Reflections on the Pentagon: A 9/11 photographic review

By Jim Fetzer on May 1, 2015

Reflections on the Pentagon: A 9/11 photographic review

by Dennis Cimino (with Jim Fetzer)

“Frank Legge paid special attention to a prominent piece of fuselage, which had come from a Boeing 757–not one that had hit the Pentagon on 9/11, but one that had crashed in Cali, Columbia, in 1995”–Jim Fetzer

Dennis Cimino

As we explained in “Limited hangouts: Kevin Ryan, A&E911 and the Journal of 9/11 Studies”, the Pentagon serves as a litmus test for those who profess to be dedicated to exposing falsehoods and revealing truths about 9/11.
By that standard, the Journal of 9/11 Studies does not measure up, because articles published there by Dr. Frank Legge, by Legge with Warren Stutt, and by Dr. John D. Wyndham on the Pentagon are intellectually indefensible.
They attempt to demonstrate that a Boeing 757, designed as “Flight 77”, hit the building and caused the death of 125 Pentagon personnel as well as its passengers and crew. But no passengers or crew died in a plane that did not crash.
What did and did not happen at the Pentagon has become a source of immense controversy within the 9/11 research community, which I have found difficult to appreciate, since books by Thierry Meysson about the Pentagon, 9/11: The Big Lie (2003) and Pentagate (2003)–were the first serious studies of 9/11 I read and convincing that no plane had hit the building. “What didn’t happen at the Pentagon”, for example, was published by rense.com in 2009 and then republished in my own blog in 2010. And when Gordon Duff invited me to write for Veterans Today, my first article, “Seven Questions about 9/11”, published in 2011, also focused on the Pentagon.
Among the points I made is that the official trajectory–of a Boeing 757 traveling over 500 mph and flying low enough to take out a series of lampposts–is neither aerodynamically nor physically possible. Such an aircraft at that speed could not have come closer than 60′ or even 80′ of the lawn because of (what is known as) downwash. And had a plane encountered a series of lampposts, the effects on a plane traveling over 500 mph hitting stationary lampposts would be the same as if the plane had been stationary and hit by lampposts traveling over 500 mph: its wings would have broken open, its fuel would have exploded and it would have careened on fire across the lawn. They missed two of my crucial questions:

When he published, “What Hit the Pentagon? Misinformation and its Effect on the Credibility of 9/11 Truth”, Frank Legge paid special attention to a prominent piece of fuselage, which had come from a Boeing 757. Although he did not appear to know it at the time, this was authentic debris from a Boeing 757–not one that had hit the Pentagon on 9/11, but one that–as James Hanson had already found by 2007–had crashed in Cali (or Buga), Columbia, in 1995, where the keys to its origin include its lack of effects from intense heat or from a violent crash–and a piece of vine.

As I had explained to the BBC when it came to my home near Madison, WI, and interviewed me for eight (8) hours for its first “Conspiracy Files” documentary about 9/11, the most stunning and revealing aspect of alleged crash at the Pentagon was the virtually complete absence of any debris from a Boeing 757, including no wings, no tail, no bodies, no seats and no luggage. They just weren’t there. And even the engines, which are virtually indestructible, were not recovered from the site. But the distinctive piece of debris has to have been dropped on the lawn by a C-130, which was circling the Pentagon:

The probability that a Boeing 757 could have hit the Pentagon and not left debris from its wings and tail or even its engines–not to mention bodies, seats, and luggage–is zero. The probability that the alleged trajectory could have been flown in violation of the laws of aerodynamics is less than zero–since violations of these laws is not even physically possible. The probability that such a crash, had it been possible, could have left a smooth, green, unblemished lawn is zero. The probability that debris would have been planted, had this event been authentic, would likewise have been extremely low. That all of these things should have occurred, if the alleged crash had been contrived, however, is precisely the opposite. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine any reasonable alternative, as the photographic record confirms.

On the Pentagon: Whom are we supposed to believe?

by Dennis Cimino

Jim Fetzer asked me to participate in our earlier article, “Limited Hangouts: Kevin Ryan, A&E911 and the Journal of 9/11 Studies”, from an analytic angle, where I enthusiastically joined in the effort to address the pathetic and sad attempts by the faux truthers–namely, Richard Gage, Kevin Ryan, Mr. Legge, Mr. Stutts, and Mr. Wyndham–to promote indefensible assertions made in the position papers we have addressed. Here I want to elaborate on the photographic proof that no Boeing 757-200 hit the Pentagon.
From the initial sentences of these articles, which are effectively being offered as incontrovertible proof that a B-757-200 struck the Pentagon on 9/11/2001–during what can only be assessed as a very elaborate hoax and ruse played out against the world that day–it is clear they are making the contrary assertion that a very complex aircraft was hijacked and flown with a great deal of precision into an impossible building entry that left no wreckage of the empennage or fuselage, nor wing, tail, or rudder fin (aka vertical stabilizer), when it hit the Pentagon that morning. We are to believe around 80% of the “official story” to simplify our understanding.
I wish to call everyone’s attention to these three photographs of the “Pentalawn”, as we call it in many places. The first was snapped less than 10 minutes after an explosion made the hole on the façade of the building. Note that there is virtually no wreckage in front of the entry hole. You won’t see this photograph in any of the Legge-Stutts-Ryan-Gage-Wyndham fraud, because this photograph by itself tells the “hole story”, as I laughingly refer to it as. Notice, too, the difference between the guard rail in the first (which is rusted) and in the second (which is not), which shows that at least some of the photos from the Pentagon were photoshopped:

More photos that simplify matters

And the fact of the matter is that there are many more photos taken early on that demonstrate the absence of the kinds and quantity of debris that would have been present had a Boeing 757-200 actually crashed there. As Jim Fetzer has observed, it is possible to prove a negative, as we do when we visit our living room and find no signs of the presence of an elephant, when those signs should be present if an elephant were there. We thereby prove that no elephant is in our living room, just as the absence of signs that a plane crashed at the Pentagon prove that no plane crashed at the Pentagon.

And here is one from the Pentagon helipad, showing that no Boeing 757-200 crashed at that location, either:

As you can see, inside the entry hole some structural members of the building are visible. But do you still think an airliner slid in this hole and disappeared? This is the entry hole. Yes. That is where 80-100 tons of airliner and wings went, according to what they would have us believe. Had an airliner truly struck the building in this location, not only would there be problems with fuselage entry through this hole, but clearly there are no slots present where wings entered the building either. Indeed, not only are those wing slots not there, we also do not have two engine penetration holes 48 feet apart where they, too, would have had to enter to not be seen in the above photograph.

The most powerful proof

Now this photograph is the most powerful indicator to the world that the wreckage that these men advance as “proof positive” could not have been the immediate result of an aircraft impacting the building, because not a single part of the plane is visible on the lawn. So one should ask, “How did any of the purported wreckage arrive there–and why so late?” Here it is post-collapse and there is still no real wreckage yet either. Given this late photo shows virtually no wreckage from an aircraft of the kind and quantity expected–period. End of story.

Here is one more post-collapse shot, which is also consistent with the absence of the expected field of debris:

A jet engine will miraculously appear in the vicinity of this generator; it is not there now but was planted later:

Legge’s “Proof of Impact”

In Mr. Legge’s astonishingly unsubstantiated “white paper”–a good term for articles published in the Journal of 9/11 Studies–he makes the claim that his photo of the main floor offers proof of airliner impact at this location:

As you can see, there are no aircraft components in this area. Per Mr. Legge’s statement, this photograph is indisputable evidence of an airliner impact in this location. Really? How did he deduce this? As many people might remember, a reporter named Jamie McIntyre had that morning observed that he saw no proof of an airliner having crashed there. Now we can all maybe in retro have asked McIntyre to go get his eyes checked, but then you would also have to send an F-15 pilot who also overflew the Pentalawn a few minutes later and likewise assessed that he, too, saw no evidence of an airliner impact there.

The Buga, Columbia crash

Unbeknownst to many people globally, a very little known American Airlines accident in Buga, Colombia in the end of 1995, provided the small amount of 757 wreckage that would be photographed on the Pentalawn, which was dropped later that morning from the lowered cargo ramp of a C-130H transport aircraft under call sign, GOFER SIX, flown by Cdr. Steven O’Brien of the Air National Guard.
This is the source of the small amount of plane parts seen on the Pentalawn after the explosion took place. GOFER SIX was the only aircraft allowed to be in the air in the immediate aftermath of this incident and had just enough cargo capacity to air drop these small fragments seen on the Pentalawn after the above photograph with NO WRECKAGE visible was taken by a U.S. Army enlisted woman. That photograph alone proves beyond reasonable doubt that there was no aircraft impact on that building that morning. There was no wreckage 9 minutes later. Notice the arrival of wreckage is evident here, when it was not there in the earlier shots:

The wreckage placement team has decided that the time is right for them to perform their assigned tasks:

Notice that rivet holes have already popped from corrosion on this allegedly fresh piece of 757 wreckage:

The series of lamp posts

The official story claims that this aircraft, N644AA, a B-757-200, flown by “Chic” Burlingame, had 5,300 gallons of JET-A on board when it pushed back from the concourse that morning and, notwithstanding a very modest amount consumed enroute, the lion’s share of the remainder of the onboard fuel should have been all over the lawn after the plane struck six lamp poles on it’s way to the building. Had this actually been the case, the fuel in the wings would have provided some spectacular pyrotechnics on the way to the building, because the wings would have been ruptured all the way to the fuel tanks and the voltage potential between the poles and the plane would have ignited massive fireballs for us to see–not to mention the shredding of wing components as the leading edge slats would have been torn from the wings on the way to the building post-impact with those poles.

If you believe the plane struck the poles on the way to the building, then you cannot with a straight face assert there would be no damage to the aircraft as it struck those poles at that speed. Certainly that no fuel explosions or wing components separated as clearly they did not, apparently. Virtually all of the fuel in this aircraft was in the wings. Yet no fuel was present at the Pentagon lawn, no wing wreckage was found and no signs of the B-757’s massive wings or tail anywhere near the entry hole, which was too small for them to have politely neatly folded in, had the plane turned into a barn swallow and tucked the wings before impact. It’s not possible these massive wings vaporized. They would be there–mostly intact–and outside, due to the lack of wing entry slots in the façade of the Pentagon. So where did they go?

And, even more importantly, where are the engine entry points? Where? The west portion allegedly hit by this plane had just been reinforced with Kevlar jacketing, making it even more likely to repel the penetration of the wings, which remain invisible in every photograph either inside or out. A key point of the official theory that these wings are not visible outside because they are inside. In Legge’s photo, however, you cannot see a single aircraft component: no wings, no main spar, no spar box, no fuselage components, no seats, no overhead bins, not even a seat cushion. And, remarkably, not one torso or body part. It’s physically impossible that such a plane could effortlessly penetrate the building without being destroyed by the heavy reinforcement of that façade, no matter how fast they assert it was flying, which was in this case beyond its aerodynamic capability.

What does this mean?

I have carefully read the assessments of another researcher about this absurd position that these gentlemen advance, where Mr. Ryan’s recommends that we ACCEPT AS TRUE as much as we can of the official story. Our puzzlement about the dearth of wreckage, body parts and other things unpleasant, are somehow buried in the rubble. So we are supposed believe an American Airlines jet flew at an impossible 465 knots speed into this building, hitting six poles en route, yet the wings didn’t rupture or fireball–and the plane did not have enough structural integrity post-crash to remain visible outside the building?
When Pentagon employee, April Gallop, crawled with her son from the building through the entry hole, she saw no evidence at all to support the assertion that any aircraft had struck the building that morning. Not one body part, not one plane component, not one strand of aircraft wiring, not one seat cushion, nothing from a plane visible to her, and amazingly, no pools of jet fuel which would not have been burnt if they assert the plane made it into the building. Are we to believe April Gallop or those who are lying to our very eyes?

The repetitious ‘believe, believe, believe’ and ‘accept, accept, accept’ suggestion by Kevin Ryan and indeed his henchmen who would wish us to so believe, is that much of an 80 ton aircraft could crash at the Pentagon and leave such a dearth of wreckage. Mr. Legge asserts that those of us who beg to differ are doing a ‘disservice’ to the truth community that he would like us to believe he is a valid part of, when neither he, nor Ryan, nor Stutts nor Wyndham has any experience or valid credentials in aviation or aircraft certifications, or aircraft operations; yet they pose as the arbiters of 9/11 Truth? How could anyone, after reviewing these photographs, continue to place faith in any of them–or in the Journal of 9/11 Studies, for that matter?
The proponents of the official story have told us that to not believe them, and to reject the nonsensical ‘official story’ is doing a massive disservice to the truth that they apparently are the sole arbiters of. Sound familiar? Which is it? Do we live now in a world where persons without ANY recognized credentials in these areas of AVIATION and FLIGHT and AIRCRAFT BUILDING AND CERTIFICATIONS now can suddenly be the very experts that tell us that the OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT STORY is TRUTH and that it’s perfectly fine that nearly 80 tons of airplane wreckage simply turned into vapor at the Pentagon? Apparently so. But it’s nonsense.
I have examined the documents Mr. Fetzer has cited in this article, written by these men, and have deduced that in spite of their very grandiose and outrageous claims in them, they have totally failed to prove that not 80 percent, not 60 percent, not 10 percent of the official story about the entire day holds any water, let alone that we should now trust them, without any requisite backgrounds or credentials, to assess for us that we should now believe the official government story that indeed a plane was involved in striking the Pentagon that morning. From my viewpoint, these men lack the requisite experience, background, credentials and knowledge to asses a dog fight let alone adjudicate this matter in a fashion that would lead anyone to see it for the pathetic psychobabble attempt by them to market a pile of lies that defies the evidence.

A missile or a Global Hawk?

Some have postulated that enough evidence of some form of air vehicle striking the Pentagon exists–and that appears to be the case. We have shards of very fine pieces of fiberglass, all over the area near the helipad and the helo control tower. A truck parked there has been fire damaged, but none of the glass is broken in that truck, which means whatever hit there didn’t hit with enough force to create shockwaves that would shatter the glass in the truck. So what created these shards of fiberglass? Could it have been one of these? The Air Force, incidentally, in the months after 9/11, reported that it had “lost” two of these in Afghanistan, which were never recovered.

John Danner, an EMT and commercially rated pilot, who was in the vicinity that morning, reported he observed a Global Hawk approach the building that morning. If this is true–which I believe it may be–then why was it there? What function did it serve? If there was a B-757-200 involved that day, any one of the Pentagon’s camera tapes would have shown that clearly to us en route to the Pentagon. So why withhold that from us? For what good reason? The only logical explanation is that the myriad of recordings clearly do not show a B-757-200 flying and striking the Pentagon as we have been maliciously and fraudulently told.
Clearly the government has not come clean here, in that IT holds the indisputable proof of what did and what did not fly over or fly into the Pentagon. We have the eyewitness testimony from N.E.I.T. 428’s Mr. Russell Roy interview by the Army, as you can easily verify for yourself, reporting that he saw a plane overfly so low that he could see the pilot’s face that morning as he pitched his plane up and banked away and flew away to the northwest towards Washington, D.C.

This man’s testimony is damning ‘prima facie’ evidence of a ‘flyover or flyby’ as is the excellent work of C.I.T.’s analysis and interviews of several very close in eyewitnesses that more or less reinforce the fact that a large aircraft flew a low approach to the building but then swerved over it. And this ‘low approach’ was not in sync with the external explosion at all, which means someone got his timing off a bit. Russell Roy could clarify this, if he is still alive today. But his interview still stands as proof of an aircraft having been close enough to the Pentagon and then departed, meaning we have ascertained that ‘something’ did not strike the building but flew over it.
Some in the truth movement believe that John Farmer, aka as Blue Collar Republican, a known ‘well poisoner’ in the 9/11 research realm, by the way, misused the Russell Roy interview transcripts to obfuscate and or muddy up the water about what really did occur at the Pentagon on 9/11. It is my professional opinion that the once fairly reliable source, Mr. Farmer, was co-opted and ‘bought’ by someone with a lot of cash to dangle, but I cannot certify the reason he went from once being a good source of information to being a definitive and certain ‘well poisoner’ for his later work, before he left the 9/11 Truth community in a huff.

What about the E4B?

One question remains in that it was well photographed that day over Arlington, high above the ground, an ‘E4B’ ‘TROUT’ doomsday aircraft was seen in a ‘hold’ pattern up high and yet this aircraft does not appear in the heavily doctored RADES 84 data for good reason. Is this the plane people seem to be pinning on Russell Roy’s observations that morning? Somehow as relevant as the E4B sighting is to the whole thing, it was up so high above Arlington that connecting it directly to a Pentagon overflight is a bit of a stretch, if not an absolute attempt to obfuscate the tight close in recollections of Mr. Roy that morning.

He was an Arlington Cemetery worker, in a very good position to see everything but the Pentagon itself from his viewpoint. At the very least we have enough damning information that firmly places O’Brien’s C-130H in tight and close to the Pentagon for wreckage seeding operations as I assert, contrary to his own disinformational claims that he was never anywhere within 4 n.m. of the Pentagon. And today, nobody has really addressed the clearly ‘supervisory’ role of the E4B aircraft in the operation in Arlington to attack the Pentagon using a missile. A solid fuel rocket motor propelled, D.U. penetrator equipped, land attack missile.
My assertion that an AGM-65J ‘maverick’ missile (below) was used to punch the ‘entry’ hole seems to fit well in what NEIT-428’s testimony states happened that morning, namely, that a large explosion occurred and then the flyover took place a few seconds later. Additionally, we also know that decontamination procedures for D.U. or ‘depleted uranium’ were being followed as It had been detected immediately after the explosion, so crews were washing people down to get D.U. off of them.

As I have stated, this indicates a penetrator warhead was used and, although I cannot pin the tail on AGM-65J with certainty, it’s inclusion in the Navy weapon’s inventory that year makes it the perfect candidate. In the below photograph, you can clearly see the use of ‘masking’ of the D.U. signature by the military having procured a huge amount of granite aggregate and other cover being laid down in the blowback area. Had an airliner been the whole gig, why would the government need to lay down rock to mask and suppress the radiation from fragments in the soil?

I don’t think they were landscaping. In other words, nobody can justify this masking of the underlying fragments of D.U. by the use of enormous quantities of radioactive granite fragments and other aggregate. So this, too, appears to be an attempt by the government to cover up the use of a D.U. penetrator warhead missile of some sort.

Kevin Ryan, Richard Gage and CIT

One of the leading sources of good solid detective work regarding the Pentagon attack is Craige Ranke’s Citizen Investigation Team (or C.I.T.), where their work on its own destroys the official story that a B-757-200 flown by inexperienced and incapable hijackers were somehow able to skillfully fly this machine to a pre-designated spot in the ‘Catcher’s Mitt’, which they hit with a great deal of precision and without being challenged or shot down by interception that day.
If one wishes to take the bait and believe Kevin Ryan and Richard Gage and the Legge-Stutts-and-Wyndham disinformation team and, just for simplicity sake, believe the government because that is less confusing, then one also has to ask these same disinformation peddlers ‘how’ we are to dispose of all of the damning evidence that suggests that they are in fact shills pushing the official government story, when so much contradictory proof destroys their assertions altogether? Simpler theories, as Jim Fetzer has reminded us many times, are only preferable when they can account for the same body of evidence.
Which is it going to be? Do as Kevin Ryan suggests and believe the official story because it is the easiest path? or follow the more logical and complex one, which implies that, no matter how hard they try, they simply cannot place a B-757-200 crash at the Pentagon, due to the total utter lack of wreckage in the immediate aftermath? The evidence we have reviewed here supports the possibility of a missile strike guided by remote control from the circling E4B ‘TROUT’ airplane above the area that morning. But it does not support Flight 77 having crashed there. None of their work even touches O’Brien or the E4B’s presence. Why? They weren’t there merely by coincidence that morning, folks.
We know the Pentagon had more than 80 video tapes of what happened that morning. “Show us the 80+ tapes”, Mr. President! Let us see what really happened at the Pentagon on 9/11.” The government will never ever come clean about this ruse, because to do so would de- legitimizes it fully and make it painfully clear that we are prisoners in a nation run by criminals and knaves, not a nation ruled by law. This event that took place going on almost 13 years now is the one that is the deal breaker. America was hijacked but those hijackings did not happen to any airliners that day. They happened in the very buildings we trust these frauds to govern from in the Beltway. That is where the hijackings really took place.

Dennis Cimino has extensive engineering and support experience with military electronics, predominantly US Navy Combat Systems, was the Navy’s top EMI troubleshooter before he went to work for Raytheon in the 1980s.