dubious witnesses just happen to be media figures.
I now searched for
other reports which had a chance of meeting the required standards of
verification and credibility. Perhaps the "urban legends" site simply chose an
unfortunate selection of quotes, and that there is more conclusive evidence to
be found elsewhere.
This is what I could find.
The Boston Globe
Sept 12 Rodney Washington, a systems engineer for a Pentagon contractor, was
stuck in stand-still traffic a few hundred yards from the Pentagon when the
American Airlines jet roared overhead from the southwest.
"It was
extremely loud, as you can imagine, a plane that size, it was deafening,"
Washington said.
The plane was flying low and rapidly descended,
Washington said, knocking over light poles before hitting the ground on a
helicopter pad just in front of the Pentagon and essentially bouncing into
it.
It "landed there and the momentum took it into the Pentagon,"
Washington said. "There was a very, very brief delay and then it
exploded."
There are some obvious signs for a report which is fabricated
or embellished beyond credibility, and this one has painted some of them in very
big letters. First, the plane. It hits the ground, but miraculously does not
break up, explode, flip over or cartwheel, but simply continues, into the wall,
intact enough to smash it's way through the wall, and then, apparently still
intact enough to see, waits a respectful moment before spontaneously exploding.
How long does it wait? 1 second? So, if it was travelling at the conservative
speed of 300mph, after it hit the ground and it landed 30 yards from the wall,
then it took approximately 0.2 of a second to reach the wall. So it endured 2
collisions in 0.2 seconds, but waited another full second to suddenly explode
after staying intact from two devastating impacts. Perhaps it exploded in a more
realistic time frame, for example 10 milliseconds after smashing through the
wall? That's more like it, except I'd like to know how the witness was able to
pick a 10 millisecond delay from "instantaneous". The entire experience, from
the time the plane hit the ground would have lasted 0.21 of a second. Could the
witness have even distinguished this from an impression that it simply flew into
the wall? Therein lies the insoluble problem of this account. If it waited long
enough before exploding, for the human eye to be able to pick up the delay, it
postulates an impossible end to an impossible crash scenario. And if it exploded
in a believable time frame - say a few milliseconds added on to a total time of
about 0.2 of a second - then how could the witness have distinguished this from
being instantaneous? The whole event would have appeared instantaneous but is
described in detailed sequence. "Oh what a tangled web we weave..."
Now, to
the question of the conditions under which the witness would have been making
this razor sharp observation. If it hit the ground, it would of course have
thrown up a huge cloud of dirt. Unless it landed on very hard ground, in which
case we ask why it didn't beak up on impact) 0.2 of a second later, the scene
would have been further complicated by the collapsing rubble as it smashed it's
way through the wall. So even if this witness does have the miraculous
observational powers to be able to pick a sequence of events broken down into
milliseconds, all he would have seen was a cloud of flying dirt and collapsing
rubble with the briefest of a blurred glimpse of the plane, before the
explosion. But Eagle-Eye-Washington was still able to pick out where it landed,
how the momentum carried it into the building and best of all, amongst the
falling rubble and flying dirt, that after it smashed through the wall, there
was "a very, very brief delay " before it exploded.
Newsday (New York NY)
Sept 11
One eyewitness, State Department employee Ken Ford, said he watched
from the 15th floor of the State Department Annex, just across the Potomac River
from the Pentagon." We were watching the airport, through the [binoculars],"
Ford said, referring to Reagan National Airport, a short distance away. "The
plane was a two-engine turbo prop that flew up the river from National. Then it
turned back toward the Pentagon. We thought it had been waved off and then it
hit the building."
It's not clear why the word "binoculars" is in
brackets. I couldn't find anything else from Ford. He's vague about the manner
in which it collided with the building, which probably increases the credibility
of his account. In real life, most people who witness shocking, unexpected
events which happen very quickly, don't take in a lot of fine detail. It's when
people report meticulously detailed observations in these situations that
suspicions of fabrication or embellishment are aroused. If he was watching from
across the river (east) then he couldn't have directly seen an impact on the
western wall, although it's feasible that he could have seen it's approach until
milliseconds before impact, and then seen some of the explosion rising above the
building. This one (just) meets accepted standards, but directly contradicts the
official story anyway. We need more information about how and when it was
sourced.
Agence France Presse Sept 11
"I saw this large American
Airlines passenger jet coming in fast and low." said Army captain Lincoln
Liebner. "My first thought was, I've never seen one flying at that height", he
said. "Before it hit, I realized what was happening".
At first glance,
this seems like a fairly straightforward eyewitness quote that Captain Liebner
really is claiming first hand to have clearly seen an American Airlines jet
"hit". (Presumably the Pentagon) Unfortunately, more detailed research exposed
it as a fabrication. Here's how. A search turned up 14 such matches for Agence
France in combination with Leibner, many of them on Sept 11, and some on Sept
12. They are all, almost exactly the same story, but there are minor variations,
as the report was modified slightly over the 14 different airings given to the
story over the two days. Unfortunately, exact times are not given for the
reports, but we know which of the 14 matches was the earliest,
because the
search always lists the results by the most recent document first. All of the
Sept 12 versions of this report gave Liebner's quote, as above. So did the later
reports of Sept 11. But the story in the first three reports was quite
different, as far as Leibner is concerned. Here's the first report.
At a
media briefing, Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clark told the story of Capt. Lincoln
Liebner, who was outside the Pentagon when the blast took place. He rushed into
the building to help. His hands were burned, and after he was taken away to a
hospital for treatment, he returned later in the day to do more.
No quote
from Leibner, and not even a second hand reference to any kind of plane, let
alone an "American airlines passenger jet." In fact the incident is described as
a "blast".
Here's the second report.
Army Captain Lincoln Liebner,
who witnessed the blast, entered the damaged building and pulled colleagues from
the fire, according to Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke. His hands badly
burnt by the flames, Liebner refused to leave the scene and seek
treatment.
"They forced him to go to the hospital," Clarke said. "He came
back and he's in the building and he is working."
The third
report
Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clark related the example of Army Capt.
Lincoln Liebner who saw the aircraft hit and rushed into the burning building to
help. He later was taken to a nearby hospital to have his hands treated for
burns, but then returned to the Pentagon, Clark said.
Still no direct
quote from Leibner but what he's alleged to have witnessed has suddenly changed
from a "blast" to "saw the aircraft hit."
And in the fourth report, it
becomes the direct quote from Leibner, and remains so for the other 10 reports.
The reference to Clarke disappears. Did the media get an opportunity to
interview Leibner, between the third and fourth reports? There's no evidence for
this.
"He came back and he's in the building and he is working." Does
this sound like an invitation to interview him?
So I found the original
transcript of Clarke's media briefing.
Federal news Service Sept 11
2001.
And I'd just like to say one more thing. The response from the military
has been phenomenal. The response from the search and rescue people has been
incredible, and the people in the community. And I'll just give you one example.
There is a young man, Captain Lincoln Liebner --
Q Spell it.
MS.
CLARKE: -- L-i-e-b-n-e-r -- who was on the west side of the building when it was
hit. He saw what happened. He immediately went in to try to help some of the
injured, and helped pull them out. His hands were burned. He went to the
hospital to be taken care of. They forced him to go to the hospital. He came
back and he's in the building and he is working. And that's just one --
Q
Army?
MS. CLARKE: Army.
Q That is just one example of the kind of
response we've seen to this tragedy. And with that, I'd like to turn it over
--
Q Torie, just -- excuse me.
There was no further reference to
Leibner in the media briefing. So the overwhelming evidence is that no such
direct account ever came from Leibner. He may or may not have said such a thing
to someone in the department, he may or may not exist. And notice that Clarke
made no mention of either a "blast" or an aircraft, using the ambiguous word
"hit". And she simply describes Leibner as having seen "what happened." The
first two media reports wrote in a reference to a "blast" with no indication
where this came from. This strongly indicates that at the time of the first two
reports, the
general word that was going around was that it had been a bomb.
Suddenly, this was corrected to be a plane, and just to re-enforce the point, a
quote and a witness was invented. So the second hand story of the man who had
witnessed the "blast", something which implies contradiction of the official
story, became mythologized as the man who's eyewitness account corroborates the
official story. Not only were the Leibner references twisted, but so were
Clarke's.
Notice that in the media briefing, Clarke was ambiguous about what
the incident actually was. Her only two references were "hit", which could mean
almost anything and "what happened." As if Clarke herself was not yet aware of
what the official story was concerning the incident. Agence France twice
paraphrased her as referring to a "blast", a word she never used. In the third
report this was sharply corrected, in that Clarke was said to claimed that
Leibner "saw the aircraft hit ", also a clear misrepresentation of what went on
at the briefing, but a very decisive shift in direction. The fact that in the
fourth report, the almost certainly fabricated Leibner account then completely
replaced any reference to
the original briefing strongly indicates that
Agence France went into damage control mode to make sure that the first two
reports were completely buried by the strongest possible confirmation that could
be manufactured that it had been an American Airlines jet.
CONTINUE
·