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Explicit eyewitness accounts
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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.
http://www.jmu.edu/alumni/tragedy%5Fresponse/read%5Fmessages.html
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Anderson is a reporter for USA Today. If the aircraft "drug its wing
along the ground" there would have been more damage to the
lawn and heliport area.
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To cause damage extending to the third ring of the Pentagon
(without cratering into the basement) the "757" would
have needed to be in level flight, rather than "coming down
head first".
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Gary Bauer, a former Presidential candidate, happened to be
driving into Washington, D.C. that morning, to a press
conference on Capitol Hill."I was in a massive traffic jam,
hadn't moved more than a hundred yards in twenty minutes. ... I
had just passed the closest place the Pentagon is to the exit on
395 . . . when all of a sudden I heard the roar of a jet
engine.""I looked at the woman sitting in the car next
to me. She had this startled look on her face. We were all
thinking the same thing. We looked out the front of our windows
to try to see the plane, and it wasn't until a few seconds later
that we realized the jet was coming up behind us on that major
highway. And it veered to the right into the Pentagon. The
blast literally rocked all of our cars. It was an incredible
moment.massnews.com / Amy Contrada / December 2001
http://www.massnews.com/past_issues/2001/dec%202001/1201bauer.htm
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Republican Gary Bauer has also been linked to Sun Myung Moon (see
http://www.realchange.org/bauer.htm), the Project for a New
American Century (see http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Gary_Bauer).
The damage to the facade of the Pentagon indicates that the
"757" was banking gently to the left, not to the right.
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Sean Boger, Air Traffic Controller and Pentagon tower chief -
"I just looked up and I saw the big nose and the wings of
the aircraft coming right at us and I just watched it hit the
building." "It exploded. I fell to the ground and
covered my head. I could actually hear the metal going
through the building." The crew, Boger and Spc.
Jacqueline Kidd, air traffic controller and training supervisor,
prepared for President George W. Bush to arrive from Florida
around 12:30 p.m.
http://www.dcmilitary.com/army/pentagram/6_46/local_news/12049-1.html
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As Pentagon tower chief, Boger meets our "deep insider"
criteria under the hypothetical condition that a conspiracy did
exist.
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Defense Protective Service officers were the first on the scene
of the terrorist attack. One, Mark Bright, actually saw the
plane hit the building. He had been manning the guard booth at
the Mall Entrance to the building. "I saw the plane at the
Navy Annex area," he said. "I knew it was going to
strike the building because it was very, very low -- at the
height of the street lights. It knocked a couple down." The
plane would have been seconds from impact -- the annex is only a
few hundred yards from the Pentagon. He said he heard the
plane "power-up" just before it struck the Pentagon.
"As soon as it struck the building I just called in an
attack, because I knew it couldn't be accidental," Bright
said. He jumped into his police cruiser and headed to the area.
http://www.dcmilitary.com/marines/hendersonhall/6_39/local_news/10797-1.html
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As Mall Entrance guard, Bright also meets our "deep
insider" criteria under the hypothetical condition of a
conspiracy. This is one of the very few
eyewitnesses who claimed to actually see the airplane knocking down
lamp poles.
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He and two colleagues from Oracle software were stopped in a car
near the Naval Annex, next to the Pentagon, when they saw the plane
dive down and level off. "It was no more than 30 feet
off the ground, and it was screaming. It was just screaming. It
was nothing more than a guided missile at that point,"
Creed said. "I can still see the plane. I can still see it
right now. It's just the most frightening thing in the world, going
full speed, going full throttle, its wheels up," Creed
recalls.
http://www.ahwatukee.com/afn/community/articles/020906a.html
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The Oracle database was originally developed by Larry Ellison for
the CIA, which has maintained a close relationship with the company
ever since. Most views from the area of the Naval Annex are
blocked to the Pentagon, because the Annex is located on a
hill.
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For one employee with Wedge One's mechanical subcontractor
John J. Kirlin Inc., Rockville MD, "lucky" is an
understatement. "We had one guy who was standing, looking
out the window and saw the plane when it was coming in. He was
in front of one of the blast-resistant windows," says
Kirlin President Wayne T. Day, who believes the window structure
saved the man's life. According to Matt Hahr, Kirlin's senior
project manager at the Pentagon, the employee "was
thrown about 80 ft down the hall through the air. As he was
traveling through the air, he says the ceiling was coming down
from the concussion. He got thrown into a closet, the door
slammed shut and the fireball went past him," recounts Hahr.
"Jet fuel was on him and it irritated his eyes, but he
didn't get burned. Then the fireball blew over and the
sprinklers came on, and he was able to crawl out of the closet
and get out of the building through the courtyard."
http://www.designbuildmag.com/oct2001/pentagon1001.asp
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This is not an eyewitness account, but rather a hearsay statement
about one of Day's employees.
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Michael DiPaula 41, project coordinator Pentagon Renovation Team
- He left a meeting in the Pentagon just minutes before the
crash, looking for an electrician who didn't show, in a
construction trailer less than 75 feet away. "Suddenly, an
airplane roared into view, nearly shearing the roof off the
trailer before slamming into the E ring. 'It sounded like a
missile,' DiPaula recalls . . . Buried in debris and covered
with airplane fuel, he was briefly listed by authorities as
missing, but eventually crawled from the flaming debris and the
shroud of black smoke unscathed.
http://www.sunspot.net/search/bal-archive-1990.htmlstory
(killtown)
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Possible insider. DiPaula emerges "unscathed" after being buried in flaming debris.
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Former ammunition plant official evacuated building moments
before suicide airliner collision.Col. Bruce Elliott, former
commander of the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant who was reassigned
to the Pentagon in July, watched in horror Tuesday as a hijacked
757 airliner crashed into the nerve center of the U.S. military
command. Elliott, in a phone interview Wednesday, said he had
just left the Pentagon and was about to board a shuttle van in a
south parking lot when he saw the plane approach and slam into
the west side of the structure. "I looked to my left and
saw the plane coming in," said Elliott, who watched it for
several seconds. "It was banking and garnering speed. I
felt it was headed for the Pentagon." (...) "It was
like a kamikaze pilot. I felt it was going to ram the
Pentagon," he said. He said the craft clipped a utility
pole guide wire, which may have slowed it down a bit before it
crashed into the building and burst into flames. (...) Elliott
said the rubble was still smoldering Wednesday morning.
http://www.thehawkeye.com/features/911/IdxThur.html
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Elliott does not mention the lamp poles, instead saying that the
jetliner hit a "guide wire." But photos of the
Pentagon area show that the electrical wiring for the lamp poles was
underground, and there were no guide wires.
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The plane approached the Pentagon about six feet off the
ground, clipping a light pole, a car antenna, a construction
trailer and an emergency generator before slicing into the
building, said Lee Evey, the manager of the Pentagon's ongoing
billion-dollar renovation. The plane penetrated three of the
Pentagon's five rings, but was probably stopped from going
farther by hundreds of concrete columns. The plane peeled back
as it entered, leaving pieces of the front of the plane near
the outside of the building and pieces from the rear of the
aircraft farther inside, Evey said. The floors just above
the impact remained intact for about 35 minutes after the crash,
allowing many people in those offices to escape, Evey said
http://detnews.com/2001/nation/0110/06/nation-312016.htm
Internally, the Wedge One project included: complete
demolition of existing facilities; significant abatement of
hazardous materials (most notably, 28 million lbs. of
asbestos-contaminated material was removed); installation of all
new electrical, mechanical, plumbing and telecommunication
systems within the existing floorplan; structural steel
reinforcement; and replacement of all 1,282 windows in the
section, including 386 blast-resistant units on the outermost
"E Ring" and innermost "A Ring" of the
building. All-new office space was created with an open space
plan aimed at enhancing flexibility (...) Amazingly, the plane
pushed through the outermost "E Ring", and drove deep
into the interior, its nose coming to rest just inside the
"C Ring."
http://www.designbuildmag.com/oct2001/pentagon1001.asp
We've learned -- this is wedge one, okay, the newly-renovated
area. The path of the airplane seems to have taken it along this
route, so it entered the building slightly, on this photo,
slightly to the left of what we call corridor four. There are 10
radial corridors in the building that extend from A ring out
through E ring, and this is the fourth of those radial
corridors. So it impacted the building in an area that had been
renovated, but its path was at a -- it appears to be at a
diagonal, so that it entered in wedge one but passed through
into areas of wedge two, an unrenovated portion of the building.
And, of course, you all know it's got rings A through E, five
stories tall, et cetera. QUESTION: That seems to indicate that
it came to rest in ring C, the nose cone. EVEY: Let me talk to
that, because you've asked a number of questions already about
the extent of penetration, et cetera. This is an overhead of the
building. The point of penetration was right here, and we
blocked that out to show that's the area of collapse. The plane
actually penetrated through the E ring, C ring -- excuse me -- E
ring, D ring, C ring. This area right here is what we call A-E
Drive. And unlike other rings in the building, it's actually a
driveway that circles the building inside, between the B and the
C ring. The nose of the plane just barely broke through the
inside of the C ring, so it was extending into A-E Drive a
little bit. So that's the extent of penetration of the aircraft.
The rings are E, D, C, B and A. Between B and C is a driveway
that goes around the Pentagon. It's called A-E Drive. The
airplane traveled in a path about like this, and the nose of
the aircraft broke through this innermost wall of C ring into
A-E Drive. QUESTION: One thing that's confusing -- if it
came in the way you described, at an angle, why then are not the
wings outside? I mean, the wings would have shorn off. The tail
would have shorn off. And yet there's apparently no evidence of
the aircraft outside the E ring. EVEY: Actually, there's
considerable evidence of the aircraft outside the E ring. It's
just not very visible. When you get up close -- actually, one of
my people happened to be walking on this sidewalk and was right
about here as the aircraft approached. It came in. It clipped a
couple of light poles on the way in. He happened to hear this
terrible noise behind him, looked back, and he actually -- he's
a Vietnam veteran -- jumped prone onto the ground so the
aircraft would not actually -- he thinks it (would have) hit
him; it was that low. On its way in, the wing clipped. Our
guess is an engine clipped a generator. We had an emergency
temporary generator to provide life-safety emergency electrical
power, should the power go off in the building. The wing
actually clipped that generator, and portions of it broke off.
There are other parts of the plane that are scattered about
outside the building. None of those parts are very large,
however. You don't see big pieces of the airplane sitting
there extending up into the air. But there are many small pieces.
And the few larger pieces there look like they are veins out of
the aircraft engine. They're circular. QUESTION: Would you say
that the plane, since it had a lot of fuel on it at the impact,
and the fact that there are very small pieces, virtually
exploded in flames when it tore into the building? I mean, since
there are not large pieces of the wings laying outside, did it
virtually explode? EVEY: I didn't see it. My people who did see
it enter the building describe it as entering the building
and then there being flames coming out immediately afterwards.
Whether you describe it as an explosion or not, people I talk to
who were there, some called it an explosion. Others called it a
large fire. I'm not sure. I wasn't there, sir. It's just a guess
on my part.
http://www.patriotresource.com/wtc/federal/0915/DoD.html
Walker Lee Evey, program manager of the Pentagon restoration
project : The fire was so hot, Evey said, that it turned
window glass to liquid and sent it spilling down walls into
puddles on the ground. The impact cracked massive concrete
columns far beyond the impact site, destabilizing a broader
section of the building than contractors had originally thought.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/03/07/attack/main503257.shtml
On Sept. 11, Flight 77 sliced through the outermost three of
the Pentagon's five concentric rings. Fires from the plane's
20,000 gallons of fuel melted windows into pools of liquid
glass. The impact of the crash fractured concrete pillars
well beyond the incisions in the three outer rings.
http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/2821782.htm
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Pentagon's manager for the renovation project, therefore meets our hypothetical
"deep insider" criterion.
He does not claim to be an eyewitness of the collision or
explosion. His statement that the plane "peeled
back" leaving the forward portions of the fuselage towards the
outside of the Pentagon makes a lot of sense -- except that it seems
to contradict the idea that the "nose" of the aircraft
made its way through the C ring into the A-E drive.
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This odd and confused account may indicate that Ford saw the C130,
which is a turboprop (although not a twin.)
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Kat Gaines, heading south on Route 110, approached the parking
lots, saw a low-flying jetliner strike the top of nearby
telephone poles. "
http://www.fccc.org/News/valor.htm
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Not telephone poles, lamp poles??
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Afework Hagos, a computer programmer, was on his way to work but
stuck in a traffic jam near the Pentagon when the plane flew
over. "There was a huge screaming noise and I got out of
the car as the plane came over. Everybody was running away in
different directions. It was tilting its wings up and down
like it was trying to balance. It hit some lampposts on the way
in."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0%2C1300%2C550486%2C00.html
Asework Hagos, 26, of Arlington, was driving on Columbia Pike on
his way to work as a consultant for Nextel. He saw a plane
flying very low and close to nearby buildings. "I thought
something was coming down on me. I know this plane is going to
crash. I've never seen a plane like this so low." He said
he looked at it and saw American Airline insignia and when it
made impact with the Pentagon initially he saw smoke, then
flames.
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If Hagos was on Columbia Pike near enough to see the lamp poles go
down, the amount of time required for the "757" to go from
his location to the impact site at the Pentagon would be about three
seconds. Hardly enough time for everybody to stop their cars,
get out and run around in different directions.
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From the view of the Navy Annex : After a few moments, Lt Gen
Ron Kadish, Director of the Ballistic Missile Defense
Organization entered the Secure Conference Room to pursue the
day's activities and do real work. This office, with two nice
windows and a great view of the monuments, the Capitol and the
Pentagon was "good digs" by any Pentagon standard. I
walked in the office and stood peering out of the window looking
at the Pentagon. As I stood there, I instinctively ducked at the
extremely loud roar and whine of a jet engine spooling up.
Immediately, the large silver cylinder of an aircraft appeared
in my window, coming over my right shoulder as I faced the
Westside of the Pentagon directly towards the heliport. The
aircraft, looking to be either a 757 or Airbus, seemed to come
directly over the annex, as if it had been following Columbia
Pike - an Arlington road leading to Pentagon. The aircraft was
moving fast, at what I could only be estimate as between 250 to
300 knots. All in all, I probably only had the aircraft in my
field of view for approximately 3 seconds. The aircraft was at a
sharp downward angle of attack, on a direct course for the
Pentagon. It was "clean", in as much as, there were no
flaps applied and no apparent landing gear deployed. He was
slightly left wing down as he appeared in my line of sight, as
if he'd just "jinked" to avoid something. As he
crossed Route 110 he appeared to level his wings, making
a slight right wing slow adjustment as he impacted low on the
Westside of the building to the right of the helo, tower and
fire vehicle around corridor 5. What instantly followed was a large
yellow fireball accompanied by an extremely bass sounding, deep
thunderous boom. The yellow fireball rose quickly as black
smoke engulfed the entire Westside of the Pentagon, obscuring
the whole of the heliport. I could feel the concussion and
felt the shockwave of the blast impact the window of the Annex,
knocking me against the desk.
http://lists.travellercentral.com/pipermail/tml/2001-September/013153.html
http://www.ournetfamily.com/WarOnTerror/emails/pentagonwitness.shtml
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Hemphill does not mention his title, but he is present for a
meeting with the Director of the BMDO in the Secure Conference
Room. The "sharp downward angle of attack" is not consistent
with the nearly level flight path of the "757". At
impact, the "757" was apparently banking slightly left,
not right. Few observers so far away as the Annex (a half
mile from impact) reported a shock wave strong enough to penetrate
a window and knock a human being against a desk. He claims
that the aircraft came over his right shoulder, contradicting
several witnesses who claimed it was more towards Arlington
Cemetery.
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Terrance Kean, 35, who lives in a 14-story building nearby,
heard the loud jet engines and glanced out his window. "I
saw this very, very large passenger jet," said the
architect, who had been packing for a move. "It just plowed
right into the side of the Pentagon. The nose penetrated into
the portico. And then it sort of disappeared, and there was
fire and smoke everywhere. . . . It was very sort of surreal."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A13766-2001Sep11
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Appears to be a credible witness, although the account is very brief.
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Sgt. William Lagasse, a pentagon police dog handler, the son of
an aviation instructor, was filling up his patrol car at a gas
station near the Pentagon when he noticed a jet fly in low. He
watched as the plane plowed into the Pentagon. Initially, he
thought the plane was about to drop on top of him -- it was that
close. Lagasse knew something was wrong. The 757's flaps were
not deployed and the landing gear was retracted.
http://206.181.245.163/ebird/e20011108vivid.htm
I saw the aircraft above my head about 80 feet above the ground,
400 miles an hour. The reason, I have some experience as a pilot
and I looked at the plane. Didn't see any landing gear.
Didn't see any flaps down. I realized it wasn't going to
land. . . . It was close enough that I could see the windows
and the blinds had been pulled down. I read American
Airlines on it. . . .I got on the radio and broadcast. I said a
plane is, is heading toward the heliport side of the building.
http://web.lexis-nexis.com...
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~julianr/lexisnexis/lagasse1.txt
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More testimony from Lagasse was posted
at APFN in response to queries from Dick Eastman. Lagasse
claimed that he was to the starboard side of the aircraft as it
passed over the gas station, which (if correct) would mean that
the plane needed to make a massive
trajectory adjustment for the plane to have struck the lamp poles
near the overpass. He makes claims about seeing debris from the plane inside the
building, which contradicts Terry Mitchell's observations.
Lagasse would have made his call stating that the plane has
already hit, because by the time he could raise his phone and
dial, it would be all over.
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After the second plane hit the World Trade Center, Major Lincoln
Leibner jumped in his pickup truck and raced to the Pentagon. As
he ran to an entrance, he heard jet engines and turned in time
to see the American Airlines plane diving toward the building.
"I was close enough that I could see through the windows
of the airplane, and watch as it as it hit," he said.
"There was no doubt in my mind what I was watching. Not for
a second. It was accelerating," he said. " It
was wheels up, flaps up, engines full throttle. "
http://www.theosuobserver.com/main.cfm/include/smdetail/synid/54846.html
Maj. Leibner drove in and made it as far as the south parking
lot, where he got out on foot. "I heard the plane
first," he said. "I thought it was a flyover Arlington
cemetery." From his vantage point, Maj. Leibner looked up
and saw the plane come in. "I was about 100 yards away,"
he said. " You could see through the windows of the
aircraft. I saw it hit." The plane came in hard and
level and was flown full throttle into the building, dead
center mass, Maj. Leibner said. "The plane completely
entered the building," he said. "I got a little
repercussion, from the sound, the blast. I've heard
artillery, and that was louder than the loudest has to offer.
I started running toward the site. I jumped over a fence. I was
probably the first person on the scene." A tree and the
backend of a crash truck at the heliport near the crash site
were on fire and the ground was scorched, Maj. Leibner
recounted. " The plane went into the building like a toy
into a birthday cake," he said. "The aircraft went
in between the second and third floors." At that point, no
one was outside. Spotting a Pentagon door that had been blown
off its hinges, Maj. Leibner went in and out several times,
helping rescue several people. "The very first person was
right there," he said. "She could walk. I walked her
out onto the grass." Maj. Leibner said a police officer
pulled up onto the grass and began to help. "Everybody was
hurt," Maj. Leibner said. "They were all civilian
females. Everybody was burned on their hands and faces.
http://www.usmedicine.com/article.cfm?articleID=384&issueID=38
Captain Lincoln Leibner says the aircraft struck a helicopter on
the helipad, setting fire to a fire truck. We got one guy out of
the cab," he said, adding he could hear people crying
inside the wreckage. Captain Liebner, who had cuts on his hands
from the debris, says he has been parking his car in the car
park when the crash occurred."
http://abc.net.au/news/2001/09/item20010911230953_1.htm
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With the rank of Major, Liebner met our "insider"
criterion. The damage to the
Pentagon was at the first and second floors, not the second and
third. Liebner is the only testimony indicating that a
helicopter was involved in a crash with the airliner, although some
witnesses reported the helicopter alone.
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David Marra, 23, an information-technology specialist, had
turned his BMW off an I-395 exit to the highway just west of the
Pentagon when he saw an American Airlines jet swooping in, its
wings wobbly, looking like it was going to slam right into the
Pentagon: "It was 50 ft. off the deck when he came in. It
sounded like the pilot had the throttle completely floored.
The plane rolled left and then rolled right. Then he caught
an edge of his wing on the ground." There is a
helicopter pad right in front of the side of the Pentagon. The
wing touched there, then the plane cartwheeled into the
building.
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,174655-4,00.html
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Marra agrees with Anderson about the wing striking the helipad, but
unfortunately this disagrees with the lack of any damage visible in
the photographs. As to the plane rolling left, rolling right
and then cartwheeling, we can only take this metaphorically.
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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. "The traffic was very slow moving,
and at one point just about at a standstill," said McGraw,
a Catholic priest at St. Anthony Parish in Falls Church. "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. "He literally had the stole in one hand
and a prayer book in the other and in one fluid motion crossed
the guardrail," said Mark Faram, a reporter from the Navy
Times who witnessed McGraw in the first moments after the crash.
http://www.dcmilitary.com/army/pentagram/6_39/local_news/10772-1.html
http://www.mdw.army.mil/news/Pentagon%5Fcrash%5Feyewitness%5Fcomforted%5Fvictims.html
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Father McGraw is an Opus Dei priest and former Justice Department
attorney. (See http://www.catholicherald.com/priests/mcgraw0607.htm
) In his "Frameup"
post, Mark Faram said that he didn't arrive at the crash scene
until ten minutes after the crash.
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It was so shocking, I was listening to the news on what had
happened in New York, and just happened to look out the window
because I heard a low flying plane and then I saw it hit the
Pentagon. It happened so fast... it was in the air one moment
and in the building the next... I still have a hard time
believing it, but every time I look out the window, it seems
to be more real than it did the time before... K.M., Pentagon
City, USA
http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/talking%5Fpoint/newsid%5F1537000/1537530.stm
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Appears to be a credible witness, but note the lack of
identification.
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Terry Morin, a former USMC aviator, Program Manager for SPARTA,
Inc was working as a contractor at the BMDO offices at the old
Navy Annex. Having just reached the elevator in the 5th Wing of
BMDO Federal Office Building (FOB) # 2. He heard "an
increasingly loud rumbling" One to two seconds later the
airliner came into my field of view. By that time the noise was
absolutely deafening. The aircraft was essentially right over
the top of me and the outer portion of the FOB (flight path
parallel the outer edge of the FOB). Everything was shaking and
vibrating, including the ground. I estimate that the aircraft
was no more than 100 feet above me (30 to 50 feet above the FOB)
in a slight nose down attitude. The plane had a silver body with
red and blue stripes down the fuselage. I believed at the time
that it belonged to American Airlines, but I couldn't be sure. It
looked like a 737 and I so reported to authorities. Within
seconds the plane cleared the 8th Wing of BMDO and was heading
directly towards the Pentagon. Engines were at a steady
high-pitched whine, indicating to me that the throttles were
steady and full. I estimated the aircraft speed at between
350 and 400 knots. The flight path appeared to be deliberate,
smooth, and controlled. As the aircraft approached the Pentagon,
I saw a minor flash (later found out that the aircraft had
sheared off a portion of a highway light pole down on Hwy 110).
As the aircraft flew ever lower I started to lose sight of the
actual airframe as a row of trees to the Northeast of the FOB
blocked my view. I could now only see the tail of the aircraft.
I believe I saw the tail dip slightly to the right indicating a
minor turn in that direction. The tail was barely visible when I
saw the flash and subsequent fireball rise approximately 200
feet above the Pentagon. There was a large explosion
noise and the low frequency sound echo that comes with this
type of sound. Associated with that was the increase in air
pressure, momentarily, like a small gust of wind. For those
formerly in the military, it sounded like a 2000lb bomb going
off roughly 1/2 mile in front of you. At once there was a huge
cloud of black smoke that rose several hundred feet up.
Elapsed time from hearing the initial noise to when I saw the
impact flash was between 12 and 15 seconds. (...) the aircraft
had been flown directly into the Pentagon without hitting the
ground first or skipping into the building. (...) The
firemen were appreciative, as the heat inside the building
generated from the 8,500 gallons of jet fuel was, in their
words, "unbelievable." It was reported that at least
three of the fireman had to be given IV fluids due to the
extreme heat.
http://www.coping.org/911/survivor/pentagon.htm
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Sparta is an elite high-tech military contracting organization, so
Morin meets our "deep insider" criterion. The statement that the throttles were full,
contradicts several other witnesses who said that the engines were
throttled back, and then spun up as the "757" approached
the Pentagon. However, the other witnesses may have been
fooled by a Doppler effect?
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A silver, twin-engine American Airlines jetliner gliding almost
noiselessly over the Navy Annex, fast, low and straight toward
the Pentagon, just hundreds of yards away. It was a nightmare
coming to life. The plane, with red and blue markings, hurtled
by and within moments exploded in a ground-shaking "whoomp"
as it appeared to hit the side of the Pentagon. A huge flash
of orange flame and black smoke poured into the sky. Smoke
seemed to change from black to white, forming a billowing
column in the sky.
http://www.navytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-467181.php
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Munsey places the plane over the Annex,
although he does not clarify whether it was closer to the
cemetery, or closer to Columbia Pike. In any case, it would
be nearly impossible for a jetliner to come anywhere over the
Annex and then jink its flight path so as to collide with light
poles at the cloverleaf -- and Munsey does not mention the light
poles. The claim that the jetliner was "almost
noiseless" contradicts several witnesses and makes no sense,
and the wording that the plane "appeared to hit the side of
the Pentagon" seems to allow for the possibility that this
was not a reality but only an "appearance".
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"The plane exploded after it hit, the tail came off and it
began burning immediately. Within five minutes, police and
emergency vehicles began arriving," said Vin Narayanan, a
reporter at USA TODAY.com, who was driving near the Pentagon when
the plane hit.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/11/washscene.htm
At 9:35 a.m., I pulled alongside the Pentagon. With traffic at
a standstill, my eyes wandered around the road, looking for the
cause of the traffic jam. Then I looked up to my left and saw an
American Airlines jet flying right at me. The jet roared over my
head, clearing my car by about 25 feet. The tail of the plane
clipped the overhanging exit sign above me as it headed
straight at the Pentagon. The windows were dark on American
Airlines Flight 77 as it streaked toward its target, only 50
yards away. The hijacked jet slammed into the Pentagon at a
ferocious speed. But the Pentagon's wall held up like a champ.
It barely budged as the nose of the plane curled upwards and
crumpled before exploding into a massive fireball. The people
who built that wall should be proud. Its ability to withstand the
initial impact of the jet probably saved thousands of lives. I
hopped out of my car after the jet exploded, nearly oblivious to a
second jet hovering in the skies. Hands shaking, I borrowed a cell
phone to call my mom and tell her I was safe. Then I called into
work, to let them know what happened. But not once was I able to
take my eyes off the inferno in front of me. I think I saw the
bodies of passengers burning. But I'm not sure. It could have been
Pentagon workers. It could have been my mind playing tricks on me.
I hope it was my mind playing tricks on me. The highway was filled
with shocked commuters, walking around in a daze.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/17/first-person.htm
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For the tail of the plane to have clipped a sign, the plane would
have needed to fly under the sign. Narayan seems to think
that the wall of the Pentagon was not breached.
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Mary Ann Owens, a journalist with Gannett News Service - was
driving along by the side of the Pentagon. Here, she recalls the
events of that horrific day and her feelings about the tragedy
12 months on. The sound of sudden and certain death roared in my
ears as I sat lodged in gridlock on Washington Boulevard, next
to the Pentagon on September 11. Up to that moment I had only
experienced shock by the news coming from New York City and
frustration with the worse-than-normal traffic snarl ... but it
wasn't until I heard the demon screaming of that engine that I
expected to die. Between the Pentagon's helicopter pad, which
sits next to the road, and Reagan Washington National Airport a
couple of miles south, aviation noise is common along my commute
to the silver office towers in Rosslyn where Gannett Co Inc.
were housed last autumn. But this engine noise was different. It
was too sudden, too loud, too encompassing. Looking up didn't
tell me what type of plane it was because it was so close I
could only see the bottom. Realising the Pentagon was its
target, I didn't think the careering, full-throttled craft would
get that far. Its downward angle was too sharp, its elevation of
maybe 50 feet, too low. Street lights toppled as the plane
barely cleared the Interstate 395 overpass. Gripping the
steering wheel of my vibrating car, I involuntarily ducked as
the wobbling plane thundered over my head. Once it passed, I
raised slightly and grimaced as the left wing dipped and
scraped the helicopter area just before the nose crashed
into the southwest wall of the Pentagon. Still gripping the
wheel, I could feel both the car and my heart jolt at the
moment of impact. An instant inferno blazed about 125
yards from me. The plane, the wall and the victims
disappeared under coal-black smoke, three-storey tall flames and
intense heat. As the thudding stopped, screams of horror and
hysteria rose from the line of cars (...) The full impact of
actually being alive overwhelmed me. A mere 125 yards had made
me a witness instead of a casualty. Survival wasn't a miracle,
it was luck ... pure luck.
http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/display.var.624436.Top+Stories.0.html
Gannett News Service employee Mary Ann Owens was stopped in
traffic on the road that runs past the Pentagon, listening on
the radio to the news of the World Trade Center attacks, when
she heard a loud roar overhead and looked up as the plane barely
cleared the highway. "Instantly I knew what was happening,
and I involuntarily ducked as the plane passed perhaps 50 to 75
feet above the roof of my car at great speed," Owens said.
"The plane slammed into the west wall of the Pentagon. The
impact was deafening. The fuselage hit the ground and blew up."
http://www.delawareonline.com/newsjournal/local/2001/09/12terrorspreadsto.html
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Another witness claiming that the left wing scraped the
helipad. We wonder why none of these folks noticed anything
about the electrical trailer and the concrete vent, that actually
were struck according to the Official Story? Owens also
mentions a "sharp downward angle." Owens is a
journalist with Gannett, the parent company of USA Today.
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Steve Patterson, who lives in Pentagon City, said it appeared to
him that a commuter jet swooped over Arlington National
Cemetery and headed for the Pentagon "at a frightening rate
... just slicing into that building." Steve Patterson, 43,
said he was watching television reports of the World Trade
Center being hit when he saw a silver commuter jet fly past the
window of his 14th-floor apartment in Pentagon City. The plane
was about 150 yards away, approaching from the west about
20 feet off the ground, Patterson said. He said the
plane, which sounded like the high-pitched squeal of a fighter
jet, flew over Arlington cemetary so low that he thought it was
going to land on I-395. He said it was flying so fast that he
couldn't read any writing on the side. The plane, which appeared
to hold about eight to 12 people, headed straight for the
Pentagon but was flying as if coming in for a landing on a
nonexistent runway, Patterson said. "At first I thought 'Oh
my God, there's a plane truly misrouted from National,'"
Patterson said. "Then this thing just became part of the
Pentagon ... I was watching the World Trade Center go and then
this. It was like Oh my God, what's next?" He said the
plane, which approached the Pentagon below treetop level, seemed
to be flying normally for a plane coming in for a landing other
than going very fast for being so low. Then, he said, he saw the
Pentagon "envelope" the plane and bright orange
flames shoot out the back of the building. "It looked
like a normal landing, as if someone knew exactly what they were
doing," said Patterson, a graphics artist who works at
home. "This looked intentional.".
Barbara Vobejda - Washington Post Staff Writer - Sept. 11,
4:59 PM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/daily/sep01/attack.html
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Patterson is one of the most widely cited eyewitnesses for the
"small plane" theory. Joel Skousen in his
"World Affairs Brief", March 8, 2002, reported that he
was unable to find a Steve Patterson in Pentagon City, and that no
graphics design firms in the area had ever heard of him.
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October 18, 2001 - Christine Peterson, '73 found herself in the
thick of last month's terrorist tragedy, and submitted this
report. It offers a personal perspective on the events in
Washington, D.C., which have perhaps been overshadowed in the
media by the scope of the horrors in New York. It was 9:30 a.m.
on Tuesday, September 11th, and traffic was terrible. For all of
my twenty-eight years living in the Washington, D.C. area,
terrible traffic was a constant. I'd been in Boston the day
before and gotten home late. That morning I repacked my suitcase
because I was heading out to San Francisco on the 3:20 p.m.
flight. I just needed a few hours in the office first, and now I
was officially late for work. I was at a complete stop on the
road in front of the helipad at the Pentagon; what I had thought
would be a shortcut was as slow as the other routes I had taken
that morning. I looked idly out my window to the left -- and saw
a plane flying so low I said, "holy cow, that plane is
going to hit my car" (not my actual words). The car shook
as the plane flew over. It was so close that I could read the
numbers under the wing. And then the plane crashed. My mind
could not comprehend what had happened. Where did the plane go? For
some reason I expected it to bounce off the Pentagon wall in
pieces. But there was no plane visible, only huge billows of
smoke and torrents of fire. (...) A few minutes later a second,
much smaller explosion got the attention of the police arriving
on the scene.
http://www.naualumni.com/News/News.cfm?ID=613&c=4
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Peterson looked to the left to see the airplane approach, so she
must have been going northbound on Washington Blvd, caught in slow
traffic. If she was near the helipad, then any plane in
position to hit the lampposts would have been far behind her,
rather than overhead. Steve Riskus (whose testimony is not
included in the Bart-Hoffman collection) similarly indicated that
the 757 approached on a path far to the north of the lamp pole
damage.
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Frank Probst : a Pentagon renovation worker and retired Army
officer, he was inspecting newly installed telecommunications
wiring inside the five-story, 6.5-million-square-foot
building.The tall, soft-spoken Probst had a 10 a.m. meeting.
About 9:25 a.m., he stopped by the renovation workers' trailer
just south of the Pentagon heliport. Someone had a television
turned on in the trailer's break room that showed smoke pouring
out of the twin towers in New York. "The Pentagon would
make a pretty good target," someone in the break room
commented. The thought stuck with Probst as he picked up his
notebook and walked to the North Parking Lot to attend his
meeting. Probst took a sidewalk alongside Route 27, which runs
near the Pentagon's western face. Traffic was at a standstill
because of a road accident. Then, at about 9:35 a.m., he saw the
airliner in the cloudless September sky. American Airlines
Flight 77 approached from the west, coming in low over the
nearby five-story Navy Annex on a hill overlooking the Pentagon.
He has lights off, wheels up, nose down," Probst
recalled. The plane seemed to be accelerating directly toward
him. He froze. "I knew I was dead," he said later.
"The only thing I thought was, 'Damn, my wife has to go to
another funeral, and I'm not going to see my two boys
again.'" He dove to his right. He recalls the engine
passing on one side of him, about six feet away. The plane's
right wing went through a generator trailer "like
butter," Probst said. The starboard engine hit a low cement
wall and blew apart. He still can't remember the sound of
the explosion. Sometimes the memory starts to come back when he
hears a particularly low-flying airliner heading into nearby
Reagan National Airport, or when military jets fly over a burial
at Arlington National Cemetery. Most of the time, though, his
memory is silent. "It was pretty horrible," he said of
the noiseless images he carries inside him, of the jet
vanishing in a cloud of smoke and dust, and bits of metal
and concrete drifting down like confetti. On either side of
him, three streetlights had been sheared in half by the
airliner's wings at 12 to 15 feet above the ground. An engine
had clipped the antenna off a Jeep Grand Cherokee stalled in
traffic not far away.
http://www.militarycity.com/sept11/fortress1.html
"I was standing on the sidewalk (parallel to the site of
impact)...and I saw this plane coming right at me at what seemed
like 300 miles an hour. I dove towards the ground and watched
this great big engine from this beautiful airplane just
vaporize," said Frank Probst, a member of the Pentagon
renovations crew commented. "It looked like a huge
fireball, pieces were flying out everywhere."
http://www.dcmilitary.com/army/pentagram/6_55/local_news/10660-1.html
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We comment more extensively on Probst
elsewhere on our website.
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James S Robbins a national-security analyst & 'nationalreviewonline'
contributor: "I was standing, looking out my large office
window, which faces west and from six stories up has a
commanding view of the Potomac and the Virginia heights."
"The Pentagon is about a mile and half distant in the
center of the tableau. I was looking directly at it when the
aircraft struck. The sight of the 757 diving in at an
unrecoverable angle is frozen in my memory, but at the time.
" I did not immediately comprehend what I was witnessing.
There was a silvery flash, an explosion, and a dark, mushroom
shaped cloud rose over the building. I froze, gaping for a
second until the sound of the detonation, a sharp pop at
that distance, shook me out of it. "
http://www.nationalreview.com/robbins/robbins040902.asp
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"Diving in at an unrecoverable angle" seems to describe
an entirely different approach path from the one reported by most
witnesses of the 757. Robbins is also a Senior Fellow of the
American Foreign Policy Council.
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Noel Sepulveda, a Master Sgt. received the awards during a
special ceremony at the Pentagon April 15. He left Bolling Air
Force Base, D.C., for a meeting at the Pentagon, only to be told
it was cancelled. Walking back to his motorcycle he saw a
commercial airliner coming from the direction of Henderson Hall
the Marine Corps headquarters.. It "flew above a nearby
hotel and drop its landing gear. The plane's right wheel
struck a light pole, causing it to fly at a 45-degree
angle", he said. The plane tried to recover, but hit a
second light pole and continued flying at an angle. "You
could hear the engines being revved up even higher," The
plane dipped its nose and crashed into the southwest side of the
Pentagon. " The right engine hit high, the left engine
hit low. For a brief moment, you could see the body of
the plane sticking out from the side of the building. Then a
ball of fire came from behind it." An explosion followed,
sending Sepulveda flying against a light pole. "if the
airliner had not hit the light poles, it would have slammed
into the Pentagon's 9th and 10th corridor "A" ring,
and the loss of life would have been greater."
http://www.jimroche.com/pentagon_hero.htm
http://www.af.mil/news/Apr2002/n20020415_0585.shtml
Recognition of Master Sergeant Noel Sepulveda : (...) on
September 11, 2001, Master Sergeant Noel Sepulveda was on
assignment at the Pentagon as a Medic. He was standing in the
parking lot at the Pentagon when he noticed a jetliner lower
its landing gear as if to make a landing an then he realized
that the airplane was actually heading towards the southwest
wall of the Pentagon; and he was standing only 150 feet from
the point of impact and for a brief moment he could see the body
of the plane sticking out from the side of the building,
followed by an explosion; and the blast of the impact was so
tremendous, that from his vantage point, it threw him backward
over 100 feet slamming into a light pole causing him internal
injuries; and despite his internal injuries, Master Sergeant
Noel Sepulveda remained on his duty station at the Pentagon for
seven days after this attack while manning a triage station to
assist the other victims of the attack
http://www.lulac.org/Issues/Resolve/2002/30%20Sepulveda.html
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Sepulveda's account is one of the few that acknowledges the
tremendous forces involved in the alleged aircraft impact, stating
that he was thrown 100 feet and slammed into a light pole by the
impact -- yet was able to get right back into action. However, no other witness saw the plane drop
its landing gear, or tilt at a 45-degree angle. The commentary
that the plane came from Henderson Hall collaborates the idea that
it was towards the north side of the Navy Annex, close to Arlington
Cemetery.
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"Where the plane came in was really at the construction
entrance," says Jack Singleton, president of Singleton
Electric Co. Inc., Gaithersburg MD, the Wedge One electrical
subcontractor. " The plane's left wing actually came in
near the ground and the right wing was tilted up in the air.
That right wing went directly over our trailer, so if that wing
had not tilted up, it would have hit the trailer. My foreman, Mickey
Bell, had just walked out of the trailer and was walking
toward the construction entrance."
http://www.designbuildmag.com/oct2001/pentagon1001.asp
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Singleton is not an eyewitness.
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A pilot who saw the impact, Tim Timmerman, said it had been an
American Airways 757. " It added power on its way in,"
he said. " The nose hit, and the wings came forward and
it went up in a fireball." Smoke and flames poured
out of a large hole punched into the side of the Pentagon.
Emergency crews rushed fire engines to the scene and
ambulancemen ran towards the flames holding wooden pallets to
carry bodies out. A few of the lightly injured, bleeding and
covered in dust, were recovering on the lawn outside, some in
civilian clothes, some in uniform. A piece of twisted aircraft
fuselage lay nearby. No one knew how many people had been
killed, but rescue workers were finding it nearly impossible to
get to people trapped inside, beaten back by the flames and
falling debris.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/wtccrash/story/0,1300,550486,00.html
Tim Timmerman : Pilot. I was looking out the window; I live on
the 16th floor, overlooking the Pentagon, in a corner apartment,
so I have quite a panorama. And being next to National Airport,
I hear jets all the time, but this jet engine was way too loud.
I looked out to the southwest, and it came right down 395, right
over Colombia Pike, and as is went by the Sheraton Hotel, the
pilot added power to the engines. I heard it pull up a
little bit more, and then I lost it behind a building. And then
it came out, and I saw it hit right in front of -- it didn't
appear to crash into the building; most of the energy was
dissipated in hitting the ground, but I saw the nose break up, I
saw the wings fly forward, and then the conflagration
engulfed everything in flames. It was horrible. It was a Boeing
757, American Airlines, no question. It was so close to me it
was like looking out my window and looking at a helicopter. It
was just right there. (We were told that it was flying so low
that it clipped off a couple of light poles as it was coming in)
That might have happened behind the apartments that occluded my
view. And when it reappeared, it was right before impact, and
like I said, it was right before impact, and I saw the
airplane just disintegrate and blow up into a huge ball of
flames. And the building shook, and it was quite a
tremendous explosion. I noticed the fire trucks and the
responses was just wonderful. Fire trucks were there quickly. I
saw the area; the building didn't look very damaged initially,
but I do see now, looking out my window, there's quite a chunk
in it. But I think the blessing here might have been that the
airplane hit before it hit the building, it hit the ground, and
a lot of energy might have gone that way. That's what it
appeared like.
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/11/bn.32.html
Donald "Tim" Timmerman, watched from across Interstate
395: I was looking out the window; I live on the 16th floor,
overlooking the Pentagon, in a corner apartment, so I have quite
a panorama. And being next to National Airport, I hear jets all
the time, but this jet engine was way too loud. I looked out to
the southwest, and it came right down 395, right over Colombia
Pike, and as it went by the Sheraton Hotel, the pilot added
power to the engines. I heard it pull up a little bit more, and
then I lost it behind a building. And then it came out, and I
saw it hit right in front of -- it didn't appear to crash
into the building; most of the energy was dissipated in hitting
the ground, but I saw the nose break up, I saw the wings fly
forward, and then the conflagration engulfed everything in
flames. It was horrible. What can you tell us about the
plane itself? It was a Boeing 757, American Airlines, no
question.You say that it was a Boeing, and you say it was a
757 or 767? 7-5-7.757, which, of course..American
Airlines.American Airlines, one of the new generation of jets.
Right. It was so close to me it was like looking out my window
and looking at a helicopter. It was just right there. . .cnn.com
TRANSCRIPT
http://commemoratewtc.com/transcripts/tr-13-46.php
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Gerard Holmgren raises questions about the credibility of Timmerman's
testimony, at: http://members.iinet.net.au/~holmgren/witness3.html
. My search in
the Yellow Pages and People Finder did not turn up any matches for
Timmerman in
the Pentagon area.
If the plane had hit on the ground
in front of the Pentagon, it would have left a crater.
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