NEWSLETTER #86
November 4, 2006
September 11, 2001 Revisited
November 4, 2006
September 11, 2001 Revisited
ACT IV: PART I
We all know
the
inspiring story of Flight 93, of the heroic passengers who forced the
hijacked
plane to the ground, sacrificing themselves to save the lives of
others. The
only trouble is: it may simply not be true ... The shortage of
available facts
did not prevent the creation of an instant legend – a legend that the
US
government and the US media were pleased to propagate, and that the
American
public have been eager, for the most part, to accept as fact. John Carlin "Unanswered Questions:
The Mystery of Flight 93," The Independent, August 13, 2002
Before the official spin set in and
United
Airlines Flight 93 became forever known as the "Let's Roll" flight,
immortalized in numerous articles, web postings, books and movies,
early
reports from local journalists on the scene strongly suggested a much
different
scenario than the one sold to the American people. So too does all the
available photographic evidence. And the overwhelming majority of
eyewitness
accounts also paint a much different picture of the fate of Flight 93
than the
story sold by Washington and its media cohorts.
That official story, of course, holds
that a
Boeing 757 that took off for San Francisco, California out of Newark,
New
Jersey at 8:42 AM, well past its scheduled liftoff time, was hijacked
somewhere
over Pennsylvania by four knife-wielding terrorists, all wearing red
bandannas,
with one sporting a fake bomb strapped around his waist. At about 9:35
AM, the
aircraft abruptly turned around somewhere over the Cleveland area and
began
heading back towards Washington, presumably with the intention of
impacting a
target of strategic importance. From about 9:30 until just before 10:00
AM, as
the aircraft headed east over Ohio and Pennsylvania, numerous
passengers and
crew members frantically placed calls to loved ones. During some of
those
calls, passengers learned of the attacks in New York and, quickly
deducing what
their likely fate would be, decided to attempt to overpower the
hijackers and
gain control of the aircraft. During the ensuing struggle, control of
the plane
was lost and it plummeted to the ground, plowing into abandoned
coal-mining
land near Shanksville, Pennsylvania at 10:06 AM, killing all forty-four
people
on board (seven crew members, four hijackers and thirty-three
passengers).
Needless to say, Hollywood just loves
the Flight
93 story, with its iconic images of the heroism and patriotism of
ordinary
Americans. And there quite likely was heroism exhibited aboard that
aircraft
that day. But perpetuating a lie does nothing to honor the memory of
those who
died on September 11, particularly if that lie is brazenly exploited by
the
very people responsible for the death and destruction that day. If we
are to do
more than just crassly exploit the dead, we first have to understand
how they
really died.
Despite the magnitude of the events of
September
11, 2001, and despite the monumental changes in our lives that have
occurred in
the aftermath of those attacks, the vast majority of Americans have
never
bothered to look at any of the details of what happened that day.
Having read
the above one-paragraph summary of the saga of Flight 93, you, the
reader, probably
already know more about what supposedly happened in Shanksville that
day than
the average American. As a nation, we have accepted that our world must
fundamentally change as a result of what happened that day, and yet we
can’t be
bothered with actually taking the time to look at what really did
happen that
day. We have accepted the notion that torture is now a legitimate tool
of the
state, and that anyone deemed an enemy of that state can be tried and
convicted
with ‘evidence’ that need never be revealed. In doing so, we have
sacrificed
not only our most basic rights, and not only the lives of our sons and
daughters, but, most tragically of all, our very humanity, and we have
done so
on blind faith, never bothering to look at any evidence beyond the
endlessly
replayed images of crashing jets and collapsing towers.
To say that this is a pathetic state of
affairs
would be quite an understatement.
Most Americans probably assume that
they saw
footage of a crashed airplane in Pennsylvania sometime during the day
of
September 11, 2001, or shortly thereafter. We were, after all, provided
with
nonstop coverage of the attacks across the television dial for several
weeks,
so there was certainly ample time to air some footage of the smoldering
wreckage of Flight 93, or at least some eyewitnesses describing the
wreckage of
Flight 93, or maybe a location interview with a rescue worker
describing the
harrowing task of recovering bodies. But though we may think that we
saw such
images amid the chaos of that day, we most certainly did not – just as
we did
not see any footage of aircraft wreckage at the Pentagon.
And we never will, for the simple
reason that images
such as those do not exist – and if someone were going to manufacture
them
using Hollywood wizardry, they would have already done so.
Don’t get me wrong here: images of the
purported
crash site of Flight 93 do exist. Some of those photographs and digital
images
were taken within minutes of the alleged event, long before any cleanup
efforts
began. Some of the photographs were even taken by the government’s own
crash
investigators. None of them, however, depict the site of the actual
crash of a
large passenger plane. We know this because, as a general rule of
thumb,
aircraft crash sites contain recognizable aircraft wreckage.
Just as one would expect to find some
recognizable vehicle wreckage at the scene of even the most horrendous
of car
crashes, one likewise expects to find aircraft wreckage at the scene of
a plane
crash. Historically, at least, that is how these things have always
worked, as
can be seen in the above photos of various Boeing 7X7 aircraft that
have
crashed over the years. According to all early reports,
however, there
was no such wreckage to be seen anywhere near the alleged crash site of
Flight
93.
An early report from the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette, for example, contained several eyewitness accounts, all
of which
noted a curious lack of recognizable aircraft debris. Co-workers Homer
Barron
and Jeff Phillips, for example, "drove to the crash scene and found a
smoky hole in the ground ... 'It didn't look like a plane crash because
there
was nothing that looked like a plane,' Barron said. 'There was one part
of a
seat burning up there,' Phillips said. 'That was something you could
recognize.' 'I never seen anything like it,' Barron said. 'Just a big
pile of
charcoal.'" ("The Crash in Somerset: 'It Dropped Out of the
Clouds,'" Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 12, 2001)
Nina Lensbouer, identified as a former
volunteer
firefighter, told reporters that her "instinct was to run toward it, to
try to help. But I got there and there was nothing, nothing there but
charcoal.
Instantly, it was charcoal." Similarly, "Charles Sturtz, 53, who
lives just over the hillside from the crash site, said a fireball 200
feet high
shot up over the hill. He got to the crash scene even before the
firefighters.
'The biggest pieces you could find were probably four feet [long]. Most
of the
pieces you could put into a shopping bag." ("The Crash in Somerset:
'It Dropped Out of the Clouds,'" Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 12,
2001)
Mark Stahl, digital camera in hand, was
one of
the first witnesses on the scene, just minutes after the alleged crash.
He had
an unobstructed view of the crater and surrounding area, which he took
the time
to photograph. Nevertheless, he had no clue that he was photographing
the site
of a purported plane crash: “He didn’t realize a passenger jet had
crashed
until a firefighter told him.” Ron Delano was another early arrival at
the
scene; “He was stunned by what he saw. ‘If they hadn’t told us a plane
had
wrecked, you wouldn’t have known.’” (“Homes, Neighbors Rattled by
Crash,”
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, September 12, 2001)
Area resident Eric Peterson, according
to the
Post-Gazette, "rushed to the scene on an all-terrain vehicle and when
he
arrived he saw bits and pieces of an airliner spread over a large area
of an
abandoned strip-mine in Stonycreek Township. 'There was a crater in the
ground
that was really burning,' Peterson said. Strewn about were pieces of
clothing
hanging from trees and parts of the Boeing 757, but nothing bigger than
a
couple of feet long, he said. Many of the items were burning. Peterson
said he
saw no bodies, but there also was no sign of life." (Jonathan D. Silver
"Day of Terror: Outside Tiny Shanksville, a Fourth Deadly Stroke,"
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 12, 2001)
In a similar vein, a Reuters wire
report held
that the impact “was so powerful that police investigators who cordoned
off the
site as a crime scene on Tuesday reported finding no pieces of debris
larger
than a phone book, and no bodies.” (“Passengers on Flight 93 May Have
Struggled
With Hijackers,” Reuters, September 12, 2001)
Remarkably enough, the government's own
official
photographs of the crime scene, introduced as evidence during the
hopelessly
tainted Zacarias Moussaoui trial earlier this year, confirm those early
reports. The three aerial photographs below (which can be enlarged for
a better
look) reveal that not only was there no significant wreckage visible in
the
supposed impact crater, there was no significant wreckage visible
anywhere
near the crater!
According to the official 9-11
narrative, the
lack of visible wreckage is attributable to the fact that the plane is
actually
buried in the ground beneath the crater. Flight 93 impacted with such
tremendous force, we are told, that virtually the entire aircraft
burrowed into
the soil. As we all know, September 11, 2001 was ‘the day that
everything
changed.’ Enormous office buildings, for example, suddenly and
inexplicably
acquired the ability to drop into their own footprints with no
assistance from
demolitions experts. Five-story masonry buildings suddenly acquired the
extraordinary ability to swallow enormous airliners without leaving
behind an
appropriate entry hole or any trace of aircraft wreckage. And now we
find,
perhaps most amazingly of all, that the ground itself somehow
also
acquired the ability to swallow commercial aircraft. On that fateful
day, and
only on that day, a 100+ ton airplane measuring 155 feet long, 125 feet
wide
and 45 feet tall disappeared into a crater measuring, at most, “about
30 to 40
feet long, 15 to 20 feet wide and 18 feet deep." ("Crews Begin
Investigation Into Somerset County 757 Crash,"
ThePittsburghChannel.com,
September 11, 2001)
Any skilled magician, I suppose, could
make an
airplane disappear into a building. But making an entire airplane
disappear
without a trace in an empty field? I have to admit that that is pretty
impressive.
The patch of soil
that
purportedly swallowed United Airlines Flight 93 seems to have had some
peculiar
physical properties. The photo to the left purports to show one of the
aircraft's engines being excavated from the alleged impact crater
(other parts
were allegedly dug out of the ridiculously small hole as well,
including the
flight recorder, which reportedly burrowed to a depth of about
twenty-five
feet). Curiously though, several published reports noted that a
"section
of engine weighing a ton was located 2,000 yards - over a mile - from
the crash
site." (Richard Wallace "What Did Happen to Flight 93?" Daily
Mirror, September 12, 2002; some reports place the engine section at
about a
third that distance from the 'crash' site, or vaguely specify that it
was found
a "considerable distance" from the alleged impact crater.)
So what appears to
have happened
in Shanksville, as best I can determine, is that Flight 93 impacted
what MSNBC
referred to as "the loose, porous soil of a deserted strip mine" in
such a way that the engine on one side of the aircraft burrowed deeply
into the
ground, while the engine on the other side of the plane, encountering
the very
same loose soil at the exact same moment in time, snapped off and
bounced
thousands of feet away! If this had happened on any other day, it would
obviously beg for a rational explanation. But since it happened on
September
11, 2001, and since we have already established that the physical
properties of
the world were in a strange state of flux that day, no further
explanation is
necessary.
If a nose-diving
plane did in
fact impact relatively soft earth at some 580 miles per hour, as
the Warren
9/11 Commission has claimed, then it is conceivable that a portion
of the
plane could have burrowed into the ground – but certainly not the
entire
155-foot-long aircraft. A substantial portion of the plane would surely
have
been visible jutting out of the alleged impact crater. And if the
entire
aircraft did somehow plow into the ground, then wouldn’t the buried
wreckage
consist of a 100-ton compacted mass of metal, fabric and human tissue,
rather
than a few scattered bits and pieces of the airplane?
If you’re like me,
you’re
probably wondering right about now what exactly happened to the rest of
the
airplane. If none of it was visible outside the crater, and only a few
pieces
were allegedly exhumed from within the crater, then what became of the
rest of
the plane, along with all its passengers, luggage and cargo?
As it turns out, much of
the wreckage was distributed, in tiny bits and pieces, over a debris
field of
roughly 15 square miles. As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported,
"United
Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757-200 en route from New Jersey to San
Francisco,
fell from the sky near Shanksville at 10:06 a.m., about two hours after
it took
off, leaving a trail of debris five miles long." That trail of
debris, it turns out, was later found to extend more than eight miles.
(Jonathan D. Silver "Day of Terror: Outside Tiny Shanksville, a Fourth
Deadly Stroke," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 12, 2001)
Under normal circumstances, an airplane
that
nose-dives into the ground and burrows into the soil will not leave a
miles-long trail of debris, though an airplane that blows apart in the
air
certainly will. Flight 93, of course, did not blow apart in the air, so
the
only explanation for the debris trail, once again, is the mysterious
break in
the time/space continuum that fateful day.
According to numerous published
reports, debris
from the aircraft was "found up to 8 miles from the crash site ...
Papers
and other light objects were carried aloft by the explosion after
impact of the
plane and they were transported by a nine-knot wind." (Bill Heltzel and
Tom Gibb "2 Planes Had No Part in Crash of Flight 93," Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette,
September 16, 2001) According to my crude calculations, that means that
debris
allegedly ejected from the plane when it impacted the ground somehow
remained
aloft for nearly a full hour as it drifted for miles across the local
terrain.
And this was not, it should be noted, relatively flat terrain that the
debris
allegedly drifted over. To the contrary, for the detritus to travel the
length
of the debris field, from the alleged crash site to the town of New
Baltimore,
it would have had to pass – are you ready for this? – up and over a
mountain
ridge! "Authorities," understandably enough, "initially insisted
crash debris could not have traveled over a mountain ridge more than
eight
miles from the crash." Those same authorities, however, later came to
their senses and insisted that such a scenario was "not only plausible,
but probable." (Debra Erdly "Crash Debris Found 8 Miles Away,"
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, September 14, 2001)
Much of the debris seems to have landed
on the
Indian Lake area, roughly two to three miles from the purported 'crash'
site.
And this was not isolated bits and pieces of debris; what "workers at
Indian Lake Marina said they saw [was] a cloud of confetti-like
debris
descend on the lake and nearby farms." (Tom Gibb, James O'Toole and
Cindi
Lash "Investigators Locate 'Black Box' From Flight 93; Widen Search
Area
in Somerset Crash," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 13, 2001)
Witness
Carol Delasko also spoke of what "looked like confetti raining down all
over the air above the lake." (Debra Erdly "Crash Debris Found 8
Miles Away," Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, September 13, 2001)
These witness accounts would seem to
indicate
that there had been some kind of explosive event in the air above
Indian Lake,
rather than on the ground a couple miles away. At least one early
report quoted
witnesses who claimed that an airplane had literally broken apart in
the air
over the Indian Lake area: "investigators also are combing a second
crime
scene in nearby Indian Lake, where residents reported hearing the
doomed
jetliner flying over at a low altitude before 'falling apart on their
homes.'
'People were calling in and reporting pieces of plane falling,' a state
trooper
said. Jim Stop reported he had seen the hijacked Boeing 757 fly over
him as he
was fishing. He said he could see parts falling from the plane." (Robin
Acton and Richard Gazarik "Human Remains Recovered in Somerset,"
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, September 13, 2001)
The ‘gopher plane’ theory, alas,
provides no
explanation for these reports and witness accounts. How is it possible,
after
all, for an airplane to hit the ground intact and burrow underground,
and yet
simultaneously break up into thousands of pieces that come to rest up
to eight
miles away, on the other side of a mountain ridge? And while we ponder
that
question, here is another one that begs for an answer: what became of
the
aircraft's considerable load of aviation fuel (given that Flight 93 was
fueled
for a cross-country flight)?
Some of that fuel purportedly burned up
in a
fireball that arose from the crash site, but if the plane did in fact
burrow
into the ground, then logic dictates that a substantial amount of the
fuel load
would have been injected into the loose soil. The reality, however, is
that no
trace of jet fuel was found in any of the soil excavated from the
crater and
the surrounding area: "By today, Environmental Resources Management
Inc. of Pine, a contractor hired by United, expects to return 5,000 to
6,000
cubic yards of soil to the 50-foot hole dug around the crater left by
the
crash. The soil is being tested for jet fuel, and at least three test
wells
have been sunk to monitor groundwater, since three nearby homes are
served by
wells, Betsy Mallison, a state Department of Environmental Protection
spokeswoman, said. So far, no contamination has been discovered, she
said." (Tom Gibb "Latest Somerset Crash Site Findings May Yield Added
IDs," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, October 3, 2001)
Also
missing from the crater
was any sign of the forty-four humans reportedly on board the plane.
You would
think that, at the very least, the remains of the flight crew and/or
hijackers,
who would have been in the nose of the aircraft when it plowed into the
ground,
would have ended up at the bottom of the Shanksville crater. But there
is no
indication from any local or national reports that any human
remains
were exhumed from that crater. As the Washington Post reported,
“Immediately
after the crash, the seeming absence of human remains led the mind of
coroner
Wally Miller to a surreal fantasy: that Flight 93 had somehow stopped
in
mid-flight and discharged all of its passengers before crashing. ‘There
was
just nothing visible,’ he says. ‘It was the strangest feeling.’ It
would be
nearly an hour before Miller came upon his first trace of a body part."
(Peter
Perl “Hallowed Ground,” Washington Post, May 12, 2002)
Perhaps when the
plane
stopped to discharge its passengers, it also jettisoned its load of
fuel.
Despite extensive
recovery
efforts, nothing resembling a human corpse was ever found, officially
at least,
anywhere within the eight-mile-long debris field. According to the
official
storyline, all that was recovered, “apart from, here and there, a
finger, a toe
or a tooth … were small pieces of tissue and bone.” (John Carlin
"Unanswered Questions: The Mystery of Flight 93," The Independent,
August 13, 2002) The largest piece of human tissue reportedly found was
“a
section of spine eight inches long.” (Richard Wallace "What Did Happen
to
Flight 93?" Daily Mirror, September 12, 2002) No torsos, no arms, no
legs,
no hands, no feet – not even a head, or at least a portion of one of
the
forty-four skulls.
To briefly recap
then, what
we have learned thus far is that United Airlines Flight 93, as per the
official
narrative, nose-dived into some former strip-mining land in rural
Pennsylvania.
Encountering loosely packed soil, the entire aircraft, or at least a
significant portion of it, slipped rather effortlessly into the ground.
A small
portion of the aircraft, however – the portion containing all the
passengers
and flight crew, and all the luggage, and all the cargo, and all the
fuel, and
the vast majority of the airplane itself – exploded on the ground and
was
reduced to scraps that soared over mountaintops to reach destinations
up to
eight miles away.
Such a scenario,
while
laughably absurd, is no harder to believe than most of the other claims
that we
have been fed concerning the events of September 11, so there is little
reason
to suspect that we have been lied to about the fate of Flight 93. But
just to
be sure, we should probably look a little deeper into the ‘crash’ of
Flight 93.
Thank you for your fine report. When you combine your report with the phony cell phone calls, the story appears bogus and they just built a museum to flight #93 but no aircraft parts there. Were body parts ever found or whole bodies?
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