Joint Statement on the Pentagon: David Chandler and Jon Cole

Overwhelming Evidence of Insider Complicity on 9/11

If you watch our videos and read the links on our site (http://www.911speakout.org) you will understand why we assert that the weight of the evidence points to the fact that 9/11 was orchestrated by insiders…

* with access to high tech military-grade nano-energetic materials (aka nano-thermite)
* with access to the infrastructure of some of the most highly secure buildings in New York over an extended period of time
* with the expertise to accomplish the most difficult demolitions in history
* with the ability to manage public perception of the event despite numerous contrary contemporaneous eyewitness reports
* with the ability to coordinate the take-downs of the twin towers with the airplane flights
* with the ability to coordinate with the military to not intercept the airplane flights
* with the ability to stage a highly coordinated cover-up, starting on the day of 9/11 itself
* with the ability to prevent ANY investigation for many months
* with the ability to stage-manage fraudulent investigations once the demand grew too loud (the 9/11 Commission report the NIST reports)

All of this evidence comes from the investigation of the World Trade Center, based on public evidence and the laws of physics. The evidence is overwhelming, consistent, persuasive, and broadly agreed upon by the “scientific wing” of the 9/11 Truth Movement. The concrete physical and video evidence leading to these conclusions narrows the field of possible perpetrators significantly.

The Pentagon

There are also anomalies in the events at the Pentagon. The biggest anomalies, in our opinion , have gotten some of the least attention.

* How could the Pentagon, the hub of the US military, have been so poorly defended that it could be hit in the first place, after the buildings in New York City had already been hit and other hijacked planes were known to still be in the air?
* Why was Norman Minetta’s testimony about Cheney’s response to the approach of the aircraft discounted in the 9/11 Commission report?
* Why was the target the newly reinforced west face of the building, occupied primarily by accountants that were tracing down what happened to the missing trillions of dollars announced just a few days earlier?
* Why would the purported hijackers perform a difficult spiral descent to hit the face of the Pentagon that had the least number of people in it, and was opposite from the offices of the Pentagon high command?
* Why would the purported hijackers risk mission failure by choosing a difficult ground level approach when they could have simply dived into the building?
* How could an untrained pilot have performed the difficult maneuvers? Was the plane flown by some kind of automatic controls and/or guided by a homing beacon?

Instead of these important questions, from very early on the focus has centered on what hit the Pentagon. The nearly unanimous testimony of over a hundred eyewitnesses, is that a large aircraft, consistent with a 757, flew very low at very high speed, clipped several light poles, and crashed into the face of the Pentagon at ground level. Still, speculation persists that the Pentagon was hit by something else, such as a Global Hawk or a cruise missile. The eyewitness testimony is consistent with the pattern of damage both inside and outside of the Pentagon (http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/pentagontrap.html). Read through the many eyewitness accounts (http://arabesque911.blogspot.com/2007/04/911-and-pentagon-attack-what.html).

What is very clear is that there is a consistent and blatant ongoing cover-up at the Pentagon. Those INSIDE the Pentagon have all the physical evidence and all the confiscated videos. They undoubtedly have the definitive proof of what hit the Pentagon, and how it was done, but they are not saying.

The problem with focusing on a protest of the Pentagon cover-up is that the population at large attributes to the military the right to keep secrets. Secrecy in wartime is understandable, if it is in furtherance of military objectives. It is not reasonable that the military should be allowed to extend this privilege to the cover-up of evidence of a monstrous crime, but the fact is, they can get away with it. The population is not willing to second guess military prerogative in matters like this. Therefore despite the absolutely blatant cover-up of the facts of 9/11 at the Pentagon, there is no public outrage, and there is no reasonable possibility that the public can be aroused on this issue.

Therefore the Pentagon is a dead-end for research. The puzzle of the Pentagon might be fascinating or intriguing, but as an avenue to determining the truth, it seems doomed to failure. The ones who want it covered up literally hold all the cards.

Fortunately the evidence at the World Trade Center makes the investigation at the Pentagon almost irrelevant. If anything essentially new (and verifiable) can be discovered at the Pentagon, fine, but the sparseness of information and the thoroughness of the cover-up at the Pentagon makes it an unlikely venue for significant new findings.

The Honey Pot

On the other hand the mystery that surrounds the Pentagon makes it an attractive target of speculation and the subject of truly wild conspiracy theories. (This kind of attractive diversion is sometimes called a “honey pot,” a “setup” to be discredited at a later time.) This is not the only instance of theories that seem designed to be easily discredited. There are groups that insist the towers at the World Trade Center were taken down by space lasers. Others claim no planes hit the Twin Towers at all: they were just holograms. What better way to tar the movement than to seed it with absurdly false theories that fuel a media circus, while making the Movement look ridiculous?

Despite popular belief, the physical evidence does not rule out that possibility that it was American Airlines Flight 77 that actually crashed into the Pentagon. Confidently asserting otherwise, then being proven wrong and discredited for sloppy research, would be disastrous for the credibility of the solid science-based research at the World Trade Center.

Why, then, the strenuous push to focus the attention of the Truth Movement onto the Pentagon? Does it sound too cynical to suggest that we are being intentionally set up? We must remember that we are in a situation where nearly 3000 people were murdered in a day not counting the thousands who have died since, and millions killed in the resulting wars. If agencies of the US government really are complicit, which the evidence shows to be the case, then the people who really know what happened are playing for keeps. Any movement with real potential for arriving at incriminating truth will certainly be highly infiltrated. This is not paranoia: it is a simple fact. The 9/11 Truth Movement must respond by policing itself and holding itself to the highest standards of intellectual rigor.

CIT (Citizen Investigation Team)

It is sometimes hard to tell the difference between simply foolish theories and intentionally planted foolish theories. The difference is generally speculative. The wisest policy is to avoid foolish theories altogether.

The generally accepted story regarding the Pentagon is that American Airlines Flight 77 was hijacked and flown to Washington DC, did a very difficult downward spiral maneuver, approached the Pentagon flying essentially eastward along Columbia Pike, descended to very low altitude, knocked over several light poles, damaged a generator sitting on the Pentagon lawn, crashed into the west face of the Pentagon at ground level, at very high speed, and created a trail of damage inside the outer three rings of the Pentagon in perfect alignment with the exterior trail of destruction.

Enter CIT, the Citizen Investigation Team. This grass-roots-sounding organization consists essentially of two individuals from California who fly back to Washington, conduct interviews with a number of witnesses on video who reconstruct the flight paths (from memory, years after the event) as being significantly further to the north than the generally accepted flight path. A north flight path is inconsistent with the trail of damage, both inside and outside the Pentagon, so this flight path would require that all the damage was intentionally and elaborately faked. CIT then asserts that since the north flight path is inconsistent with the damage in the building, the plane did not actually hit the building. Instead it pulled up and flew over the Pentagon perfectly timed with an explosion set off in the Pentagon. The plane was hidden by the explosion as it flew off and blended in with general air traffic. (How the passengers were disposed of is a question they don’t consider.) Interestingly, nearly all of the people they interview are certain that the plane hit the building and none directly confirm the flyover hypothesis. The best they can do is elicit sketches of northerly flight paths that actually differ significantly from each other. They compile their thirteen interviews in a feature-length video called “National Security Alert” (with an eyebrow-raising acronym shared with the National Security Agency: NSA), then further cherry-pick their witnesses and present the four who are most in agreement with their own views, and add a musical sound track for a second video they call their “Smoking Gun” version.

Think about it just for a minute. The Pentagon is completely ringed by major highways, including Interstate 395 which had stand-still traffic that morning. Any flyover of the Pentagon would have been witnessed by hundreds of people from all directions. If a plane flew over the Pentagon at low altitude leaving a major explosion in its wake, anyone who saw it would certainly think they were witnessing a plane bombing the Pentagon. Yet there were no such reports, and some who were questioned later, who were in a good position to see any flyover, said they did not see any such thing.

The CIT videos don’t qualify as scientific studies. Their witnesses are not representative of the overall eyewitness pool, the witnesses accounts are far from contemporaneous with the events, and the conversational style of the interviews frequently leads the witnesses. Who knows what conversations preceded the videotaped interviews to either shape or filter the testimonies? The “researchers” ignore the fact that none of their witnesses directly confirms their primary hypothesis: a Pentagon flyover. Some of the witnesses contradict themselves, but this does not count against their credibility. Furthermore, there is no mention of the voluminous eyewitness testimony that supports the conventional path in line with the path of destruction. Rather than subject their work to peer review, even internal peer review within the 9/11 Truth Movement, they simply disparage any who take issue with their methods or their results, and instead rely on a list of questionable endorsements. They posted a literal “enemies list” on the internet in which they attacked the character of those who disagree with them. [Ed. Note: we are not yet on that list, but after posting this essay we will surely qualify.] CIT has even gone so far as to disparage their own witnesses, accusing the driver of the taxi that was hit by a light pole of being a co-conspirator with the perpetrators of the crime. CIT has gone out of its way to make themselves a highly divisive issue in the 9/11 Truth movement. The “Flyover theory” had recent success in getting main stream media coverage on the Jesse Ventura “Conspiracy Theory” show. Whether CIT in fact represents an orchestrated attempt to splinter the 9/11 Truth Movement or not, it is having a splintering effect. “Divide and Conquer” has a long history, going back to Caesar in the Gallic Wars, and Alexander the Great before him. CIT is attempting to become the public face of the 9/11 Truth Movement. If it succeeds, the 9/11 Truth Movement will be seen as vicious, mean spirited, crazy, and ultimately discredited.

If the Pentagon issue intrigues you, we highly recommend that you balance your reading with the literature that sets Pentagon theorizing into perspective. Here is a short recommended reading list. (All of the authors are on CIT’s enemies list, but read them and decide about their credibility for yourself.)

In conclusion, we urge you not to be taken in by divisive speculation masquerading as research.

Recommended Reading

To Con a Movement: Exposing CIT’s PentaCon ‘Magic Show’ by Victoria Ashleyhttp://www.911review.com/articles/ashley/pentacon_con.html

9/11 and the Pentagon Attack: What Witnesses Described
[[http://arabesque911.blogspot.com/2007/04/911-and-pentagon-attack-what.html]]

A Critical Review of "The PentaCon – Smoking Gun Version"http://arabesque911.blogspot.com/2007/05/critical-review-of-pentacon-smoking-gun.html

Google Earth Exposes Pentagon Flyover Farce or Critiquing PentaCon (Smoking Crack Version) by Jim Hoffmanhttp://911research.wtc7.net/essays/pentacon/index.html

American Memory Project of the Library of Congress (http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/S?ammem/afc911bib:@field%28SUBJ+@od1%28Pentagon++Va++%29%29)
— Interviews shortly after 9/11 by witnesses to various aspects of the Pentagon events.
Note in particular the interviewing style compared to the CIT interviews. There is no leading the witness. There is no agenda to prove a particular point. The interviewees are allowed to express themselves freely and fully with no coaching. Several of the witnesses interviewed here are also on the CIT videos. Notice the differences in the overall tone as well as the details of their stories.

The National Security Alert video and the The PentaCon: Eyewitnesses Speak, Conspiracy Revealed (Smoking Gun Version) are available to view online on various CIT web sites.
The National Security Alert: http://www.citizeninvestigationteam.com/nsa.html
The PentaCon (Smoking Gun Version): http://www.thepentacon.com/googlesmokinggun.htm