Witnesses

Well. We've got witnesses who saw an American Airlines 757 hit the Pentagon. But we've also got witnesses who swear it was a much smaller craft, capable of holding maybe 8 or 12 people. And then we've got witnesses who swear they saw two planes.

What are we to make of this? If we want to try to make the case that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon, some support can be found by analyzing the witness situation.

Firstly, standard forensic procedure dictates that when there is a conflict between eyewitness testimony and physical evidence, physical evidence wins. So if that hole was too small for a 757 to fit into and there's no way a fragile nose cone penetrates several reinforced Pentagon walls and 757s can't fly horizontally at ground level at 400 miles an hour, then no matter how many people think they saw a 757, they're just probably wrong.

It has also been argued that, if it was a missile or a military plane, given the earlier events at the WTC and the widespread knowledge of hijacked commercial jets, it's not too strange that some people would see a plane and think 757. However, if it was a 757, it would be pretty weird to have any people say they saw a missile.

Also, a guy called Gerard Holmgren investigated 19 witnesses, identified on a conspiracy theory debunking site, who were reported to have seen an American Airlines jet hit the Pentagon. One by one, their stories disappeared. Some say they never said it was a big jet, others say they saw a big jet fly overhead then a few minutes later heard an explosion, some could not be found at all, but none could actually be found who really truly saw a jumbo jet actually hit the actual Pentagon. Nineteen witnesses turned into zero witnesses.

There's also a two plane theory, in which a military jet was the second plane, flying right behind the first at a slightly different angle. The government complicity theorist would hold that either the first plane was a jumbo jet as decoy, or that the military jet was guiding the other plane, e.g., controlling a drone, as a C-130 can do. In any case, many people have reported seeing two planes, one a C-130 (or C-130-ish), including: Kelly Knowles, area resident; Brian Kennedy, congressional press secretary; Keith Wheelhouse and several other people who were leaving a funeral at Arlington National Cemetery; John O'Keefe, commuter driving past the Pentagon; USA Today editor Joel Sucherman; Scott Cook, in his office looking towards the Pentagon from the Tidal Basin; and many others.

So there's your witnesses, make of it what you will.

Source: Griffin, p. 36-39, and many Web sites.

It kinda sounds like there were two planes, although I have no idea what that means. The two slightly different flight paths might explain the two slightly different animations we've been given, by the official commission and the NTSB, respectively (see elsewhere on this site). Perhaps the flight data recorder info was from the second plane.

It's still difficult to discount the eyewitnesses who say they saw a large jet hit the Pentagon, despite Holmgren's research, because Holmgren also says that no planes hit anything, including the World Trade Center, it was all animations made by the government and shown instantly on TV and nobody anywhere really saw any planes. I don't want to make fun of anybody's conspiracy theory but let's just say I don't go along with that one, and I feel it sort of undermines anything else he says.

I read that C-130s can do a thing called "drone control" but I haven't sorted out exactly what that means. This strange white jet has been reported in the Flight 93 area as well, and some people say also at the WTC. If it is remotely controlling other aircraft, it would help explain how the planes hit their targets when the alleged hijackers clearly lacked the requisite skills.

I just don't know what to make of all this except that it sounds a bit fishy and somewhat suspicious.

Bottom line, me, I give it: