16 November 2004

New turns in the 9/11 Pentagon debate

Jim Hoffman, author (with Don Paul) of the excellent Waking Up From Our Nightmare: The 9/11/01 Crimes In New York City, has published a new article which marks a dramatic new chapter in the interminable debate over what happened at the Pentagon:

The Pentagon No-757-Crash Theory: Booby Trap for 9/11 Skeptics
http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/pentagontrap.html

Hoffman was formerly a promoter of the "no-757-crash" theory, but has since reevaluated the evidence and come to the conclusion that not only is the presence of a 757 supported by the evidence, but also that the general field of no-757 theories is the result of pre-constructed disinfo trap. Over the past year, I have gone through a similar change of heart, although I feel that the notion of a disinfo campaign being prepared and lined up even before the attacks might be an overstretch.

In 2002, the no-plane argument seemed quite convincing, and I joined Dick Eastman's "frameup" discussion group. By the end of that year, however, it had become clear to me that arguing the no-plane case was not as simple as it had seemed, and that sorting it out would require a lengthy and very detailed technical examination of the type of evidence that was being offered by "debunkers". Not having the time to do this myself, I left the issue and devoted myself to other areas of research. As time went on, the increasingly confident and unambiguous claims I heard from the no-757 theorists led me to believe that the sticky points and doubts had been sorted out and the case was getting stronger. Sometime earlier this year, I would begin to discover that this was a mistaken impression. I had decided after a long time to revisit the evidence, and discovered that the no-757 case had not progressed much at all, while the pro-757 case had taken some remarkable leaps forward. Hoffman covers most of the points that I find important, so I won't attempt a detailed discussion of my own. I would note, however, that Hoffman overlooked in his discussion another researcher who blazed some trails in this area, and that is Jean-Pierre Desmoulins: http://www.earth-citizens.net/pages-en/npp-sum.html.

There are a number of secondary tangents and speculations in his page that are controversial, but the really essential and compelling parts are his discussion of the approach and the damage to the building.

Another article worth reading for a second opinion on the Pentagon is by G. Edward Griffin (although one has to suffer a bit of gratuitous JBS-style ideological ranting, and I think Hoffman's work is technically stronger anyway): http://www.freedomforceinternational.org/freedomcontent.cfm?fuseaction=burningquestions&refpage=issues

On the topic of deliberate disinfo ops, I recently posted these comments about the famous Pentagon security camera images in a discussion group, in response to someone pointing out the questionable origin of these from official sources:

additionally, the timing of that original release is damning. it occured just days after the "hunt the boeing" craze hit the web. but these ambiguous and confusing images didn't help the "coverup", they only triggered more speculation. incomptetence theory, anyone? i wouldn't bet on it.

now, the fundamental fact is: if officials needed to create a convincing and clear fake video of an airliner hitting the pentagon, rather than some blurry images that just prompted more speculation, there's absolutely no reason to doubt that they could do this.

i tried to keep the benefit of the doubt about this for a long time, but i can't escape the conclusion that these images were released with the intent of *promoting* "no-plane" speculations about the pentagon. which creates a false dialectic, distracting from the truly incontestible anomalies -- such as the illogical target point, very difficult approach path, the cordite smell and severe heat & blast effects reported by several credible military personnel, indicating the use of extra explosives, etc. i.e. "no plane" is not the pentagon smoking gun -- it is the *defence* against the smoking guns! that's how i call it anyway.

and if there really was no plane impact, and officials were desperate to cover it up, they would have come up with another video fake from one of the other sources, and had a perfect and undetectable fake image of a 757 impact. this would have been done by now, no doubt in my mind. the fact that it *hasn't* been done, over these three long years, says a lot about whose wild goose chase this is. IMO.

The truth is that I have had these doubts about the Pentagon no-757 theories for many months, but have not discussed it because I consider it to be a genuinely complicated debate, and many of the oddities which have prompted these theories are quite real. This puts these theories in a very different category than things like the "pod" or WTC "no plane" theories which are based on virtually groundless — and generally technically incompetent — "interpretations" of images, not to mention some outright hoaxes. And despite the profusion of fallacies and errors which Hoffman has rightly pointed out, there are some examples of more rigorous and thorough work on the part of no-757 advocates, such as Richard Stanley and Jerry Russell, who present the whole body of evidence in a generally fair and non-filtered way (except, crucially, the eyewitnesses). So, I see sincerity and good intentions on the part of many Pentagon no-757 advocates, in contrast to the advocates of some of those other 9/11 "theories".

At the same time, I am deeply disturbed by the level of hostility and invective towards pro-757 views that seems to have become quite widely accepted in some circles. That in itself has played a major role over time in undermining my previous confidence in the no-757 side. We are in the midst of a global political crisis, where the consequences of missteps are enormous, and something like the no-757-crash has to be absolutely incontestible in order for it to help the cause. That, it isn't — but egos and agendas seem to be conspiring to prevent acknowledgement of this. My instincts lead me to agree very strongly with Hoffman's warnings about the furor of publicity over this theory ultimately threatening to do more harm than good.