Eyewitness Accounts Conflict
Over Pentagon Crash
By Thierry Meyssan
www.asile.org
5-21-2
Many
eyewitnesses saw some kind of craft
hit the Pentagon. Was what they saw a Boeing 757-200 or was it a missile?
Eyewitnesses confirm having seen something fly into the Pentagon. However,
their accounts differ largely when it comes to describing the nature of
the aircraft in more detail.
"We heard what sounded like a missile"
Several
eyewitnesses testify to having seen a large airliner. An anonymous
woman interviewed by CNN on September 11 confirms having seen "a
commercial plane". Army Captain Lincoln Liebner told the AFP: "I
saw this large American Airlines passenger jet coming in fast and low."
Since our article Pentagon: Hunt the Boeing! And test your perceptions!
went on-line, many other eyewitnesses have come forward on the internet.
However,
other accounts reported in the American press, immediately after
the event, speak of a smaller aircraft that, in flight, was very unlike
a commercial airliner, and even resembled a winged missile.
The aircraft "appeared to hold about 8 to 12 people" and "sounded
like the high-pitched squeal of a fighter", explained Steve Patterson
to the Washington Post, on September 11.
"That may have been the plane. I have never seen one on that (flight)
pattern."
Tom
Seibert, a network engineer at the Pentagon, told the Washington Post:
"We heard what sounded like a missile, then we heard a loud boom."
"There wasn't anything in the air, except for one airplane, and it
looked like it was loitering over Georgetown, in a high, left-hand bank",
explained U.S. Army Brigadier General Clyde Vaughn, director of military
support, to CNN. "That may have been the plane. I have never seen
one on that (flight) pattern."
"It was like a cruise missile with wings"
Just
after the attack, Mike Walter, journalist at USA Today, explained
to the Washington Post and CNN that "it was like a cruise missile
with wings."
Danielle O'Brien, air controller at Washington's Dulles airport, from
where American Airways flight 77 took off, explained that the craft that
hit the Pentagon had the speed and maneuverability of a "military
plane". Her account was published on the ABCnews site and used on
the National Air Traffic Controllers Association site. We reproduce an
extract of it here:
"I noticed the aircraft. It was an unidentified plane to the southwest
of Dulles, moving at a very high rate of speed - I had literally a blip
and nothing more."
O'Brien asked the controller sitting next to her, Tom Howell, if he saw
it too.
"I said, 'Oh my God, it looks like he's headed to the White House',"
recalls Howell. "I was yelling 'We've got a target headed right for
the White House!' At a speed of about 500 miles an hour, the plane was
headed straight for what is known as P-56, protected air space 56, which
covers the White House and the Capitol."
"The speed, the maneuverability, the way that he turned, we all thought
in the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that
that was a military plane," says O'Brien. "You don't fly a 757
in that manner. It's unsafe."
"The speed, the maneuverability, the way that he turned, we all thought
in the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that
that was a military plane."
"The plane was between 12 and 14 miles away" says O'Brien, "and
it was just a countdown. Ten miles west. Nine miles west... Our supervisor
picked up our line to the White House and started relaying to them the
information, [that] we have an unidentified very fast-moving aircraft
inbound toward your vicinity, 8 miles west."
Vice
President Cheney was rushed to a special basement bunker. White
House staff members were told to run away from the building
"And it went 'six, five, four', And I had it in my mouth to say,
three, and all of a sudden the plane turned away. In the room, it was
almost a sense of relief. This must be a fighter. This must be one of
our guys sent in, scrambled to patrol our capital, and to protect our
president, and we sat back in our chairs and breathed for just a second,"
says O'Brien.
But the plane continued to turn right until it had made a 360-degree maneuver.
"We lost radar contact with that aircraft. And we waited. And we
waited. And your heart is just beating out of your chest waiting to hear
what's happened," says O'Brien. "And then the Washington National
[Airport] controllers came over our speakers in our room and said, 'Dulles,
hold all of our inbound traffic. The Pentagon's been hit.'"
On
September 11, the State Department for Defense confirmed that a Boeing
757 had crashed on the Pentagon. Eyewitnesses indeed talk of a
flying craft. But there is no absolute consensus that this craft was an
airliner. Maybe the official version of events subsequently influenced
eyewitness accounts. Two French newspapers, Le Monde and LibÈration,
have both published counter-arguments to our own. Both cite Steve Patterson
and Mike Walter to prove how wrong we were to doubt the Boeing 757 hypothesis.
Such accounts, those first reported in the American press, should, however,
open up new lines of enquiry. The first said that the aircraft 'appeared
to hold about 8 to 12 people' and 'sounded like the high-pitched squeal
of a fighter.' The second said that it 'was like a cruise missile with
wings'...
This begs the question: What evidence is available to determine the nature
of the craft? Please read the article that follows:
