There is little if any hard evidence, available to the public, that American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 flying from Washington Dulles International Airport, crashed into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
At the Dept. of Defense (DoD) News Briefing on September 12, 2001, American Airlines, Flight 77, Boeing, Dulles, and passengers were not mentioned.
Standing in front of the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Jamie McIntyre, CNN's senior Pentagon correspondent since November 1992, reported:
From my close up inspection there's no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon. . . . . The only pieces left that you can see are small enough that you could pick up in your hand. There are no large tail sections, wing sections, fuselage—nothing like that anywhere around which would indicate that the entire plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon. . . . It wasn't till about 45 minutes later . . . that all of the floors collapsed.
Arlington County Fire Chief Ed Plaugher, incident commander at the Pentagon on September 11, corroborates Jamie McIntyre's report. At the September 12, 2001, DoD briefing, when asked: "Is there anything left of the aircraft at all?" said: "there are some small pieces of aircraft … there's no fuselage sections and that sort of thing."
Victoria Clarke, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs—"presenter" of the DoD briefing, did not contradict Plaugher. National news media failed to follow up on Plaugher's comment.
Another question put to Chief Plaugher at the September 12, 2001, DoD briefing was:
Chief, there are small pieces of the plane virtually all over, out over the highway, tiny pieces. Would you say the plane exploded, virtually exploded on impact due to the fuel?"
"I'd rather not comment on that," replied Plaugher.
How did "small pieces of the plane" end up "out over the highway" when the plane is reported to have disintegrated inside the Pentagon after it crossed the highway? If it disintegrated outside the Pentagon why is there nothing that looks like a Boeing 757 on the Pentagon lawn? If it disintegrated either inside or outside the Pentagon what caused the hole in C-ring?
When asked, "Have you removed the bodies?" Chief Plaugher replied, "We have no information on any type of casualty or body counts at this time."
Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who from her fifth-floor, B-ring office at the Pentagon, witnessed "an unforgettable fireball, 20 to 30 feet in diameter," writes in 9/11 and American Empire: Muslims, Jews, and Christians Speak Out, that she was called for stretcher duty as she and others
stared in disbelief at a smoking gash in the Pentagon . . . But no person or thing emerged from that side of the Pentagon. We heard that survivors and injured folks were being rescued from the inside, . . . and out the River exit into ambulances.
Kwiatkowski continues that there was
a strange absence of airliner debris, there was no sign of the kind of damage to the Pentagon structure one would expect from the impact of a large airliner. This visible evidence or lack thereof may also have been apparent to the secretary of defense, who in an unfortunate slip of the tongue referred to the aircraft that slammed into the Pentagon as a 'missile'.
Barbara Honegger, military affairs journalist and former White House policy analyst, writes NORAD's
Gen. Larry Arnold, revealed that he ordered one of his jets to fly down low over the Pentagon shortly after the attack that morning, and that his pilot reported back that there was no evidence that a plane had hit the building.
Questions about what hit the Pentagon on September 11, continued to be raised at the Dept. of Defense News Briefing on September 15, 2001.
Honegger adds an intriguing statement:
Multiple standard-issue, battery-operated wall clocks . . . stopped between 9:31 and 9:32-1/2 on September 11. . . .
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