24 February 2005: Another Pentagon distraction

The latest escapade in the frantic effort to "keep the faith" amongst the Pentagon no-plane cult is the announcement of a great new "smoking gun". It turns out that a key figure in the Gannon scandal, GOPUSA.com president Bobby Eberle, who was a key White House go-between, testified that he witnessed the Pentagon strike on 9/11. Well, there's only one logical conclusion that anyone could draw from this -- that all of the witness testimony supporting the crash of a 757 airliner into the Pentagon is all part of a vast fraudulent conspiracy masterminded by Bobby Eberle! As the Xymphora blog tells it, with breathless drama:

"Forget about Gannon. The only reason he has been interesting is the purient part of his story. I'm reading more and more about how everyone in the White House, up to and including Rove and Bush, is as gay as Paul Lynde, which just reflects the deep homophobia in the coverage of Gannongate. The gay aspect is a red herring. The deep politics aspect of the story is the connection between the White House, conservative e-mail harvester and fundraiser Bruce W. Eberle, and GOPUSA President Bobby Eberle. Bobby Eberle's eyewitness testimony of Flight 77 crashing into the Pentagon is the big break we've been waiting for, the first tiny window into the American conspiracy behind 9-11."
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2005/02/gannongate-and-9-11.html

In an earlier entry, Xymphora said:

"I have speculated that at least some of the witnesses to the crash of Flight 77 into the Pentagon were ringers planted by the conspirators. What are the chances that Eberle, whose name has come up prominently in Gannongate, was an eyewitness to the crash? Those who are so certain that the testimony of eyewitnesses means that Flight 77 must have crashed into the Pentagon, despite the enormous amount of physical evidence to the contrary, just might want to give their heads a shake and rethink things. If the evidence of the crash of Flight 77 is so goddamn clear, why did the operators in the Republican Party feel the need to gild the lily?"

Well, speaking for myself, these assertions does give my head a shake. A shake of disbelief and disgust. Where does one start? By noting, first, that the claims of "enormous amount of physical evidence to the contrary" to a 757 crash has been profoundly challenged, something that is not ignored by those who have a little more respect for honest debate. Jim Hoffman has shown that the arguments against a 757 crash have been littered with fallacies and gross scientific errors. A number of other skeptics, including myself, have pointed out misrepresentations in the popular "Pentagon Strike" video and "In Plane Site" (I also have to point out that these misrepresentations were accepted and promoted by virtually all of the Pentagon no-plane crowd for some time, and disavowed only by a few among them -- and only AFTER critiques had made support for these works of disinfo conspicuously untenable). So the fallacy of construction here is the backhanded attempt to claim that there is already a conflict between witnesses and physical evidence, when in fact a careful reconsideration of the evidence reconciles both. The insinuation being made in many quarters that a pro-757 position relies overwhelmingly on witness testimony, and that there is an either-or choice between physical evidence and witnesses, is false -- and as I increasingly suspect, deliberately misleading. Or at least self-deceptive.

Furthermore, there is no basis to claim that Eberle's testimony represented an effort to "gild the lily". There is already a large body of witnesses that is consistent, and many of them had already been interviewed on the day of 9/11. So Eberle was not the "star witness", nor was he the first when he published his testimony on the web the next day. Now, I wouldn't be surprised if a character like Eberle could have been lying about having been there for the purposes of drawing attention to himself and serving his political ambitions. He could have cobbled together his story based on what was being said by other witnesses who were already being interviewed on the spot and broadcast on 9/11. But this speculation is beside the point. What if he actually was there? If one is going to impune the Pentagon witness testimony, it has to be all-or-nothing, not just cherry-picking for only those witnesses that are most convenient for drumming up suspicion. Only one really substantive attempt has been made in this regard, which is a piece by Jerry Russell and Rick Stanley, "Eyewitnesses and the Plane Bomb Theory":

http://www.911-strike.com/PlaneBomb.htm

I consider this attempt to be a resounding failure.

It is an attempt to show that Pentagon witness accounts were forged, either through plants, brainwashing, etc. Despite strident and boldly sweeping claims in the summary of findings, the actual analysis of evidence fails to come anywhere close to justifying this boldness, and in fact is riddled with extreme bias, subjectivity, ad hominem ridicule, and the rather serious fallacy of interpreting basically any and all discrepancies and errors -- which are inevitable in any large body of witness testimony like this, especially concerning a vivid and traumatic experience -- as de facto evidence for deceipt or manipulation. Previously, I had started on a point-by-point critique of this piece which reached about five pages and growing, but shelved it after I came to my senses and realized that there is no justification to expend a huge amount of effort rebutting something that doesn't reach the bar in the first place. Rejecting the witness requires a slam-dunk, absolutely devastating proof. Sorry, no cigar in this case. Instead of a devastating proof, what we get, among other things, is a bizarre attempt to claim that the preponderance of military personnel, government employees, news reporters, etc., amongst the witnesses, "proves" that the testimony was slanted by agents, plants, etc. Lordy, Lordy.

It wouldn't come to mind that this was Washington, D.C., and it was at the goddamn Pentagon after all, with the goddamn Naval Annex across the street to boot. And that news reporters might be relatively over-represented as witnesses in the press because, well, that's where they work. And that civilian witnesses would be relatively under-represented because they were the ones who left the scene early and were not as available to the press as Pentagon personnel who were still on duty at the scene. In fact, that a number of witnesses who were on the road soon left the scene was specifically noted by witness Mike Walter, who was one of the few who made a deliberate choice to stay at the scene in order to give his testimony to the press.

What really disturbs me about this cheapshot undermining of the witnesses as a whole by Karl Rove-style guilt-by-association tactics and suspicion-mongering, is not only that it is being done so gratuitously in lieu of a really slam-dunk, devastating proof, but also that it is, or will be percieved to be, an all-out attack on the victims themselves. Some of these Pentagon witnesses were hurt, and many more were psychologically traumatized. Rushing into ill-supported hatchet jobs for no other purpose than to keep the unnecessary no-plane speculation alive just helps to smear 9/11 Truth activists as hateful maniacs. Maybe that's the idea.

The fact is that the whole body of witnesses continues to hold up in supporting the crash of a 757:
http://home.planet.nl/~reijd050/pentahole_dimensions_est.htm#8

If there's going to be a wholesale deprecation of the witness testimony, it had better be based on a hell of a lot more than opportunistic innuendo. And it had better be truly justified by indisputable anomalies in the physical evidence too, which is the even greater issue.

Incidentally, I'm quite impressed with the uncommon graciousness showed by Mike Walter in the face of agenda-driven slanders. Here are his comments from an interview by Russell Pickering (pentagonresearch.com):

"I know a lot of people have different theories about what happened that day. I donít have any theories, I just have two eyes! I saw what I saw. It was an American Airlines jet that slammed into the Pentagon that day. I have nothing to gain or lose by saying this. The truth is the truth, thatís what happened. The reason why Iíve consented to this interview is because Iíve learned a lot as a result of that day. Iím a guy who grew up reading books, newspapers, and magazines. Iím a guy who watches television and listens to the radio. Those are the mediums that Iím comfortable with and understand. Iíve written for radio, TV, newspapers and even contributed to two books. Having said that, I understand the power of the web, and did before 9-11. But it really hit home afterwards. So many websites have critiqued my words, and added meaning to statements I made by taking them out of context. Some how Iíve been trapped on the World Wide Web and my words have been used to promote this theory or that. Iíve been criticized and critiqued. Iím not sure what the theory will be on this website, in fact I donít really care what it is. All I know is someone was kind enough to ask me to answer their questions instead of just jumping to conclusions, and for that I thank you. I know people tend to gravitate towards conspiracy theories, I canít stop them. People will believe what they want to believe, but I know what I saw that day."

These are some of the essential Pentagon research sites which critique the no-757 obsession in great detail,

http://www.pentagonresearch.com/ (this new site is a must-read. one of the best photo collection, and a balanced, thoughtful approach).
http://www.911review.com/errors/pentagon/index.html
http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/pentagontrap.html
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/jpdesm/pentagon/pages-en/pentcrash.html

All of the above sites also to some extent or another touch upon the superior "plane bomb" hypothesis (or a variation, plane + explosives in the building), which much more elegantly explains some of the genuinely substantiated anomalies at the Pentagon without requiring that the witnesses by liars or zombies, such as the very anomalous reports from several relevantly experienced Pentagon personnel who reported smelling cordite or explosives at the scene, in addition to possibly anomalous damage and reports of apparent severe blast effects and such (but hey, if we can dispense with witnesses on the shallowest of pretexts, I guess we can also dispense with this very interesting smoking gun. Everyone in uniform is an "insider" who can be casually discredited as anyone sees fit, right? Now who benefits from that? And who benefits from alleged "911 activists" insisting on "theories" that require assuming that everyone in uniform -- even those who aren't of high rank, as is the case with many of these Pentagon witnesses -- can be seen automatically and reflexively as suspects in big elite conspiracies, at a time when there are many credible reports of intense behind-the-scenes opposition amongst the mid- and lower-ranks of the officer corps against the White House policies being imposed by the Pentagon civilian leadership? Now who benefits here? And, since the cyclical rehabilitation of pet theories for the sake of entrenched egos and over-leveraged prestige has required rejecting virtually the very concept of eyewitnesses, is it safe now to wave away all those people who said they saw a missile hit Flight 800, and so on? It's also important to note that these speculations of mass witness tampering require the assumption of an enormous and delicately complex conspiracy involving many more government personnel as deep insiders than would otherwise be necessary. But the image of huge, sprawling, and arbitrarily complex conspiracies is exactly what debunkers like David Corn cite in order to claim that a 9/11 inside job could never happen and that 9/11 skeptics are out of bounds. Again, who benefits?)

Those who have some time to spare might like to read this witness compilation by Eric Bart, which I believe is the most extensive available, and decide whether one can connect all of them to a conspiracy supposedly orchestrated by Bobby Eberle:
http://911research.wtc7.net/pentagon/evidence/witnesses/bart.html

A few evidence points:

Blunt force impact damage to the Pentagon exterior:
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/jpdesm/pentagon/pages-en/dam-front.html

How does one account for the fact that this damage is too broad and extensive to have been caused by a small plane or missile? If there was no aircraft at all and only an explosive demolition, then why is there impact damage at all? As Desmoulins has pointed out, the damage to the building actually most strongly DISPROVES the claim of a plane smaller than a 757!

Here's an analysis of the entry hole dimensions:
http://home.planet.nl/~reijd050/pentahole_dimensions_est.htm#1

The lamp poles. No one has come up with a better explanation for what caused these to be knocked down, other than by a 757-sized plane:
http://www.pentagonresearch.com/lamps.html
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/jpdesm/pentagon/pages-en/trj-lpoles.html

(Contrary to uninformed and off-the-cuff claims, lamp poles would not do much to obstruct and airliner or knock it off course. They are quite light (I found some specs online for 12-meter poles weighing less than 500 lbs) and are designed to be easily knocked off their mountings, as a safety feature in vehicle collisions. They also get knocked over fairly often in hurricanes. To see just how little it takes to topple a light pole, here's a government crash test with a truck collision at 35kph, if anyone's interested: http://ntl.bts.gov/DOCS/98s003/index.htm)

Total debunking of the claim that the jet engine part photographed at the Pentagon does not match a 757-type engine (notably claimed by Karl Schwarz):
http://www.pentagonresearch.com/079.html

Why a "plane bomb", or extra explosives? I think that the existence of explosives would point to some agenda to cause extra damage inside the building. I don't think it would just be about muddling the evidence or creating disinfo. There would be some purpose behind creating a certain reliable damage pattern -- this is the whole point of explosives. That's what has been missing from the debate. The day before 9/11, Rumsfeld finally admitted to the press that two trillion dollars had gone missing from the Pentagon's books. Now, how long did this scandal stay in the headlines? What personnel, offices, and/or records were located in the destroyed section which might have related to this? These are the sort of questions that I find interesting, not the obsession with what did or did not hit the building. The evidence for explosives can be considered without getting mired down in that sideline, since it could fit just as well with 757 or no-757, so its just a moot point. It could be that the Pentagon strike was more than just for the purpose of fake terror -- it may have been like Oklahoma City, where a depository of sensitive federal records in the Murrah Building (said to connect to Iran-contra, Iraqgate, or other similar subjects) was conveniently destroyed in a kill-two-birds operation. This is one reason I'm critical of the Pentagon no-plane quagmire, because I think it distracts from the truly interesting possible leads.

But even some of the no-plane advocates have contributed some helpful ideas in this regard, on their off hours. Some speculations by Dick Eastman on the possibility that dissident factions in the military may have been targeted by the Pentagon op:

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/jpdesm/pentagon/pages-en/npp-east.html

I'm not qualified to judge the specifics of this kind of speculation, but I think that this sort of inquiry represents a much more fruitful direction of effort in Pentagon 9/11 investigation.

And, even if at some point the apparent anomalies pointing to explosives could be explained away, there are still many anomalies pointing to "inside job" that don't require a no-757 claim, as has so often been pointed out by many observers. Illogical approach path, illogical choice of target area, impossible piloting skills for alleged hijacker Hani Hanjour, and so on.

Finally, I have to recommend in particular reading the section, "An Opening for Attacker" from Jim Hoffman's "Pentagon Trap", to counter the contention that the mass media are afraid of and trying to suppress Pentagon no-plane theories. On the contrary, with just a few examples (there are many more), Hoffman shows that media debunkers have shown maximum enthusiasm for portraying this as the heart and soul of 9/11 skepticism and making it the centerpiece of practically every hit piece. Now why is that?