Excellent paper, Kevin. (Edit: My bad; the paper was written by Frank Legge.)

The timing of the paper seems to coincide with the movement's prominent scholars' endorsement of CIT's new video "National Security Alert," which provides an airtight case for the north side approach. Perhaps as a way of smoothing things out between the "camps."

I believe that the small amount of undeniable 757 wreckage is indeed planted. If I were Rumsfeld and I had a budget of $300 trillion (facebook, Mr. Gold) I could easily manage to plant some debris there. I'm glad, Kevin, that you included this as a very valid possibility in your paper, rather than those who defend the official flight path approach with "You guys harm the movement by claiming planted light poles, planted airplane wreckage, and a flyover. How embarrassing."

As far as competing eyewitnesses about the flight path:

Those who defend the South Side Approach have lately been very fond of citing Father McGraw.

It's right there. He didn't just hear it. He watched it hit the building. - jimd3100

In fact, here's a witness by CIT whose testimony supports a SOUTH path that they completely omit from their claims: - Arabesque

I'm really beginning to conclude that CIT's detractors (south side defenders) bank on the hope that fence sitters will take them at their word without clicking on the links (or taking the time to watch the vids).

I watched this video. His testimony is extremely suspect, so much so as to not be believable.

Here is his testimony starting at 5:18 on that video. Tell me if this matches the photographic evidence:

"I will say that I have a memory, um, which was you might say was revived after the fact, of the plane bouncing on the lawn before it went into the building. That basically, uh, came to me, um, after hearing of other witness testimony, from other witnesses that were in the area. I heard that other witnesses had supported that the plane had bounced, you know, had hit the ground before it crashed into the building. When I heard that, it kind of, sort of, provoked something, or um, I thought, 'Yes, that's the image I remember having."

There is no damage on the lawn which would indicate that the plane bounced.

In the last thread on CIT's work, a couple weeks ago, Snowcrash and I nailed Victronix on two similar misrepresentations which were easily exposed with a simple examination of the links she provided which they claimed refuted the north side approach.

And I have little doubt that DRG and the rest of them DID look at all sides of this debate and found many falsehoods and misrepresentations on the side of the south side / plane crash defenders.

Thanks Kevin. What an excellent opportunity for me to post this as the first comment on the thread, where it will receive the most views.

And I hope Justin and Orangatan are taking note.

"Many eye witnesses confirm this [official, south, flight] path." However, the author does not back up this contention with a list of these "many eye witnesses," nor does he quote them, nor does he bother to interview them on camera and independently verify their accounts.

I can name several other eye-witnesses whose accounts have been recorded and independently verified that place the plane they saw on a heading that is irreconcilable with the physical damage. Now, either all these witnesses are mistaken or they are lying or they are telling us exactly what they saw. If the latter, then the question "What Hit the Pentagon," is absurd because, obviously, nothing did. You can't have physical damage caused by one object on a very specific line of approach by another object traveling on a completely different line of approach. That is physically impossible. It is completely reasonable, therefore, to come to the conclusion that the physical damage was not caused by the witnessed aircraft at all, but was staged. Indeed, nothing should have hit the Pentagon nor could have without inside complicity. But I've yet to be shown convincing evidence that anything DID impact the Pentagon. Yes, I realize there is significant physical damage inside and out the Pentagon but the question being raised is what hit it? The author concludes, "The authorities could easily show us what hit the Pentagon but they do not." Right. They don't. Because they can't. The prime suspects have total opaque control over all the physical evidence. After all these years they've refused to provide us with wreckage positively identified as having come from Flight 77 and clearly documented to have been found within the Pentagon. In fact, via FOIA, they freely, openly and arrogantly admit that they don't have any such documentation because, "the identities of the aircraft used in the terrorist attacks on 9/11 were never in question."

Sounds like a rather lame Jedi mind trick to me.

And I agree that is unlikely no plane hit the Pentagon, as I've said and implied before. However, should the perpetrators have planted physical evidence, it's apparent that this is an extremely powerful thought stopper.

An interesting quote:

If explosives were used to destroy the plane you would not expect it to make a perfect impact
mark on the building, as happened at the towers, nor would it leave much in the way of large
easily recognized pieces.

The fact that we saw planes vanish into the WTC buildings and largely reduced to confetti tells us something about what to expect from planes impacting buildings in this manner. I believe no explosives are required: a specifically reinforced facade of a military building will not respond the way the steel facade of the WTC did, a strong facade designed to distribute heavy wind loads, and which has been compared to "mosquito netting". A commercial airplane versus the Pentagon's reinforced and strengthened concrete facade, on the other hand, is something else altogether, and results in a devastating loss for the airplane. This is one of the (apparently) best kept secrets of the Pentagon. 9/11 was a good test for the new blast resistance. Could it be possible that the Pentagon Building Performance Report merely represents experimental results for some perverted people in the military?

If the ground rules for the Pentagon discussion are honesty, then I see no problems in proceeding with the discussion. We should cease polarizing discussion into camps. I don't belong to either "camp", and I believe that this is the majority of the truth movement. There are contradictions between witness statements, government released data, and physical and forensic evidence, and these contradictions need to be resolved. I agree that if the discussion becomes too damaging, that we should stop:

Inferences from Contradictory Evidence
Much time has gone by since 9/11 and it would have been very easy for the authorities to
provide clear evidence to answer the question “What hit the Pentagon?” and set our minds at
rest. A useful perspective is to consider the attack on the Pentagon as if it were a stage play.
On the stage we, the audience, have seen actors playing parts in a mystery thriller, full of
convincing details. We speculate at length on the clues as we enjoy a glass of wine after the
show. Eventually we realize that the question of the identity of the criminal was deliberately
left unanswered. Next day the media critics give the author high praise for skillfully
tantalizing us right to the end.

The most logical inference from the Pentagon attack evidence is that the perpetrators of 9/11
knew that there would be many members of the public who would become suspicious for one
reason or another. The perpetrators realized that a powerful technique for weakening the
arguments of the skeptics would be to have them arguing against one another. Like a good
playwright they balanced contradictory evidence to keep the public guessing.

We shouldn't be willing actors in a stage play designed to subvert the movement. Clues for the government's involvement in designing this stage play are in the release of contradictory flight data. It's strange that the government would be willing to fatally conflict with its own story in this manner.

I do not have anything significant to add to this discussion in terms of further testimony, evidence, or other anamolies that would explain exactly what happened at the pentagon. What I would like to offer is a common ground for which we all can stand on without point fingers of accusations of being misinformed, mistaken, and/or worst of lying. Especially since this all about truth.

Before this discussion gets way out of hand about who is right or wrong, who is lying or not, and what effect that is having on our search for truth, I think we all need to step back from the table a moment and look at this at a higher level. I say this because as we get into the details, we simply just do not know period. That is the purpose of this entire blog site is that we DON'T know. What I do know is that when we go questioning other peoples motives and sincerity, the bad guys win.

This is purely speculation on my part, but there are many angles I think we lose track of when we get buried into the "how it was done". Again, we just don't know. Could the damage path evidence been planted? 5 light poles?I tend to doubt it. Staging this evidence seem highly risky to me when you consider the risks already being taken. Unless someone can prove that these light poles were not there prior, I believe the damage to authentic. What caused it, again, we don't know for sure. I read Jim Hoffman's take on the pentagon, which I highly regard his research, and he hasn't convinced me one iota either way whetherr it was flight 77 or a Boeing 767 at all. He left out many details in my mind. I look at the same pictures he does and my interpretations don't agree. So what to do?

When I read any theory about 9/11, I try to keep an open mind and I willing to look at their evidence at face value and try to see if it correlates with other evidence and make a determination on its plausiblity, not is reality. And I think we need to take that approach here. For example, the "no-planers" theory seemed quite bizarre to me (especially when I consider my own experience that day which I should share sometime.) However, I looked over their evidence thoroghly (i felt i did) and sure enough, it held no plausibility except on the old Scooby-Doo cartoons. I was waiting next for the unmasking of GWB only to find out he was really Karl Rove.

All kidding aside, I take each 9/11 theory with the caveat that is just a theory and does not necessarily represent the views of this site, movement, or any group there after. But we have the issue of, does this type of wild, loosely fact based speculation hurt the movement? No, I don't believe it does. What hurts this movement is the fundamental fact is that we KNOW we are being lied to and suspect remnants within our own government are behind it. That theory alone in this corporate culture today is wild enough to call us crazy no matter what the facts. Case in point, JFK. 75% of the populace, it is said, now believe it was a conspiracy. Are we any closer to the truth? Not at all because you will still be called crazy by the MSM. Did anyone see Chris Matthews earlier this week? There has been much ado lately about the "birther conspiracy" lately and he was masterful and "debunking it" by displaying Pres. Obama's birth certificate. Once debunked with this evidence (like it was hard), he conflates it and it,s believers to some psychological disorder and paints 9/11 and JFKers with the same brush. It is really quite appalling. And it didn't stop there, MSNBC did it again the next day during programming btwn the 4 and 5:00 hour. With that said, it seems we should not take to this road ourselves amongst competing theories as it tend to lose us allies and we need every person we can get, despite their personal theories, to speak out.

So where do go from here? I think we should work on common ground with facts we do know. The renovation on the pentagon was a long time in the planning and construction phases. Why? Why that part of the building too? Rumsfeld and other top brass offices were on the other side. Why reinforce that wing? Was there a plan to move the offices of top officials over there for more protection? Was it for the scenarios being practiced prior to 9/11 about planes crashing into the pentagon? It seems so, but that would be akin (in my estimation) to building a meteor defense system around the planet to protect us from the 1 in a billion chance one comes our way. Whatever happened that day, it seems to me that is was well planned to confuse witnesses. IMHO, I believe the planning for 9/11 began shortly after the first WTC bombing in '93. So we up against too much forsight, I think, to really come up with the actual how and why they did it. But in order to get a murder conviction retried, a laywer needs only to prove the original conclusion was likely false and seeks a retrial. He does not have to prove who actually did. He only needs a proponderance of the evidence to raise doubt in the verdict. Here is where I think we can score points.

I believe we have ample evidence in order to do this. Regarding the pentagon, the answer lies the 80+ videos being withheld. There must be further action through FOIA to get them released. I know it was tried once, and very little additional info was released. I think we can press that issue. I don't know what the citation is for withholding the videos, I am presuming national security. But that is simply not applicable. The deed is done, security was already breached. No new security information can be compromised at this junction. Possibly a national petition to demand their release, lets say a FOIA signed by thousands instead of one? Can they be sued for it? ACLU? I feel the answers lie in those tapes and instead of speculating on what did happen, we should find, fund, and support legal avenues to have them ALL released. There are only 2 organizations I give what little money I have left to give and they are NYC CAN & AE911Truth because they are demand driven and science driven which are our two best avenues. I know that many people have put a lot of stock in various theories of 9/11. some sincere, some not so sincere. Some valid, some not so valid. But not unlike the different religions, there is a common precipice on the truth movement and that is we all demand the truth regardless of its consequences, because without it, we will never rid ourselves fo the cancer that has spread through our country and destroying it. My greatest hope is to see a million man march on the whitehouse, demanding truth whatever it may be. Thanks to all who took the time to hear what I had to say and thank God for 9/11blogger for providing the forum for saying it.

Peace to all

dtg
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"We must all hang together or most assuredly we will all hang separately." - Benjamin Franklin
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I've been following the research of CIT, posted on their forums, and have found them to be very credible researchers surrounding the Pentagon attack. I'm not sure why Dr. Legge has virtually ignored CIT's work and cited two sources, one that is a basic character attack of the researchers. They are the only research team that has canvassed the Pentagon area to obtain eyewitness accounts and corroborate them. These accounts along with the FDR data prove without a doubt that a passenger plane did not hit the Pentagon.

1. 13+ people on camera and on a photograph show the path of the plane DOES NOT align with the official flight path. They aren't new to the area but long time employees familiar with their environment. These people include the the air traffic controller at the Pentagon on 9/11, Pentagon police officers, Arlington Cemetery workers, and one Pentagon employee who saw a large commercial airliner fly over the Pentagon immediately after the explosion. Other secondary testimony points to a fly over as well as one claimed she thought the plane flew over and crashed on the other side. All of these witnesses state the plane was slower than what the official story states as well. Those with the clearest view state the plane was banking to the right before the alleged impact. This banking takes its path over the South parking lot where it was observed by Roberts on the southside of the Pentagon. The timing of the impact and what Roberts viewed do not match the C-130 turbo prop plane. Roberts states, it was a commercial aircraft in his interview.

2. They interviewed the cab driver,Loyd England, who essentially blew the whistle surrounding the light poles and the pole that allegedly hit his cab and is central to the official flight path. It was a staged scene. This alone negates much of Dr. Legge's justification for stating that the overflight theory has met with "substantial opposition." Dr. Legge, why did you rely on this website, 5 http://911review.com/articles/ashley/pentacon_con.html which is essentially a character attack. For one example of the erroneous logic at the site, the author lists 200 some witnesses to a plane hitting the building and concludes this is why a fly over didn't happen. However, the author ignores the fact that no one has collaborated their accounts and accepts the media accounts as gospel, where as CIT did do exactly that with the witnesses they came across in and around the area with the numerous people who contradict the official flight path.

3. The 100's of witnesses who are expected to have seen a plane hit the Pentagon are simply lacking. Many inferred an impact without direct observation as stated above. But what about those expected to have seen a fly over? Plain and simple, situational blindness. That and the fact that flyovers are a common everyday occurrence in the region.

4. The second website claims that the flyover theory is not credible because it would be observed by 100's of people around the Pentagon. This of course can be explained as situational blindness. Those unfamiliar with this should research it. Unfortunately, Hoffman fails to collaborate those impact witnesses. Many have been collaborated only to discover they inferred impact and did not directly witnesses it. Doesn't the press tell amazing stories when sources aren't collaborated? Sort of like that WMD thing in Iraq,eh.
Hoffman completely relies on the fact that people would continue to view a low altitude plane flying towards an airport instead of a massive explosion and resulting smoke screen at the Pentagon. I would too I suppose if I were trying to ignore those that put the plane North of the Citgo and therefore unable to cause the damage path cone to and into the Pentagon as well as Rossevelt Roberts testimony.

The fact that CIT could predict the response of the mainstream media as well as those opposed to their research is very telling indeed.

Perhaps Dr. Legge you should re-examine the body of CIT's work, read and listen closely to the eyewitness statements, and decide for yourself instead of relying upon a character attack of a website that omits information and uses bad logic to attack the body of evidence.

CIT's research combined with Pilots for 9/11 Truth's examination of the flight data recorder, essentially prove the official story false, and that the plane did not impact the Pentagon.

Besides, two websites that I just showed contained several errors and poor logic do not amount to "substantial opposition" and why you would describe them as such is beyond me.

Visit http://dotheordersstillstand.blogspot.com/ for analysis and commentary on 9/11.

"What is quite certain is that this flight data and the official report are contradictory. One or other, or both, must be untrue. The flight data is just as likely to have been faked as the photos of the 757 components in the debris."

Unfortunately this statement is wrong. It appears that Legge has been fooled by this "meme" as have many others. It is very annoying to have to debunk this information again and again. So here we go... again:

1. There is more than one set of "data" and it is contradictory
2. The Black box data is NOT the same as the flight path animation
3. The animation is supposed to be a "reconstruction" of the black box data and yet it is not
4. Most critical of all, The Black box Data supports the official flight path.

If you don't believe me, I'll quote snowygrouch for you (Callum Douglas) who says:

"The raw FDR files do show the plane on the correct path as I make perfectly clear in all my public engagements. The question is...do you believe that seasoned professionals at the NTSB with decades of experience in crash re-construction FORGOT about magnetic declination! One of the most basic concepts in map reading and navigation..."
http://frustratingfraud.blogspot.com/2007/05/ntsb-animation-is-flat-wron...

That certainly is a relevant question. The fact that the animation does not match the black box data is certainly "interesting", but you cannot claim that this data is "right" and they "faked" the black box data--that would be incredibly absurd. It is possible that a mistake was made in the translation of the Black Box data. Now at the risk of confusing people further, there is ANOTHER animation, and it was used during the 9/11 commission and this animation supported the official path. Again, don't ask me why.

The "animation" cannot exist without being reconstructed from the black box data. This is the original source of the data for the animation and should be understood as such. The animation could NOT exist without the original black box data. So it cannot be claimed that the "animation" is right and the "black box is wrong". I suppose some will still claim that they "faked" the FDR, but you cannot claim that the "animation" is right when it is contradicted by the FDR. Make sense?

I don't know why they do not match, but the black box does support the official "flight path" of the plane. However, the data ends several seconds before the impact of the plane into the Pentagon and is therefore several feet in the air. It is unclear why the data is missing, but the data does support the official flight path.

Interestingly, this has not prevented many in the 9/11 truth movement with confusing the "animation" with the black box data. Which is an example of misinformation repeated in Legge's article.

Interestingly enough, CIT has NEVER used the "animation" as evidence for their flight path which is really saying something. The animation is NOT the black box data, which is in agreement with the official path.
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A 9/11/2008 Resolution: Start Your Own 9/11 Blog

Nearly all of the points in Frank Legge's paper were made more clearly and more extensively in Jim Hoffman's following two papers:

"The Pentagon No-757- Crash Theory: Booby Trap for 9/11 Skeptics," published on 10/7/2004 and revised on 11/15/2004, available at http:/911research.wtc7.net/essays/pentagontrap.html

"The Pentagon Attack: What the Physical Evidence Shows," published on March 28, 2006, available at http:/911research.wtc7.net/essays/pentagon/index.html

These papers are highly recommended reading.

It is interesting that this paper has generated such a fuss. The range of attacks is wide. Some say it has errors, some say it makes a weak case for flight 77 hitting the Pentagon.

In fact the paper gives very little evidence for what hit the Pentagon, so what is the paper about? Have some of the critics missed its thesis? It is stated right at the beginning. It is advice about what to do when asked "What hit the Pentagon". The purpose of the paper is stated later where it points out that it will put the 9/11 truth movement at risk if members strongly assert that flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon, given the contradictory evidence and hence contradictory assertions. Are there contradictory assertions? Certainly, and they are strongly held and it seems getting more strident.

Even in the comments on this thread, where we are all supposed to be friends fighting for the same cause, we see opposing views. Arabesque says that the statement that the data recorder flight path contradicts the official story is misinformation, while Swingdangler links to a video showing that the data stops at a point too high for the plane to hit the Pentagon. Clearly these contradict.

Peace brothers and sisters. Learn the message of the paper that it is the contradictory evidence and how we deal with it which is the issue, not what hit the Pentagon.