25 February 2005: Jamie McIntyre CNN Pentagon footage

The latest to-do about the Pentagon involves a clip by CNN reporter Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon on 9/11 which supposedly proves that there was no plane crash. A video file has been archived at Webfairy's site:

[http://thewebfairy.com/911/pentagon/index.html]

A partial transcript:

"JAMIE MCINTYRE: From my close-up inspection, there's no evidence of a
plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon.

"The only site, is the actual side of the building that's crashed in.
And as I said, the only pieces left that you can see are small enough
that you 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
and then caused the side to collapse.

"Even though if you look at the pictures of the Pentagon you see that
the floors have all collapsed, that didn't happenm immediately. It
wasn't until almost about 45 minutes later that the structure was
weakened enough that all of the floors collapsed."

This is yet another would-be "smoking gun" that is actually, in my opinion, not so smoking.

For one thing, this CNN video is actually quite useful in a completely different way, because it proves immediately that there was no well-organized media conspiracy to push a "party line", as is asserted by those who attempt to claim that all the eyewitness testimony of a 757 was fake or coached (I discussed this in yesterday's entry).

If there was some plot to fabricate testimony about a 757 crash where there was none, then how is it that a top CNN reporter wound up not following the "script"??? There's no logic here. There's no way you can argue that various civilians & low-ranking pentagon folks who were already being interviewed and giving testimony to both local and national news crews about seeing the 757 were in on the plot and being coached, while a top CNN talking head somehow missed his "marching orders".

In fact, there's no revelations here, nothing new -- McIntyre's spontaneous observations about the scene at the Pentagon are actually very consistent with the testimony of a number of witnesses who said they saw the 757 impact. Namely, how the plane disintegrated into the building upon impact, how the wreckage was pulverized into small pieces (which has happened to planes in other documented cases, such as the sandia labs test crash of an F-4 fighter that is referenced by Jim Hoffman and others), and how some of them were surprised by the counterintuitive lack of big debris outside. Many of them were very specific and emphatic about this, and it's not surprising that someone who saw the scene afterwards could have impressions like McIntyre's. We've all already had the same impression from looking at various post-crash photos anyway.

This video actually builds the credibility of the eyewitnesses in general -- it is consistent with what the witnesses have already said concerning the appearance of the crash site, but it's also clear that McIntyre (does he have training for examining airplane crashes?) didn't exactly do a thorough "closeup" inspection, because we do have photos of wreckage that are a larger than what I'd call hand-held size. The best photo collection of debris and wreckage is at pentagonresearch.com.

The following are some of the witnesses who both reported seeing the 757 impact along with details that are consistent with McIntyre's after-the-fact impressions, such as explosive disintegration, lack of large identifiable wreckage outside, the illusion of a too-small hole, etc.

DeChiaro, Steve
Captain Defina
Elgas, Penny
Evey, Walker Lee
Faram, Mark
Jarvis, Will
Kean, Terrance
Mitchell, Terry
Narayanan, Vin
O'Keefe, John
Owens, Mary Ann
Peterson, Christine
Probst, Frank
Sepulveda, Noel
Skarlet
Sucherman, Joel
Tamillow, Michael
Terronez, Tony
Timmerman, Tim

http://911research.wtc7.net/pentagon/evidence/witnesses/bart.html

FYI, here is another useful Pentagon photo gallery that I just heard about:

http://renovation.pentagon.mil/Phoenix/9-11-2001/Page.html