911: 'I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts. Okay?'

Two officially recognized statements on the September 11th Crash form one impossible truth.

Tim King, shown here just before flying in an Air Force F-16 jet fighter, has a strong military and reporting background in aviation Photo: U.S.A.F. Air Warfare Center

(SACRAMENTO, CA) - (This article, originally titled: Huge Contradictions in Official Theories on 9/11 Crash at Pentagon, was first published in April 2006; the points seem no less valid today)

An article from seven years ago on the questions behind what actually crashed into the Pentagon September 11th 2001, prompted a good deal of feedback on Salem-News.com.

Two theories included in a 'Popular Mechanics' magazine article from 2005 make the 'official' U.S. government account of 9/11 absolutely impossible, if each is true. The main points, once clearly understood, are startling.

I`m talking about the experts, selected by the Bush Administration to address national media on the subject of flight 77 and the attack on the Pentagon, on the day of our nation`s darkest hour, working in unison with a magazine staff to construct an article that only exists to validate the story that millions now do not entirely believe.

When it comes to the people who instantly call it `conspiracy theory," I truly question what they are thinking, or what sense of logic they are applying to it. The first article that I published was not a full-blown research piece, it was my initial reaction to this most disturbing question: If a 757 aircraft, more than a football field long, crashed into the Pentagon, where is the wreckage?

The purpose of the story was to make people think.

Seized Cameras

Why didn't the government release the footage of the crash recorded from a number of nearby video cameras on a Chevron gas station, a Hilton Hotel and the Virginia Highway Dept.? Why did the FBI immediately seize all of them?

Those images show what crashed into the Pentagon. If it was the 757, then why don`t they just release the other views of it? The only footage they have released, from a Pentagon camera, shows a brief blur of an object, and it sure doesn`t look like it is anything close to the size of a football field.

One first time visitor to Salem-News.com blasted my first article on this subject, writing, "This is not what actually passes as news? No facts, no interviews with credible sources, no real story."

Salem-News.com is an extremely credible news organization and we have the track record to demonstrate it, but we do not hail from the stamp and go world of large corporate media. I lived in that world for years, and often had to work the hardest to sell the producers on what would go on to be the best stories, and one particular story that I was the solo believer in, won an award from the Associated Press that I am very proud of. That story was part of a series on aviation history.

This story is not written by somebody who just took a sudden interest in airplanes.

I've been involved in aviation in one way or another since I was an 18-year Marine old on the flightline with the jet fighters at Marine Corps Air Station El Toro in 1981.

In my TV news career, I`ve taken the controls of an Air Force F-16 Fighter, and I have flown in all kinds of military planes and helicopters in both the U.S. and while covering the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I've also gone sky diving with Green Berets for a news story, and I've flown in a blimp, a hot air balloon, you name it. In 2006 when I initially wrote this article, I mentioned that I had recently flown over a surf contest in a helicopter with the door removed to shoot video of 35-foot plus waves from the sky.

In the early 90`s, I produced a documentary on the sole survivor of the Cape Lookout, WWII B-17 bomber crash for Oregon Public Broadcasting, which aired twice in 1993.

I have researched, shot and reported many TV news stories on plane crashes and historic plane crash sites, starting with the crash of a biplane in Lincoln City in 1988. These stories aired on NBC, ABC, CBS and FOX stations, and generally went out on the national satellites to affiliates because the networks always request footage of a plane crash scene. I also covered Marine and Navy plane crashes as a reporter/photojournalist for KATU in Yuma, Arizona.

So in response to those comments, try to appreciate that I do have a great deal of background in aviation and observe that Salem-News.com has the courage and the desire to make people open their minds and think.

When I wrote the first story, I hadn't seen this national article in Popular Mechanics Magazine. http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html?page=6 (This link is now dead, as expected, I see an article by the same title here, www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military/news/1227842, however I am not sure if they have modified the content. My quotes referenced in this article from their magazine are verbatim.)

Though their intention is the opposite, the story is enough to make a person question what crashed into the Pentagon all by itself.

The following two statements are from that article in Popular Mechanics: It was a March 2005 cover story that was written with the clear and obvious intent of dispelling questions about the lack of wreckage, with the title "9/11: Debunking The Myths."

If Popular Mechanics considers this their national duty, then where is their journalistic integrity? As a news reporter for well over twenty years, I don't remember ever being sent out to do a story that specifically argued the point of view of a government agency, never.

The first statement in the PM magazine is from a professor at Purdue, the university that interestingly to many, received enormous amounts of federal money in recent years. That professor, Mete Sozen, says there was no wreckage because "the plane flowed into the structure in a state closer to a liquid than a solid mass." The statement is actually written by the author, and sandwiched between quotes from the professor, but it is clearly attributed to him.

Sozen and a team from the university were also selected to create the computer "simulation" of the 757 crash for the federal government, which is supposed to demonstrate "what really happened" and surely carried a big price tag from Purdue. The big money for Purdue has been on the minds of many, and the relationship between this institution and the Bush administration is automatically brought into question by the contradicting statements of the so-called "experts" selected to talk nationally about Flight 77.

Then there is the Blast expert in the PM article, Allyn E. Kilsheimer, who said "I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts. Okay?"

One says the plane turned to liquid, that`s why there is no wreckage, and the other held parts of the crew`s uniform and body parts in his hand?

What?

These guys needed to get on the same page before being interviewed for Popular Mechanics.

The author of that PM article by the way is not named, at least on the published Web story.

Finally, if Kilsheimer did hold parts of uniforms, then they easily could have come from the poor unfortunate people inside the building, I mean we are talking about the Pentagon, but he directly states the body parts and uniforms were from the plane's flight crew.

Everyone watching the news that day remembers that the grass in front of the Pentagon showed no burn marks, no wreckage, many of the windows where the wings would have struck the building are unbroken. They were made of special glass, but a 757 going 500 MPH into a building is a force that one could hardly imagine. Like most airplanes, the 757 carries its fuel in its wings, and the plane`s wingspan is 125 feet, so why was the fire and damage at the Pentagon confined to such a small area?

As a person who has been researching airplane crash sites for almost twenty five years, I have visited many locations where a plane struck the earth at several hundred miles an hour. One such aircraft is an F-106 jet fighter that crashed east of Cloverdale, Oregon one evening in the late 1950`s. The pilot ejected, and the impact from the plane striking the ground at high speed was so profound, that it interrupted a high school basketball game miles away, and sent people running outside to see what had happened. That plane has a wing in the wreckage field that is almost complete, and still has a moving aileron and Air Force symbols were still visible. I originally wrote a story about this crash site for the Tillamook Headlight Herald Newspaper in 1994.

My point is that even high-speed crashes leave big pieces of wreckage. You can see things in the aftermath of a crash like luggage, pieces of the fuselage, and heavy machinery-type parts that comprise the plane. Titanium parts in the jet engine construction of a 757 are nearly indestructible. I have people researching the available photos who can specifically identify 757 parts. This is too big of a subject to simply blow off.

In the desert, planes like an F-100 jet fighter that I photographed are often in pieces. Those pieces can be several feet long, or just a fraction of an inch. Most jets break completely up on impact, but many of their parts are rugged and they can sometimes be strewn over a mile or more, depending on the plane`s rate of speed and angle of descent at the time of impact.

My friend Doug Scroggins in Las Vegas, Nevada operates a museum and non-profit crash site research group called Lost Birds, www.lostbirds.com. By April 2006, he was involved in the airplane scrapping business. Doug took possession of five 767`s in the last year, and they headed for the chopping block. Doug knows the planes, including the 757, inside and out, literally. He did point out that a 757 is a seemingly fragile aircraft, and that their construction is far from military standards in terms of strength. He says the impact would be entirely devastating to the aircraft, but that still far from explains it. No matter what, and Doug agrees, airplanes do not strike an object at 500 MPH and turn into liquid.

This is how Doug describes a 500 MPH airplane crash, "Imagine standing on a thousand foot building and dropping a coke bottle to the ground. That is a starting point in comprehending what happens to an airplane when it hits the ground at a high rate of speed."

If that coke bottle lands on the sidewalk, it is going to shatter into countless thousands of small glass fragments. But if it landed on soft grass, it may absorb the impact and at least remain in a single location, even if it is broken.

If a pilot ejects while underway, the plane could conceivable go into a steep dive and gain massive airspeed before reaching the ground.

Here is the first paragraph, complete and unaltered, from Popular Mechanics article where the `liquid theory" is offered:

Why wasn't the hole as wide as a 757's 124-ft.-10-in. wingspan? A crashing jet doesn't punch a cartoon-like outline of itself into a reinforced concrete building, says ASCE team member Mete Sozen, a professor of structural engineering at Purdue University. In this case, one wing hit the ground; the other was sheared off by the force of the impact with the Pentagon's load-bearing columns, explains Sozen, who specializes in the behavior of concrete buildings. What was left of the plane flowed into the structure in a state closer to a liquid than a solid mass. "If you expected the entire wing to cut into the building," Sozen tells PM, "it didn't happen."

This is the paragraph where the blast expert talks about holding remains and clothing from the crew:

Blast expert Allyn E. Kilsheimer was the first structural engineer to arrive at the Pentagon after the crash and helped coordinate the emergency response. "It was absolutely a plane, and I'll tell you why," says Kilsheimer, CEO of KCE Structural Engineers PC, Washington, D.C. "I saw the marks of the plane wing on the face of the building. I picked up parts of the plane with the airline markings on them. I held in my hand the tail section of the plane, and I found the black box." Kilsheimer's eyewitness account is backed up by photos of plane wreckage inside and outside the building. Kilsheimer adds: "I held parts of uniforms from crew members in my hands, including body parts. Okay?"

I have read no accounts of people asking about "cartoon-like" holes on the Pentagon where the wings would have been, that is just an advertising agency tactic to throw people off and discredit anyone who questions how such a big plane could disappear so completely, without a trace, when similar crashes leave debris spread over a large area. The height of a 757, over 44 feet, is highly disproportionate with respect to the government`s official story.

I once shot a story with a Marine fighter pilot who survived a head to head collision with another fighter in the desert in southern Arizona. He landed his plane afterward with a shattered canopy, but the other pilot ejected and the F-5 fighter plane flew south over the Mexican border and was never seen again. The F-5, a trim Air Force fighter used extensively during Vietnam, probably ended up like the bottle that falls a thousand feet and hits the sidewalk, but it did not turn into liquid when it struck the ground, because that isn't what happens to airplanes when they crash.

If you didn't see it the first time around, here is the link the fascinating and thought provoking video flash presentation about the Pentagon and September 11th, 2001. These producers wanted to make a point, like the staff at Popular Mechanics, www.freedomunderground.org/memoryhole/pentagon.php (Link appears to be dead)

You can write to Tim at this address: tim@salem-news.com.

Visit Tim's Facebook page (facebook.com/TimKing.Reporter)

With almost 25 years of experience on the west coast and worldwide as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor, Tim King is Salem-News.com's Executive News Editor. His background includes covering the war in Afghanistan in 2006 and 2007, and reporting from the Iraq war in 2008. Tim is a former U.S. Marine who follows stories of Marines and Marine Veterans; he's covered British Royal Marines and in Iraq, Tim embedded with the same unit he served with in the 1980's.

Tim holds awards for reporting, photography, writing and editing from traditional mainstream news agencies like The Associated Press and Electronic Media Association; he also holds awards from the National Coalition of Motorcyclists, the Oregon Confederation of Motorcycle Clubs; and was presented with a 'Good Neighbor Award' for his reporting, by the The Red Cross.

Tim King reporting from the war in Iraq

Tim's years as a Human Rights reporter have taken on many dimensions; he has rallied for a long list of cultures and populations and continues to every day, with a strong and direct concentration on the 2009 Genocide of Tamil Hindus and Christians in Sri Lanka. As a result of his long list of reports exposing war crimes against Tamil people, Tim was invited to be the keynote speaker at the FeTNA (Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America) Conference in Baltimore, in July 2012. This is the largest annual gathering of North American Tamils; Tim addressed more than 3000 people and was presented with a traditional Sri Lanka ‘blessed garland’ and a shawl as per the tradition and custom of Tamil Nadu

In a personal capacity, Tim has written 2,026 articles as of March 2012 for Salem-News.com since the new format designed by Matt Lintz was launched in December, 2005. Serving readers with news from all over the globe, Tim's life is literally encircled by the endless news flow published by Salem-News.com, where more than 100 writers contribute stories from 23+ countries and regions.

Tim specializes in writing about political and military developments worldwide; and maintains that the label 'terrorist' is ill placed in many cases; specifically with the LTTE Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, where it was used as an excuse to slaughter people by the tens of thousands; and in Gaza, where a trapped population lives at the mercy of Israel's destructive military war crime grinder. At the center of all of this, Tim pays extremely close attention to the safety and welfare of journalists worldwide.