"Official Respose from CIT" regarding the Gage "clariffication" - For the record.

Hello all,

Below is Craig Ranke's reply to Richard Gage's recent clarification about his support of the "National Security Alert" video released a few months back.

I confess I have also been in Richard's ear for him to clarify his position on the "fly over" theory; which is CIT's two man teams final conclusion gleaned from their 13 witnesses presented in their film. Richard was also able to watch Dr Legge's presentation about the Pentagon at the "Truth in Action" event in Sydney on the 15th of November as part of the Hard Evidence Tour Down Under.

No matter if you believe that a "fly over" is possible or not, we are still left with the simple fact that not one of CIT's witnesses thinks Flt 77 "flew over" rather they all believe that it hit the Pentagon. They also have not produced someone who saw 77 fly over the Pentagon. We are also left with the fact many witnesses are in support of the "official story" and the simple fact that direct evidence is seen at the crash scene consistant with a Boeing 757.

For a balanced scientific review of this matter please read Dr Legge's piece at the Journal of 911 Studies www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2009/WhatHitPentagonDrLeggeAug.pdf

I hope as an activist this will bring this area discussion to a close, but I will be surprised if it does:)

Kind regards John Bursill - Licensed Aircraft Engineer - Boeing 737/767/747

Here is Craigs response....

http://www.911oz.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=6361

Official response from CIT

Richard Gage met me personally in June of 2009 when we had a detailed discussion regarding the Pentagon attack and he agreed to view National Security Alert which was our brand new video presentation at the time. A couple of weeks later (after viewing the presentation in full) he contacted me to say he was impressed enough to give us a blurb of support, and did, but soon after contacted me again to say that certain members of his board of directors were upset with this and that he would need to alter the endorsement.

Our press release went out at the end of July announcing a significant amount of endorsements for National Security Alert including the version from Richard Gage that had been fully vetted by his board of directors. Shortly after the press release went out I received a call from Gage that he attributed to escalating pressure from upset individuals trying to convince him to fully retract his statement of support for our work.

To his credit he had the courtesy to personally call me to talk about these concerns before acting on them. After over an hour of discussion on the phone about the evidence and our "methods" he told me that his concerns had been lifted so he would not retract and that he was looking forward to seeing me in New York for the 9/11 anniversary since we were both presenting at the "We Demand Transparency" conference where we could talk further.

We did in fact have the opportunity to talk in great detail in September and he assured me that he was still supportive of our efforts even though he was still receiving a significant amount of pressure from a select group of individuals. Namely, Justin Keogh who controls 9/11 Blogger and Michael Wolsey who has been on a public rampage since the release of National Security Alert in an attempt to personally discredit us with baseless accusations of "disinfo".

During this 2nd personal meeting on the weekend of the 8th anniversary in New York Richard Gage not only pledged continued support but also agreed to contact me with any concerns that might arise in the future.

Now, almost 3 months after the anniversary and almost 5 months after he first provided his statement of support Gage has issued a "clarification" without being specific as to what prompted this and without having contacted me to discuss his concerns as promised.

Quote:
Earlier this year I wrote a review of CIT's "National Security Alert" in which I recommended that we all take a closer at the eyewitness accounts supporting the "North path" of American Airlines Flight 77 at the Pentagon. CIT's investigation includes detailed in-person interviews which appeared quite compelling. As AE911Truth's focus is the destruction of three buildings at WTC, I didn't perform an exhaustive review of CIT's material and methods. My quick statement (see below) should not be portrayed as an endorsement of CIT's conclusion that the airliner "flew over" the Pentagon.
Richard Gage, AIA, Architect
Founder of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth

Original Review:
The exhaustive effort by Craig Ranke and Aldo Marquis of Citizen Investigation Team to contact, record, document, and analyze numerous first-hand eyewitness accounts of the actual flight path of the airliner at the Pentagon on 9/11 has been long overdue, but worth waiting for. The evidence they have uncovered and compiled in their DVD "National Security Alert" deserves serious attention - particularly in light of what we now know about the explosive destruction of the three World Trade Center high-rises that day.

Richard has not retracted his statement in support of our efforts. He has merely demonstrated that he has been effectively spun away from understanding the simple non-controversial scientific fact that a plane approaching on the north side of the former Citgo gas station can not hit the light poles or the building and that he has potentially been influenced by misrepresentations of our alleged "methods".

While we're sorry that he has given in to the admitted pressure to issue this "clarification" it does not change the implications of the information or the fact that Richard Gage has stood by his statement that the evidence presented in National Security Alert is "long overdue, but worth waiting for" and that it "deserves serious attention". It also does not diminish the unprecedented amount of public support we have received from other respected and accomplished researchers, pilots, journalists, activists, and concerned citizens, including countless who are not even listed on that page.
We continue to support the work of Richard Gage and his dedication to exposing the 9/11 deception. We respect his decision to stay focused on the collapse of the three World Trade Center towers while deferring research of the Pentagon attack to others. We appreciate his continued support of our efforts as well.

Sincerely,
Craig Ranke
CIT

Hello John

Thanks for your take.

You said we are also left with the simple fact that not one of CIT's witnesses thinks Flt 77 "flew over" rather they all believe that it hit the Pentagon.

This is where people can agree to disagree, and you can call what I say "speculation," but here's my take:

This was a military deception, assisted by the elephant which is the mass media telling people what to think.

Here's an analogy:

Remember all the firefighters at the WTC who reported the characteristics of controlled demolition? Particularly in the Naudet Brothers documentary?

Remember how Loose Change 2nd Edition was the first truly viral 9/11 truth documentary?

Remember how in the "Recut" version of the Second Edition, Dylan and crew were forced to put in a legal disclaimer, stating that the firefighters presented in the film "do not endorse or support the views expressed in Loose Change?"

So in other words, even though the firefighters reported the characteristics of controlled demolition, they refused (at least publicly) to support that conclusion.

See what I'm getting at here?

Someone trying to discredit controlled demolition could point to that and say: "The firefighters who were interviewed don't support the filmmakers' conclusions. See, this is so characteristic of those got-dang conspiracy theorists, they'll seize upon anything to support their views."

To this day, a number of firefighters still insist on clinging to the official story of the WTC, and shower hatred and ridicule upon any firefighters (and even ae911truth) who suspect otherwise. Later in the thread they even call Richard Gage a liar and fraud. They say that the hundreds of people who've signed Gage's petition are 0.00001% of the "hundreds of thousands" of engineers who believe the official story.

William Lagasse, Chadwick Brooks, Robert Turcios, etc. were fooled into believing the plane approach + fireball = plane crash, just as the firefighters and others at the WTC were fooled into believing that plane crash + fires = structural failure.

Imagine you were on the scene near the Pentagon, and you already knew from your TV that two planes had crashed into the WTC. Then you see a low flying aircraft approaching the Pentagon. Then you see the plane disappear behind a huge fireball. What would you think?

And if you were to have any doubts, the first media report of a plane crashing into the building occurred five minutes later, and the propaganda machine was already in motion.

Well, let me back up. Depending on who and where you are, and depending on how you'd react, you'd very likely duck, look down, or start running the other way as the large low plane gets closer and closer. Then, you look up in stunned awe as you see the Pentagon's side going up in smoke. Within these few seconds, the flyaway plane would be far enough away and already blending in with the normal everyday air traffic coming and going from Reagan National, which is 1 mile away from the Pentagon. Low-flying planes near the Pentagon are a daily occurance whereas a fireball and subsequent wall of smoke at the Pentagon is a one-in-a-century sight.

Ultimately, it does not matter what the witnesses "believe." The fact that they all saw the plane on a flight path which is fatal to the official story shows that the plane could not have hit the light poles or caused the southwesterly directional damage to the building.

Imagine you did see the flyover. Would you want to be the one person, in the face of all the hyper-nationalistic patriotism propaganda, who tries to go to authorities and the media and say "I saw the plane fly away! This is all a hoax!" For one thing, the media would simply write off your testimony as "anomalous."

Furthermore, how do we not know that witnesses DID try to come forward? Do you think anyone listened? To use the WTC analogy again, William Rodriguez testified before the 9/11 Commission and they never reported or printed a word of it.

Nonetheless, a few people ARE on record (though only one first hand person) as seeing a plane flying away. Roosevelt Roberts saw a "commercial aircraft" flying away from the Pentagon "ten seconds tops" after the explosion. And as much as Chris Sarns tries to discredit Roberts' testimony, the fact is that no eyewitnesses nor official sources document two commercial aircraft on the scene at the time of the explosion.

Erik Diehle reported that when he ran outside from his office building, the first thing that "people" (note the plural) were reporting was that "a bomb hit the Pentagon and a jet kept on going!"

One "person" then corrected these other "people" and said "No, no, the plane crashed into the building."

But think about it: which is more likely? That those people were hallucinating seeing a plane flying away (before they were told what to think), or that the "correcter" deduced that the plane had to have crashed based on the approach and fireball combined with what was going on at the WTC?

Roosevelt Roberts and Erik Diehle were interviewed in November 2001 by the Center for Military History, not that long after the event when their memories would still be fresh.

If we veer away from audio-recorded, interviewed eyewitnesses and go to print media for a second, there is even a third person who was a likely witness to a flyover, Dewitt Roseborough. Take a look and listen. CIT called him and tried to get him to talk, but Dewitt Roseborough wouldn't. He did say that "I appreciate what you're doing, but... no."

When critical witnesses realize the implications of what they saw, they get scared and clam up.

Furthermore, the perps would create some cover stories to confuse and neutralize any flyover witnesses that might come forward. They did this in the form of an unsubstantiated "Second Plane Cover Story," whereby a C-130 was "shadowing" the attack jet and veered off and flew away right at the last instant before the plane hit the building.

(Keith Wheelhouse is the lone "witness" to this scenario and is not corroborated by anyone else. The actual C-130 did not show up on the scene until 3 minutes later. Also, Wheelhouse was in a position where a line of trees was obscuring his view of the Pentagon wall, so he does not count as an "impact witness" despite what CIT critics would have you believe.)

This story could then serve to reassure any potentially confused witnesses into believing that the flyaway plane was a SECOND plane.

The idea that it would be easy to find lots of flyover witnesses is a non-starter, given the properties of groupthink and propaganda.

All of the North approach witnesses, and Roosevelt Roberts, are no longer talking. This is because they NOW realize the implications of their testimony, whereas they didn't before. When Lagasse was describing the north approach to Craig and the camera, he thought he was reaffirming the OCT by refuting the "missile theory." Little did he know that his testimony was actually refuting the official flight path.

BUT none of these eyewitnesses have gone on the record to say that CIT misrepresented them, or that their testimony was taken out of context, etc. Chadwick Brooks even e-mailed CIT and said that their findings were "very eye-opening."

The idea that lots of flyover witnesses would have come forward and exposed the 9/11 deception is as flawed as the idea that if CD were true, the entire FDNY and global engineering community would have all instantly and vocally cried foul, all declaring 9/11 to be a false flag, right from day one.

Bottom line: At the very, very, very least, CIT's findings ram huge holes in the official story. Regardless of what you think of their conclusions, their work does indeed deserve "serious attention" that is "long overdue" as Richard Gage himself says.

As such, people should be ENCOURAGED to watch their material, rather than being told "This has all been debunked, nothing to see here, move along."

PS John I'm actually glad you did this topic a service by posting Craig's response in a blog entry here!

PPS This area of discussion is not going to come to a "close" anytime soon. CIT do not rest on what they've accomplished, and, without revealing too much, I can say that more eyewitness interviews and some other suprises are in store for everyone! :-)

As you said we agree to disagree:)

It's interesting to note that we have reached this stage of this discussion finally.

My view is the same as the view expressed by Dr Legge in his piece at the Journal of 9/11 Studies, as linked in this above blog entry.

I encourage both CIT and Pilots for Truth to put forward their ideas, theories and arguments in the form of a paper or letter to the Journal for peer review. This way they may have a better chance of gaining credibility, if that is they can accept their work being challenged and possibly rejected?

Kind regards John

9/11 24/7 UNTIL JUSTICE!!
www.truthaction.org.au

Interesting background information

from Craig.

When I read Richard Gage's "clarification", I got the impression that he tries to sit down on the fence. He's very careful in his wording, he hasn't retracted anything, and the only "clarification" is that he doesn't "endorse" a point of view that he himself never propagated.

Where's the problem here? And why made this harmless statement it to the front page?

http://911woodybox.blogspot.com

Clarifications needed regarding what is really known

Confusion abounds regarding the pentagon, and promoting that confusion seems to be the official strategy for dealing with 9/11 truth efforts. This note is my small effort to direct efforts more productively.

We are too easily provoked into exaggerating our claims, and it doesn't help us when we do so. I believe Richard is right to pull back from the appearance of an endorsement of the CIT efforts. I agree that the best course of action for CIT is to make their theories clear and explicit on paper.

Several months ago, I spent many hours pouring over the CIT videos and the background evidence. I was impressed, as Richard was I suppose, that the several eyewitnesses of the North of CITGO path seem very believable and consistent with each other. Meanwhile, I have found no videos of comparable eyewitnesses who support the South of CITGO path. By that I don't mean the end of the path through the light poles and ending inside the pentagon. I mean the supposedly official path (though no one seems to officially claim it is official) straight along the South side of the CITGO station.

So the North of CITGO path seems well established enough to deserve further investigation. And it is inconsistent with the official story. CIT probably should have stopped at that point, because that is all their eyewitness testimony really shows. However, they went much further and made claims which are not substantiated, even if they seem to be logical conclusions. That is where they got themselves in trouble.

CIT (maybe together with P4T, I am not sure) provided a couple other bits of evidence to consider. The 5 light poles that would have been in the way along the official path were found on the ground, but it appears they could not have found their way to the ground merely by being hit by the plane, judging from the way they broke off both at the ground and at the point of impact. Also consider exactly where they fell, and why they fell at all rather than having their tops merely chopped off.

And in particular, light pole number 1 would have had to make a magical flying twisting leap through Lloyd England's taxi window with minimal damage. And the testimony of Lloyd is interesting, to say the least, since he denies being at the location of where his car was found, claiming instead, in a manner that is very believable, that the event happened back a ways at the earlier exit. Perhaps shock is enough to explain his disorientation, but perhaps something else happened.

Anyway, the evidence of the light poles, even just the photographic evidence, should be enough to determine whether it was possible or impossible that they were, in fact, impacted by the wings of a plane. Someone needs to do the physics on that please. It is certainly not justified to suggest that the light poles MUST have been hit by a plane merely because the physical evidence of the impact at the pentagon forces us to conclude that a plane did it by flying along that path. Don't make the mistake of forcing a conclusion to fit the evidence if there are alternative explanations that could also make sense. A loose hand wave is not enough here. Prove it!

On the other hand, it is also wrong to claim that the light poles could NOT have been hit by a plane merely because the earlier part of the flight path must have been on the North side of the CITGO station, according to the CIT eyewitnesses. Those are different parts of the flight path, and I haven't seen the conclusive evidence that both parts of the flight path could not possibly be merged. Prove it!

And while you are investigating possible flight paths, check whether it is possible to merge the North of CITGO path with the final entry path into the pentagon, excluding the path through the light poles. Unless this is proven one way or another, we cannot justifiably conclude much of anything about the impact (or flyover) from the North of CITGO evidence.

And finally, the flyover of the plane is the wildest and strongest claim of CIT with the least direct evidence, and it is based only on the weak logical inference from the other evidence. It is contradicted by LACK of evidence of any eyewitnesses who should have seen the plane miss and fly away, and many witnesses who say they DID see the impact. Only one guy claimed to see a plane fly over on a path that seems very inconsistent with the earlier parts of the path.

We would have to believe those who did the cleanup inside the pentagon, but this part of the evidence does appear to be consistent with the official story, and consistent with physics. Since WE don't have that evidence, we can only go on trust, which they obviously don't deserve.

So where does this mess leave us? I would say the following, merging part of the CIT theory with not much of the official story - just the pentagon impact itself:

1. The North of CITGO path is substantiated, and more investigation is warranted to see if more witnesses offer consistent testimony, or vice versa.
2. The light poles were likely taken down in advance, and Lloyd's taxi impact was staged, maybe without his conscious awareness.
3. The plane did impact the pentagon on a path that just barely accounts for the external and internal damage, but that is all it has to do, after all.

All of this can be further investigated, and should be, but we should do so in a way that avoids accusations of spreading misinfo or disinfo if that is, itself, an exaggeration. If you don't want to appear to be a disinfo agent, don't act like one.

Hope this helps direct efforts more productively.