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Apr-07-2006 15:13printcomments

Huge Contradictions in Official Theories on 9/11 Crash at Pentagon

Two officially recognized statements on the September 11th Crash into the Pentagon go together like the opposite sides of a magnet.


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

(SALEM) - A recent article on the questions behind what actually crashed into the Pentagon September 11th 2001, prompted a good deal of feedback on Salem-News.com. The main points, once clearly understood, are startling. It all comes down to what the official government talking heads are saying, and how completely contradicting they are of one another.

I`m talking about the experts, selected by the federal government 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.

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 original story that I published was not a full-blown research piece, it was the first article of what will surely be many, on 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.

And why doesn`t the government release the footage of the crash recorded form a number of nearby video cameras? Why did the FBI immediately seize all of those cameras?

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 the article and the site, 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 being 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 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. I`ve also gone sky diving with Green Berets for a news story, and I`ve flown in a blimp, balloon, you name it, a few weeks ago I was flying over a surf contest in a helicopter with the door removed.

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 plane crashes as a reporter/photojournalist for KATU as recently as one and two years ago.

So in response to those comments, try to appreciate that we have the courage and the desire to make people think, and some things we publish may not have a beginning, middle and an end. Requests for interviews on this story have been made, and we will continue to make inquiries and publish stories and updates as we go.

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

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 most of the last 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 is from a professor at Purdue, the university that interestingly to many, has been receiving enormous amounts of federal money in recent years. That professor named 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.

He 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.

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 years, I have visited many locations where a plane struck the earth at several hundred miles an hour. One such aircraft is an F-89 Scorpion 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 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. 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, depending on the plane`s rate of speed and angle of descent at the time of impact.

If a plane has experienced a mid-air collision, like the F-100 that I mentioned above, then it might not actually be flying, but falling instead, often in a spin. This means that the object reaches terminal velocity, in the vicinity of 120 MPH, and that is how fast it is going when it strikes the ground.

My friend Doug Scroggins in Las Vegas, Nevada operates a museum and non-profit crash site research group called Lost Birds, www.lostbirds.com. Today he is involved in the airplane scrapping business. He took possession of five 767`s in the last year, and they headed for the chopping block. I say this because 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 a 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 did 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

________________________________________

______________________________________________________

Tim King: Salem-News.com Editor and Writer

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.

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Comments

Comments are Closed on this story.



Master Sergeant March 16, 2013 8:42 pm (Pacific time)

Hard to believe anyone would take thi clown seriously. King sould have interviewed thousands of workers at the Pentagon, from all over the country, who saw and handled body parts, plane parts (some large),even burned bodies still in plane seats.

This guy cribbed some talking points from loony conspiracy websites, did zero research, and published this nonsense.

So every US university is on the payroll of the US govt and can't be trusted? And obviously he thinks that the entire NIST, the ASCE and hundreds of engineers who have published on the subject are also on the US payroll and hiding some "evidence."

Probably I am, too, since I get a gov't retirement check, so hundreds of my friends who worked on the Pentagon rescue and recovery teams can't be trusted either.

Are people really stupid enough to swallow this crap?

Unfortunately, considering the shape of US public schools ... they probably are.

DJ: I'd like to see some publicly  verifiable/replicable evidence.  Do we have to wait for a deathbed confession from Dick Cheney? Good luck on that


Sam April 9, 2007 9:50 am (Pacific time)

That's the best you can do? Correct the length of a football field? Did you read any further? There are a lot of other details that raise other questions, and they're worth thinking about. We need to be skeptical, it's healthy. That's not buying into conspiracy theories without hesitation, it's also not being a sheep and believing anything you are told by your government, just because "they" say it. At least you know something about your world though, and you never even had to get out of your LaZBoy to show the level of your expertise! Ha! Bravo! Now, when you can explain why this plane had no wings...and why the entrance point into the building was smaller than the plane itself... then I'll give a crap about your football semantics. Till then, put down the beer and keep trying Buddy!


nodeofollie April 9, 2007 3:17 am (Pacific time)

ha ha, a football field is 360 feet in length so how the hell is a 125ft long boeing going to look like the size of a football field? you must smoke a lot of crack to be this paranoid about our government BOMBING the effing pentagon. ha


h smith April 13, 2006 2:40 pm (Pacific time)

Professor Kee Dewdney's site has a few good articles on the Pentagon at http://www.physics911.net/ Also http://www.pentagonresearch.com/ has quite a bit of good stuff on the Pentagon. The crash at Shanksville is even worse. A smoking crater that appears to be from a missle.


grafdog April 13, 2006 5:46 am (Pacific time)

No accounts of injury sustained by exposure to jet wash from the Boeing. No mention of hearing loss resulting from Boeing engine noise, and hardly any witness statement starts with "i heard a large aircraft" No mention of the smell of burning bodies? Why no luggage, clothing or bodies seen in ANY photo, video of that morning. How did the 2 large engines of a Boeing turn into the one small engine recovered? Maybe someone paid some "folks" to lie.


David Diggins April 12, 2006 8:56 pm (Pacific time)

Testimony and parts may be manufactured evidence, but the laws of nature may not be suspended. Take away the physical impossibilities and you are left with the truth. soy somos eres sois es son


cojones April 12, 2006 10:53 am (Pacific time)

take a look at st911.org


Bob Friend April 12, 2006 6:41 am (Pacific time)

Benjamin Chertoff is the author of the PM Magazine article. Does the name sound familiar?


Tim King April 6, 2006 3:54 pm (Pacific time)

Responding to the post from Dave, I do not know what happened to the plane, or the precious souls aboard. I`ll tell you that I am not an outward critic of the government; you could talk to endless numbers of people who would back that up based on my reporting career. I have dedicated years of my life to telling stories of American military heroes and events, and I am still deeply immersed in it. I do have a problem with chicken hawks that deceive the public from the highest levels, and it is a fact that our country is run by them. Some I`m sure are still honest people, but I fear the worst from many. It is my job as a reporter to bring ideas forward when they have credibility. I am waiting for someone to explain something about that crash at the Pentagon, anything, that makes the government`s POV believable.


D. E. Smith April 6, 2006 3:02 pm (Pacific time)

For anyone interested... SFGate (from San Francisco) has run this article with some additional imbedded links: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/gate/archive/2006/03/29/notes032906.DTL


Dave March 28, 2006 6:24 pm (Pacific time)

If it did not strike the pentagon, what happened to American Airlines Flight 77, and the people on it? And your statement that you've never done a story that specifically argued the point of view of a government agency? Have you disagreed with the decisions of every government agency you have reported on?


Mary March 28, 2006 1:31 pm (Pacific time)

Finally, some freedom of speach and thought. Thank You So Much for being so bold and presenting this possibility/probability to our little community. This is really something to consider. Me personally, I couldn't get past the classroom scene, there was this quality of guilt on Bush's face that I just can't get around. So the whole 911 this is in my mind a perfect example of how far down this "Democracy" has fallen. I hold "The People" responsible for allowing themselves to be so misled.


R. van Pelt March 28, 2006 7:47 am (Pacific time)

A further reason to remain skeptical concerning the contradiction between what happened (something did strike the Pentagon) and theories that question how it could have happened is that the recovered the bodies of those on the plane and they recovered them at the site. Theories about whether it was the plane, a drone, or a missle require explaining away the bodies - habeus corpus


R. van Pelt March 27, 2006 7:02 am (Pacific time)

I go into skeptic mode whenever conspiracy theories rise up. BUT: In this instance, I have reasonable worries. I have not seen this site mentioned; you might want to check it out: http://www.freedomfiles.org/war/pentagon.htm


Michael Heggen March 25, 2006 12:47 am (Pacific time)

I would suggest you also take a look at this site, which is what finally put the suspicions I had about the Pentagon on 9/11 to rest. http://www.abovetopsecret.com/pages/911_pentagon_757_plane_evidence.html As I said before, I don't trust this administration any further than I can throw them. But I think that a commercial jet really did hit the Pentagon on 9/11. (I'm not sure I believe some of the other stuff about 9/11, but that's another topic.)


Jory March 24, 2006 9:22 pm (Pacific time)

This is what true news reporting should look like across the nation. With so many large and powerful media outlets tinting the truth for their own interest or gain, it is good to know we have Salem-News.com, a place where we can find the real story. Thanks Tim, you have proven once agian to stand for what is right, instead of what is just accepted. Keep up the good work!


D. E. Smith March 24, 2006 2:01 pm (Pacific time)

I very much appreciate and praise you and your news organization for pursuing this story and these questions. Your tenacity and bravery are qualities that I like to think are those of a true American and caring and engaged member of the human race. Stay strong.


Henry Clay Ruark March 24, 2006 8:40 am (Pacific time)

From 60 years work "in the media" let me congratulate you, Tim, on one of the best and most professional stories I have seen re plane-crashes. None can speak about such drastic occurrences without having "been there, done that" professionaly, as comes through loud and clear on this one.

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