September Eleventh

28th anniversary of the US-backed coup in Chile BBC…which was, thus, also on a Tuesday. And the bloodiest in South America to that time.

60th anniversary of the groundbreaking for the Pentagon (which was a Thursday). And of Lindbergh's speech in Des Moines warning of the Zionist threat.

10th anniversary of GHWB's New World Order speech to the UN (check)

(And the 85th anniversay of the 2nd collapse of the Québec Bridge.)

UN International Day of Peace, Hear the Children Day. (Information conflicts on this. Some say it's the third Tuesday of September, some say it's the day the UN Gen'l Ass'y goes into session, others say it's been changed to Sep 21.) PD · UN · PF · US · TL

I don't subscribe to the controlled-demolition thoeries yet—but it's getting very hard not to!

• the times of the collapse, so close to the hour and ½-hour, as if on timers someone forgot to randomise
• the molten steel—not merely melted and recooled—steel found in October near the very bottom of the pit
• the witnesses who thought they heard explosives P · TMH · BBC @ 1min · BBC
• the spikes in the seismic record
• video cameras shivered just before collapse WRH, several witnesses report tremors preceding the collapses WRH
• the time taken for collapse, which someone figure to be very close to freefall time—even less—certainly too fast if the energy needed to pulverise the concrete in the floors has to come from gravity PP
• funny little puffs well below the pancake zone 911R
• the likelihood that the fire was nowhere near hot enough even to weaken the steel USC · WRH especially since the fires had dwindled to very little by the time of collapse S
• explosions at the bases of the towers essentially coincident with the plane crashes [PP citing Phillip Morelli NY1, Mike Pecoraro CE, Naudet docco]

IMO the exceedingly swift removal and offshore recycling of the structural members should be considered criminal destruction of evidence. The Science C'tee of the House of Representatives…concluded that the investigation was hampered. One problem was that cleanup crews arrived the same day and immediately began disposing of the rubble. Some of the critical pieces of steel…were gone before the first [investigator] ever reached the site. When investigators finally arrived at the site they discovered they were subservient to the cleanup crews. EH It's all very well to work fast looking for survivors. That does not explain the haste in sending the steel offshore for recycling, nor the near-total ban on photography. S I have enough contempt for Washington believe them capable of this. It's also suspicious that the mass of information collected and generated by the investigation may be destroyed before the public gets a crack at it. BBC

As to the small-first-plane theory, note the photos of the impact showing a neat slice from the right wing shown on Nova's hour, explicitly mentioned therein (but unfortunately not online). Does it show a large craft? Video alteration? I'd like to get a good copy of that picture and measure for myself.

• A meteorologist named Brandli: September is the worst month in the world to be planning anything in the air on the East Coast, because you're at the height of hurricane season. In fact, climatologically speaking, Sep 3 is the worst day of the entire year to plan a flight. And yet, you had this day where the weather was perfect, from Maine all the way down to Washington. (Not sure what to make of that, but it's interesting.)
• John Fulton and his CIA team are running a simulation exploring emergency-response issues were a plane to strike a building. [MH and CR quoting NLSI—the NLSI page seems to come and go, but I've read it and that's what it says] TO Seems the Nat'l Reconnaissance Office is also part. EJE · B

  [This admin] insisted that anything like the planes as weapons scenario of 9-11 was unthinkable before 9-11. Right. They had a brand new counter-terror emergency plan in place at the Pentagon for exactly that scenario, and had a counter-terror wargame set to begin on exactly that scenario that very morning. Just couldn't imagine. Because putting together counter-terror exercises like the one that was to take place the morning of 9-11 in the nation's capitol was precisely the right thing to do, the fact that everyone in the Administration from the President on down has so completely lied about it shows that they have something terrible, indeed, to hide. 911PI

  Fulton's exercise began within five minutes of Flight 77 deviating from its scheduled course and doubling back to Washington. (Timeline in Terrorist Attacks Washington Post Sep 12) What are the chances of this being coincidence? LSB

  There is one other possibility here we need to consider. On the morning of 9/11, there was no mock exercise underway. The whole idea of such an exercise was fabricated to explain otherwise mind-boggling communications traffic among intelligence and military and civilian agencies of the US government—traffic that would have exposed the complete and casual disregard for the very real events that were underway in the air. Oh, all those messages? They were just part of the mock exercise. They had nothing to do with the real thing. We were slow to catch on that the actual attacks were happening, because we had this practice deal running. What a coincidence. Q²

• For the past two weeks certain Israelis have been, through the Toronto and Frankfurt exchanges, short-selling 38 stocks that are about to go down the toilet, netting them a multimegabuck profit. [TBRN citing SEC findings]
• GWB's brother Marvin P. is a director of Securacom aka Stratesec, providing electronic security for WTC and Dulles Int'nat'l Airport. Provided same for UA before '98. Company is backed by Kuwait-American Corp, also Bush-connected since GW. [CD quoting Prince George Co MD Journal '03 Feb 4 citing public record] (Article also mentions a Wirt D. Walker III—a cousin?)
• GHWB is meeting a bin Laden brother in a Washington hotel on Carlyle matters. [5th Estate 2003 Oct 29] PM
• ±4:00: SS agents guarding GWB get warning of imminent terrorist attack on America and attempt on Bush.

  Zainlabdeen Omer contacted local police the night before the attack[, saying] a friend of his, who had made violent threats against the President in the past, had just arrived in Sarasota…In the police report obtained by the MadCowMorningNews the man Omer is warning authorities about is identified only as Ghandi. MCP

  There is a Saudi tribe al Ghamdi which seems to be crop up; three of the hijackers are Ahmed, Saeed, and Hazma al Ghamdi. And there is a Maj. Mohammed al Ghamdi lurking in the corner. MCP
• Until today, airlines are the only transports in the US requiring photo ID from some branch of civil gov't for use. JR Actually, the law seems to be, the airlines are required to ask for ID, but whether a person without ID may board is at the airline's discretion. [W citing 49CFR (PDF)] Atta and Abdulaziz Alomari leave Room 232 of the South Portland Comfort Inn in ME to fly to Logan. FBI · WP
• Another election in the unrelenting cycle of US democratic masquerade gets underway in NY.
• John O'Neill begins the first day of his new job—at the 34th floor of the north tower as head of WTC security. MV · MC · AT · NYM
• ±6:00: Middle Easterners pull up to the Colony in a van and say they had a poolside interview with the president, asking for an SS agent by name. Neither the receptionist nor an SS agent near her had heard of this agent or plans for an interview. The men are told to contact the WH PR office and sent away. LBO
• 6:30: GWB goes for 7-km jog around Colony Beach and Tennis Resort on Longboat Key FL. TL
• ±6:45: Two employees of Odigo, an Israeli-owned IM company about two blocks from the WTC, receive messages warning of an impending attack. [IM citing Newsbytes, Oct 3] Ha'aretz · TL (I don't know why I ignored this for so long. I guess fell into the diversion.) It may just have been someone who was joking and turned out they accidentally got it right. H (Yuhuh.)
• Atta almost misses the Logan connexion and makes himself quite conspicuous. WND (This whole 11th-hour Portland diversion is odd for an alleged leader in a carefully organised plan. Either he wasn't nearly so clever as he's been made out to be, or he was part of no plan, or he's a fabrication and this story built in such a way as to self-answer how is it you clearly remember this one among so many? Supposedly his piece of checked luggage is the only one that didn't get on the plane—isn't that convenient; but then he was late arriving. But why would a suicide-hijacker bother with checked luggage? If it was to be not conspicuous by lack of luggage, he failed. It's suggested Portland was an inconspicuous entry point, but there are a lot of arguments against that as well. MT · P)
• 7:59: AA Flight 11, a Boeing 767 w/ allegedly 92 aboard, leaves Boston (Logan) for LA, 14 minutes late. TL It's one of 220 planes out of Boston (Logan?) from 7:00 to 9:00. SMH · CNN · JR · ENC
• 8:01: UA Flight 93, a Boeing 757 w/ allegedly 45 aboard, leaves the gate but gets stuck in traffic. PG 182 seats MSNBC
• 8:14: UA 175, a Boeing 767 w/ allegedly 65 aboard, leaves Boston for LA. SMH · CNN
• 8:20: AA 77, a Boeing 757 w/ allegedly 64 aboard, leaves Dulles for LA. Cot · CNN Khalid Al-Midhar and Nawaf Al-Hamzi allegedly aboard (see Aug 23). ND (Time is disputed; one source said 8:10, another said it was scheduled for 8:01. TL)
• 8:20: AA 11 shuts off IFF beacon (transponder?) CNN (In deference to the plane-substitution idea, from here I'll call it {AA11} when I'm not sure it's actually AA 11.)
• 8:28: {AA11} deviates from flight plan. A flight attendant manages to make an emergency telephone call. SMH ATC in NH supposedly heard We have more planes. We have other planes over the radio. C4] [ie, in CS parlance, at least three trouble indications are thrown, one poll- and one interrupt-model. (One I can't quite classify.) It's very improbable all three would fail to be noticed. A purported pilot would point out that shutting off the transponder alone draws heaps of attention, and following that with a velocity deviation sets off alarms all over the country.]
• Boston and Cleveland ATC receiving distracting bomb threats MSNBC
• 8:32: GWB leaves The Colony resort for Booker Elementary in Sarasota. TL
• 8:38: Boston/FAA informs NORAD AA 11 is hijacked. CNN · UST
• The Air Force spokesman confirmed that after the alerts and requests for intercepts of the aircraft were received from FAA/ATC, orders from the highest level of the executive branch of the federal government were received, demanding that the Air Force stand down and not follow through with established scramble/intercept procedures that morning until further notice. APFN (I don't take this too seriously but I'm not about to dismiss it either. But it sounds a lot like what ret. col. Donn de Grand-Pre has been saying. AJ I'm glad to see I'm not the only one asking just what this supposed faction in the military thinks is the right time, to do all within their power to set things straight.)
• I was in the Air Force. My career field was radar operations and I was assigned to the Air Defense Command. The airliners turned around at Erie, Pennsylvania and were off-course for approximately one-hour, at the wrong altitude, at the wrong speed, without radio contact and it is absolutely insane for anybody to believe that could have happened unless people were told to stand down…The fighters that were stationed in Virginia, just across the border from Washington, D.C., could have been flying at bust speed, which is max speed, they could have intercepted those planes in 15 minutes and saved all that tragedy. And the second airplane was 15 minutes behind the first airplane. So to think they didn't do anything about the second one makes it even more ludicrous. PP
• With more than 4500 aircraft continuously sharing US airspace, between September 2000 and June 2001 the Pentagon launched fighters on 67 occasions to escort wayward aircraft. But on Sept 11, 2001, NORAD and the FAA ignored routine procedures and strict regulations. In response to a national emergency involving hijacked airliners as dangerous as cruise missiles, interceptors launched late from distant bases flew to defend their nation at a fraction of their top speeds. [GR citing FAA news release '02 Aug 92 via AP Aug 13 and NORAD news release Sep 18]
• Still no indication standing FAA intercept rules are being obeyed.
• AA11 flight attendants Amy Sweeny and Betty Ong spend 25 min each on phones with Logan flight services manager Woodward and Nydia Gonzales of AA security, explaining what's going on, giving seat numbers of the hijackers (supposedly how they figure out so fast whodunit, even though the names have never appeared on published lists and the number of missing names doesn't sum right) and saying they took a bomb with yellow wires into the cockpit. Sweeny's call is not recorded; four minutes of Ong's are allegedly recorded. ABC (This story is months coming out; very hard to know what's true in it. If the hijackers truly got a bomb with yellow wires aboard, where was airport security? Boxcutters, being small and unprohibited, made a plausible story, bombs don't. And then there's the gun story: Supposedly Daniel Lewin, elite Israeli counterterrorist, was shot by a Satam al-Suqami. WND. · WND But that's an FBI reconstruction of Sweeny's supposedly unrecorded call. She may actually have said something completely different. LF)
• 8:39: Two fighters leave Otis to intercept. C4 [Supposedly from Sep 13, found mid-May. This would put a small crimp in the theory. But why does CNN leave this another 13 minutes? Did Channel 4 confuse the FAA call to NORAD with raising fighters?]
• 8:39: {AA11} is following the Hudson River southward, passing over a jim-dandy terrorist target; Indian Point nuclear plant, with 2 operating reactors and 65 years' worth of wastes in storage. Why did the terrorists jeopardise the mission by giving the AF another 7 min to intercept them before taking out the piddly WTC, instead of diving into Indian Pt and poisoning the whole northeast? [TL, paraphrase] The mastermind behind these terrorists hijackers would have soon figured out their best and only shot against the strongest military foe in the world would have been to hit them first and hit them as hard as you can. Why didn't they hit Indian Point? VHO (The only thing I can suggest in line with the official theory is that it would've been beyond their piloting skills—small, low-height target. WTF was I thinking. Check out the aerobatics around the Pentagon. If maximal death & destruction were the goal, it'd've been a much better use of that pilot to hit Indian Pt. Clearly the real goal was not serious damage to a mighty enemy.)
• 8:41: UA 93 leaves Newark for San Francisco. CNN 40 minutes late. MSNBC · TL
• 8:43: FAA informs NORAD UA 175 is hijacked. CNN
• 8:44: Otis ANG base (246 km from WTC) in Falmouth MA ordered to get fighters up. CNN · ND · TL
• There's no tourist on the north tower getting his picture taken as {AA11} approaches. For one thing, WTC1 has no observation deck; for another, the observation decks (on WTC2) don't open until 9:30. UL GreaterThings kinda misses the point. It's not the person that has to be inserted convincingly; it's the plane. GT Some clever things are inspired, however. TD · AB (Should this raise questions on what the Fed knew and when?)
• Jackie Chan isn't on the roof either; he was supposed to be filming there but the script was late. TS The film was Nosebleed and involved terrorists blowing up the statue of Liberty. H
• The Lone Gunmen pilot is on-air in Australia. WP
• 8:46: {AA11} flies into WTC1 (north tower)—broadside to its core, maximizing damage to both the load-bearing structure and escape routes. G · SMH · CNN · UST Does the Fireman's Video show that the plane which hit the North Tower did not have engines attached to the wings and thus was not a Boeing 767? S DOe it show a flash a couple frames before any flash can be explained? S AA 77 has U-turned over KY back toward Washington. MSNBC Waiting outside a FL classroom, GWB sees an airplane hit the tower on TV. [Q&A on Dec 4 CNN, his answer to Jordan; backup at WRH; WH] IM [Q&A on Jan 5 WH] (This is puzzling because there were no pictures of the first impact broadcast until much later. Why are we told elsewhere that the photograph of Card telling Bush the News in front of the Kiddies is the Moment Bush Knew? Is GWB so ditzy he can't remember what he was doing? Or so ditzy he can't keep the cover story straight? Is he spaced out on Halcion like Daddy, or suffering aspartame brainrot? Whatever the cause of this ghaffe, should this kind of mind be in charge of the world's deadliest arsenal?? Just the sort of mistake a guy as dumb as Dubya might make, you say. Once, maybe, but twice? TB)
• Sarah Ferguson just missed being on the 101st floor of one of the towers. [KT citing ABC]
• Between now and the time this tower collapses, 5–10× the usual trading volume is passed through the WTC's computers. AFP German data-recovery firm Convar eventually figures about M$100 above normal. Not only the volume but the size of the transactions was far higher than usual for a day like that. JR (The below thanks to LF) They work round the clock [Reuters] and recover essentially everything. But the FBI does nothing with the information. G (Just like it ultimately decides the heap of put options on AA and US were just coïncidence.) Convar is bought up in 2002 Jun by Kroll Inc. It was either Kroll or a fmr employee Jerome Hauer which had helped find Paul O'Neill his job at the WTC. [NOGW citing GFP] TTS Kroll is now coöwned by American International Group (you know them; they of AIG Assurance AIGA who overtake Norwich Union Canada by Nov CG · OI) etc etc God only knows where all this goes.
• UA 23, NY to LA, delayed after four Muslim passengers began demanding that the plane take off immediately. The passengers were thrown off the flight. [FTW citing Globe & Mail 2002 Jun 13]
• <Q: what kind of evacuation orders went around the WTC?>
• 8:47: NORAD informed of crash CNN

  NYC Fire Chief Joe Pfeiffer of 7th Battalion puts out an emergency call that this was clearly a deliberate attack, an intentional act of mass death and devastation. TL (Yet GWB will say he thought that was just a real bad pilot. Could you two please trade places?)

• 8:48: First broadcast reports of the crash. [CR citing CNN, NYT Sep 15]
• 8:50: UA 175 deviates from flight plan CNN
• 8:51: GWB arrives at Booker Elementary. TL (So if he saw the first crash live as he will claim in December, it wasn't in the hall waiting, since he wasn't at the school yet.)
• ±8:52: Otis gets up two F15 Eagles CNN · UST These have a top speed over 838 m/s CR and thus could easily reach the WTC by 9:00.
• 8:52: F15s get out of Otis. They go after 175 like a scalded ape, topping 500 mph but [are] unable to catch up to the airliner, with a 9-minute window and in excess of 100 miles. WP · DMN Yet F15s top out around Mach 2½ BBC and should have been able to cover about 280 mi in 9 min.
• ±8:55: UA 77 U-turns over Ohio. ND
• ±8:58: WTC6 completely evacuated of ±800 persons. [RMN citing Knowing the Drill Saved Lives at New York's Customs House Washington Post Sep 18]
• 9:00: Pentagon goes to protection level alpha (one above normal) UST Rep. Cox is in the Pentagon getting a dose of the World According to Rumsfeld et al. The US needs to abandon its decade-old two-major-war strategy, and focus on the real threat facing us in the 21st century: terrorism…If we remain vulnerable to missile attack, a terrorist group or rogue state that demonstrates the capacity to strike the US or its allies from long range could have the power to hold our entire country hostage to nuclear or other blackmail. (Naturally the US wouldn't dream of using its weapons for blackmail.) I've been around the block a few times. There will be another event. There will be another event. CC (G*mn s*t-eating-grin-faced Cox keeps moving this page. But Rummy essentially confirms this during his 2003 March testimony. I was hosting a meeting for some members of Congress. And I remember stressing how important it was for our country to be prepared for the unexpected. GR Of course an antimissile system would've been of ±0 use in today's events.)
• The two Florida lawmakers who lead the House and Senate intelligence committees are having breakfast with Mahmoud Ahmad, head of the Pakistani intelligence service. Rep. Porter Goss, R-Sanibel, Sen. Bob Graham, and other members of the House Intelligence Committee are talking about terrorism issues with the Pakistani official—specifically, terrorism generated from Afghanistan. GR But Ahmad is the man who sent k$100 to Atta. And Graham and Goss will co-chair the 9/11 investigation. GR
• 9:02: UA 175 flies northward into WTC2; a bit obliquely. Guardian · SMH · CNN · UST This crash is much more spectacular, as if playing to the cameras that had been drawn by the first. S On the other hand, it could represent a near miss. S NORAD says that when UA175 impacts the WTC at 9:02:54, the two F15s from Otis are still 71 mi away. This means their average flight speed in trying to intercept UA175 was only 23.9% of their top speed. VHO

  Is there a UFO is over the towers heading for WTC6 or 7? SO

• 9:04: Unexplained explosion between WTC 6 and 7. RMN (That would fit the streaking object subtheory but the RMN page is gone.)

  GWB is informed of the second crash, blandly continues reading to the kiddies. SMH · [LG citing AssocPress 9/12 and Sarasota Herald–Tribune 9/12] For at least five minutes on video. TMH (He's either f*ing coldblooded or f*ing clueless. That noöne even gives him a kick and says, uh, look, sir dipstick, something important is happening…) Instead of being bundled up by the SS and whisked to someplace more secure and in touch with command apparatus, W sits in full public view for at least 7 minutes, still trying to read a story with 2nd graders. VHO Even the pro-W Fighting Back by Bill Sammon describes a very laid-back W, as if he didn't have a care in the world, most relaxed manner imaginable, taking his good old time.

• Richard Clarke made crisis manager by Rice minutes after the second crash. GR
• 9:06: NYPD radio: This was a terrorist attack. Notify the Pentagon. ENC
• 9:08: NYPD radio: Freeze all the airports. Freeze all the airports. Nothing in or out ENC
• Jeb Bush declares state of emergency in FL (before NY or DC do), enabling his martial-law order of the 9th. JR (Maybe because Brother Prezzy is there?)
• 9:16: FAA informs NORAD UA 93 may be hijacked CNN
• 9:17: FAA closes NYC airports SMH John O'Neill calls a friend. NYM
• 9:19: FBI is investigating reports of a plane hijacking before the crashes [ENC citing AssocPress]
• 9:21: NYC bridges, tunnels closed SMH
• 9:22: Seismograph in southern PA (95 km from the Somerset Co strip mine) records the distinct trace of a sonic boom, indicating a warplane is in striking range of Flight 93. FC
• 9:25: FAA alerts NORAD of UA 77 hijacking CNN · UST and has cancelled takeoffs CT
• ±9:27: NORAD scrambles Langley AFB, ±209 km from Washington. CNN Andrews AFB, ±16 km from Washington with two entire squadrons of combat-ready fighter jets [ENC] apparently gets not a peep all day. The number of air bases where fighter planes are kept on alert has dwindled sharply in recent years, one of the generals who runs the system told Newsday. And on Sept. 11, they no longer included any bases close to two obvious terrorist targets Washington and NYC. ND (So. Although Washington advisors have been warning of the worsening risk of terrorism, although US defense spending accounts for 1/3 of global military spending, you took away the planes guarding the capital??? Gross stupidity is the least charge that can be laid.) The DC NG maintained fighter planes at Andrews AFB, only about 15 miles from the Pentagon, but those planes were not on alert and not deployed. UST Andrews AFB is only 15 miles away from the Pentagon, but it had no fighters assigned to it. UST
• C-130 transport asked to make visual contact with UA 77. UST (When is this first revealed?)
• 9:30: GWB makes first public comment about an apparent terrorist attack on our country. SMH · ENC He promises an investigation, but spends the next 16 months blocking one VHO and the rest of his term stonewalling it.
• 9:32: SS (at long last) forcibly removes Cheney to the bunker under the Whitehouse. VHO
• ±9:36: Langley gets up three F16 Fighting Falcons. CNN · UST AA 77 reäppears on Dulles ATC radar as a primary target—something commonly seen by controllers when an aircraft doesn't have a transponder or is a military aircraft flying with its transponder turned off. But the airspace around…much of Washington is designated class B, meaning no one is supposed to fly there without a working transponder and permission from a controller. It flies southward full-throttle over Washington, makes a hard ¾ turn to starboard, and…
• ±9:39: …dives eastward into the Pentagon. NORAD says the F16s from Langley were still 105 miles and 12 minutes away. Incredibly, this means their average flight speed in trying to intercept UA175 was only 14.3% of their top speed. VHO

  A pilot they want us to believe was trained at a FL puddle-jumper school for Piper Cubs and Cessnas, conducts a well-controlled downward spiral, descending the last 7000' in 2½ minutes, brings the plane in so low and flat that it clips the electrical wires across the street from the Pentagon, and flies it with pinpoint accuracy into the side of this building at 460 kn.

  When the theory about learning to fly this well at the puddle-jumper school began to lose ground, it was added that they received further training on a flight simulator. This is like saying you prepared your teenager for her first drive on I40 at rush hour by buying her a video driving game. It's horse shit! Goff

  Photographic evidence and eye-witness accounts support the idea that the [pilot-overriding capacity] of the planes' computers was somehow defeated, allowing the hijackers to make prohibited maneuvers. For example, there are multiple photographs and video clips showing AA 175 making an outrageously hard turn into the second tower. According to official information, the plane that hit the Pentagon also made aerobatic descent maneuvers worthy of a fighter pilot. To have flown the planes in this manner, Atta and the rest would have needed 1) advanced large-plane skills, and 2) a way to defeat the planes' avionic systems. Since that flight school they attended in Venice FL probably didn't offer a course titled Hot-dog Maneuvers with Airliners 101, they must have possessed these abilities already, so why would they have bothered with flight lessons at all? Any benefit they realized in terms of understanding new control layouts would have been at the cost of increased exposure, thus endangering their mission. On the other hand, if they were as inexperienced as the presstitutes tell us (I just want to learn how to steer), they couldn't possibly have flown the planes this way at all, which means someone else must have.

  However distasteful, there is a real possibility that remote circumvention occurred on those planes…The necessary hardware isn't just a cockamamie theory: a fully developed, totally programmable remote flight-control platform actually exists…the Flight Termination System…manufactured by Systems Planning Corporation of Rosslyn VA…The CEO of Systems Planning's international division, Dov Zakheim, is a long-time DoD and Republican Party insider, and a founding member of the neoconservative cult [advisor to W, in the Raygun admin, Comptroller of the DoD, coauthor of Rebuilding America's Defenses]

  The remote control scenario also neatly punctures the [kneejerk conspiracy antitheorist objection] too many people would have known, and someone would blab…Once the patsies were in position, the rest of this scenario—the really unbelievable part—could have been carried off in its entirety by a tiny team wielding extravagant technical skills… NYCI

  (Some and others will doubt that a plane hit the Pentagon, eventually developing it into L'effroyable imposture. AA Dissenters of the first party say that's the hoax. Then those of the second party clarify they didn't claim no plane hit the Pentagon (indeed, I misspoke above); but no Boeing hit it; it was a smaller craft, like a fighter or a cruise missile (and that photos like WRH's are the spook plants). Then those of the first part get very irritated, very irritated indeed. Thoroughly confused yet? There's at least one impressive attempt to evaluate the supposed eyewitness acounts, which Rivero dismissed as A propagandist tr[ying] to dismiss and ridicule the eyewitnesses. I still want to know where the tail of the alleged Boeing went without nicking the building. I suppose tails are more delicate than weight- and fuel-bearing wings tho'. Maybe the thing that hit the Pentagon was a big plastic decoy remotely piloted from the second plane and the real AA 77 is what went down near Colorado never to be heard of again.) (One big crimp in the no Boeing theory is that remains of everyone on its manifest, except for an infant/toddler, are found. See Nov 16) One Dick Eastman reconciles the eyewitnesses by figuring on a military craft attacking the Pentagon while a decoy Boeing flew above and disappeared by landing at Reagan. 911R It was flown with extraordinary skill.* NB/WA · SMH · UST (UA 93? makes hairpin turn south of Cleveland MSNBC) That side was under renovation, consequently few people were in it. WB11 The hijackers fail to deprive the world of the Rumsfeld smirk—he was in his office on the east side. (In four days the Pentagon will claim it had been tracking the craft for an hour or so but didn't know what to do about it despite elaborate plans that link civilian and military efforts to control the nation's airspace. CT)

  * Hani Hanjour, the alleged hijack pilot, had logged 600 hours yet could not even fly a Cessna. Similar comments apply to the other supposed hijack pilots. Cot I've read that aircrews are told to coöperate with hijackers but this is going a little far.

  Although the WTC crashes were videoed—the second, naturally, thoroughly—and the tapes replayed on the mass media to pornographic degree all that's ever broadcast of the Pentagon crash is long views of the smoking ruins. It is claimed none of the Pentagon's own security cameras, including those for the heliport near the west side, caught the event. Of course the Pentagon area is much less densely populated, nevertheless there were a few security cameras (with recorders) watching. Their record has never been widely seen because, as with so many photos of the JFK assassination, the FBI confiscated them without furnishing copies. GF Some eyewitnesses will claim there was a second aircraft paralleling the crash-plane. MVT

  Note to anyone who happens to record something interesting: Don't Panic. Make at least one copy ASAP (if P), and hide at least one away someplace. Scatter the balance to the four winds. Resist the apparent instinct to review it endlessly until Objective One is accomplished; time is of the essence.

• BBC is interviewing Ehud Barak. Inserted in the broadcast are photos or video of a plane diving toward the Pentagon. These images are never shown again. Barak, himself, seems to have a whole plan laid out for W, very like what W eventually does—quite remarkable in that he has no obvious time since the attack began to create one. W
• 9:40: UA 93 sheds radar contact CNN dives from assigned altitude and turns off transponder MSNBC
• 9:43: New Jersey airports and river crossings to NYC closed. PATH and NJTransit trains also ordered halted. ENC
• 9:44: Debris rains off WTC2, people start running down Rector St. ConEd workers, cops, detectives, firefighters move people along the street. Stores close. ENC
• Broadcast screams noted by Cleveland control and several airliners. The only channel to which several airliners would be listening at one time is the emergency channel, 121.5 MHz. But accidental transmission on that channel is impossible; craft have a dedicated receiver but no such transmitter. An ordinary transmitter has to be explicitly retuned to 1215. It's unlikely the hijackers would have broadcast a couple of screams only to go silent. But how likely is it a pilot got the radio retuned to only get a couple screams out? Thus this smells like a deception. Also suspect are the broadcasts from supposed hijackers a few minutes later; they are perfectly to radio-telephony protocols, timed to be clearly recorded, and have a signal strength of 5 but readability 1. [LF quoting X] (You know&href;read you 5-by-5? 'Cept here it's 5-by-1. They aren't quite as fishy as that miracle passport tho.)
• 9:48: Capitol and West Wing of the White House are evacuated. Congressional leaders and key White House officials are taken to a secret location. ENC David Welna for NPR: I spoke with Congressman Ike Skelton—a Democrat from Missouri and a member of the Armed Services Committee—who said that just recently the Director of the CIA warned that there could be an attack—an imminent attack—on the US of this nature. So this is not entirely unexpected. TMH Despite what Rice will say.

• Unless I'm paranoid, it doesn't make any sense at all that GWB, commander-in-chief, sat in a second-grade classroom for 20 minutes after he was informed that a second plane had hit the WTC, listening to children read a story about a goat. Nor does it make sense that the Number 2 man, Dick Cheney—even knowing that the commander was on a mission in Florida—nevertheless sat at his desk in the White House, watching TV, until the Secret Service dragged him out by the armpits.

  Unless I'm paranoid, it makes no sense that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sat at his desk until Flight 77 hit the Pentagon—well over an hour after the military had learned about the multiple hijacking in progress. It also makes no sense that the brand-new chairman of the JCS sat in a Senate office for two hours while the 9/11 attacks took place, after leaving explicit instructions that he not be disturbed—which he wasn't.

  In other words, while the 9/11 attacks were occurring, the entire top of the chain of command of the most powerful military in the world sat at various desks, inert. Why weren't they in the Situation Room? Don't any of them ever watch West Wing?

  In a sane world, this would be an object of major scandal. But here on this side of the paranoid shift, it's business as usual. OLJ

  Kenyon Gibson: …these and a plethora or other facts point to 9/11 simply being Operation Northwoods. JR—see 1962 Mar 13
• 9:49: F16s arrive over Washington after supersonic rush. CNN (By GR's read of NORAD's report the speed was subsonic&mdah;0.9 Mach. Instead of flying 2½ times faster than a bullet, Nasty and Duff drove their expensive air superiority fighters at a leisurely 447 mph—supposedly to intercept a 767 flying 43 mph faster! GR) FAA orders first-ever national grounding. ENC
• 9:58: frantic 911 call from UA 93. PG Heard an explosion…seen white smoke. C4 The PG article says there were all kinds of aeronautical didoes through the previous ½-hour or so which may or may not have been this aircraft. And there'll be a lot of suspicion the plane was shot down, although the official line denies it. Even though there were supposedly three clear orders to engage. WP [what's the point…oh, yeah…] Given what had gone on so far that day, and that (probably) this plane had been acting suspiciously for awhile, and now aimed at the capital, maybe it was time to shoot? Am I asking why deny it was shot down since it'd be half reasonable to have done so? I don't know…

  [postscripted version] One of the last calls from UA 93, from the man who'd locked himself in the toilet, mentions an explosion aboard and white smoke coming from the plane. The FBI will confiscate the tape of the conversation; and the 911 operator that took the call, Glen Cramer, plus the Cleveland ATCs who watched it all on radar, get orders to keep their mouths shut. I (Do airliner toilets have windows? Or did he see this before going there?) (A shootdown looks very likely. But why cover it up? It seems shootdown orders had been given, given 93's behaviours and the day so far it would have been just-barely justifiable. Are they embarassed about shooting down an obvious threat, and leave so much else embarassing lying around; or are they hiding a downing intended to eliminate evidence and witnesses? According to a 93 docco on 2002 Sep 9, they haven't even touched the wreckage, just filled in the hole. Is there fear of some fragment from the plane, of an explosive or remote control, giving the game away?)

• 9:59: AF1 leaves Sarasota-Bradenton International, with no extra military protection. VHO

  WTC2 collapses, devastating NYC skyline. G · ENC · CR (LA Times also lamented the skyline damage. Far more than the damage to rights. [IR quoting LAT])

  First we see the top of the building start to tip to one side as a monolithic block, which we would expect to continue to rotate and topple to the side. Instead, almost as soon as it starts to tip, the building below it starts to collapse, allowing it to drop straight down…instead of continuing to topple to the side, the top portion actually telescopes into itself at the same time that it sinks effortlessly into the building beneath it. PP

  (But the only non-WTC structures desroyed—classed as full collapse by FEMA—were a little Greek church and a wing of Banker's TRust, to the south of the south tower. H)
• UA93 files a flight-plan change, Ronald Reagan ETA 10:28. [M, unsourced]
• Jeb Bush signs EO#01-262 declaring that a state of emergency exists in FL, ordering `the Adjutant General to activate the Florida National Guard for the duration of this emergency, and [placing] the National Guard under the direction of the State Coordinating Officer for the duration of this emergency', and suspending `all statutes, rules and orders…for the duration of this emergency to the extent that literal compliance with such statutes, rules, and orders may be inconsistent with the timely performance of emergency response functions.' EO#01-262 I think this is the second state-of-emergency declaration this day (NYC was first). JR
• 10:02: After a review of radar tapes, a radar signal is detected near Shanksville, PA. CNN
• hmp. I thought I had the famous Olson cell'-'phone call in here, but I guess not. I wanted to mark that it's in doubt. · nuther copy Not least because of Dewdney's experiment showing cell' 'phones don't work in aircraft. FN (This still leaves open inbuilt telephones.) Also because, although the hijackers allegedly tell the passengers to call home [KT citing WP] she's supposed to be the only one who succeeds, and that twice. VHO but noöne else does even though the hijackers are alleged to have told passengers to Vialls also disputes the Arab Hijacker calls from UA93. [LF quoting JV]
• 10:06:05±5: UA 93 smashes into a refilled strip mine in PA. FC · UST [10:37?] Wolfowitz will say the Pentagon had been tracking this plane and could have shot it down if necessary. CT It was probably meant for another Washington landmark; but its passengers, having some news of the other hijackings and calculating certain death is the alternative, heroically intervened. This plane will get its own website for dissenting theories. One obscure fact is that the plane shed débris over 8–13 km and an engine. (In April the NTSB will play the CVR record for the families. The record was muffled especially by the noisy rush of air, relatives said. CNN So what was open, a door or a hole?) Why this would be hushed-up (not widely told) I can't imagine, conspiracy or not. hmmm Hint of explosives? As a kind of self-destruct to hide evidence in case the plan went wrong? But…explosives leave evidence all their own (surface pitting/cratering of nearby parts; particular patterns of deformations; hull ruptures etc. leaving débris where it shouldn't be) which would raise sticky questions about how explosives got aboard. So surely conspirators of the calibre to pull off a 9/11 would've picked something else as a failsafe. Unless they figured hijacking would be obvious in any event, and thus no find-that-wee-little-part-that-quit examination of the débris. Ach, I think I'm spinnin' mah wheels here. Wait! I forgot the explosives wouldn't have to be aboard. What if it was shot at? [93, esp. the 911 call PG] No need to explain security breaches. But again, hijacking alone would be unlikely to explain the evidence. Ah. But it would also be exceedingly important not to let insiders out of your sight. What if they just plain chickened out—decided to land in Canada and spill their guts? You'd want to keep very close track of proceedings* and have a sure way to eliminate the backtrail, even if the physical evidence was fishy.**

  *There are what I'll call for now whisperings about other aircraft paralleling the four jets. (More than whispers? JN Myaah. The one seen from NJ is surely a simple bird. But the other one, seen from below the towers, is strange. I'm almost convinced it appears from behind the smoke of the north tower. And although the timing of the UFOs in the two views is about right, I can't believe the geometry would work out to make them one. I sure wish I could read Japanese; Babelfish doesn't seem to work on it.)

  **Of course remote-control would fit this, too.

  Oh crap. I threaded my way through it. I've earned a Junior Conspiracy-Theorist badge. Well…there are alternatives. The plane's altitude isn't clear; but what if a bird happened to get in an engine, and noöne thought to turn it off; could it ultimately have fallen off? Could a window have been ruptured or a door opened?
  collection of UA93 articles

  Altogether, ±260 persons die aboard aircraft built to carry ±900. No wonder the airlines need so much subsidy. (Airlines in America were already headed for a loss of ±G$3 this year. Economist's World in 2002 p. 98) All four planes had their transponders and communications offline. WB11 · SMH

• GWB authorises shootdown of non-responsive aircraft. UST (Gee, Dubya, maybe if you hadn't struggled through the rest of the goat story…) (Correction: it may have been The Very Hungry Caterpillar. S Maybe there's a goat in it?)
• There'll be many reports of explosions heard, from firemen, who ought to have a decent idea what they're hearing. It gets into the recordings of FD communications, released in June:

  Official: Battalion 3 to dispatch, we've just had another explosion.
  Official: Battalion 3 to dispatch, we've had additional explosion.
  Dispatcher: Received batallion command. Additional explostion.

  But it's not clear from this source when or where. WNBC
• Video cameras near the towers vibrate slightly. WRH A certain clip from WTC The First 24 Hours shows the North Tower from almost exactly due north, and is another fixed camera almost level with the top of the building. About four seconds into the clip there is a strong ground tremor that shakes the building the camera is mounted on. About 12 seconds after this the [tower] begins to fall. PP
• 10:29: WTC1 collapses. ENC A portion of the tower's core (60 storeys or so) remains standing for about 15 seconds. [PBS Why the Towers Fell] AZ · 911R · 911R · PP (That factoid is hard to fit into the controlled-demolition theory. But why does the grand pillar of dust seem rooted so far from the tower? Wind drift?)

  The spire stood for about 20 seconds after the debris cloud fell away from around it, swaying slightly without tipping over despite its height and lack of support. It then began to drop straight down in place, but after dropping only a little way it abruptly turned into dust in place, very much as the towers themselves did. PP · WF

  (I think it was coated in dust, which came loose when the spire dropped and formed a cloud that made it look like the spire spontaneously pulverised. But that sudden straight-down dropping strikes me as odd.) Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades records narrow, high-energy E–W pulses at the beginning of the collapse noise. AFP (The trace here shows it slightly into the noise. I don't know how uniform are speeds across frequency; the lag could be a result of distance.) Although the towers held up remarkably well given the structural damage—in some engineers' opinions, far better than could have been expected given the much greater masses and speeds over design assumptions—their structural engineer John Skilling doubted anyone had taken account of the jet-fuel fire and the loss of fire insulation from the impact. [TLC, maybe Discover] [After the Fall showed some insulation wasn't knocked off but vitrified in situ.] Steel's strength is rather temperature-sensitive (hence the use of insulation), and there is no doubt* the fire caused or hastened ultimate collapse. SMH · UofS [this article is wrong on one point—one calculation ended in impact forces about 95% the design wind load, hardly insignificant.] HERA · HERA]

  *Well…there is dissent; most confuse the melting of steel with mere weakening which happens at much lower temperatures. Some dispute that even those lower temperatures were reached. As I said before, I smell nothing in the official version of the collapses.

  (It's only taken me a year to twig to this: how remarkable is it that the two towers collapse so close to round times, 10:30 and 10:30? Almost like they were on timers.)

• 10:40: NYC primary cancelled. ENC
• 10–11:30: UN closes. SEC closes. US financial markets close. Giuliani calls for evacuation of lower Manhattan. Evacuations are ordered at the tallest skyscrapers in several cities. High-profile tourist attractions are closed, including Disneyworld, Mt. Rushmore, Seattle Space Needle, and St. Louis Gateway Arch. ENC
• ATCs record verbal statements while the morning is fresh in their minds. The tapes will be thoroughly destroyed in a few months by an FAA QA manager, asserting that making the tape broke the rules. No known copies, transcripts, etc. were made, NYT · FOX
• ±noon: Firefighters verifying the evacuation of 300 Albany St, about 2 blocks north of WTC, find Israeli drug gang member Zwi Haim Harris guarding his inventory of ecstacy and marijuana. JP
• 12:29: Taliban decry the terrorism, deny bin Laden had anything to do with it. CNN
• 13:20: GWB leaves Barksdale AFB La., to undisclosed secure location. ENC
• [Some time through this day there were reports of a plane going down somewhere in/around Colorado. What became of those? Were they errors, or was it covered up?]
• 14:40: Rumsfeld is telling his aides to get `best info fast. Judge whether good enough hit S[addam] H[ussein] at same time. Not only UBL[aden]. Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not.' [SC copying CP citing Don Martin of CBS 2002 Sep 4]
• 14:51: Navy dispatches missile destroyers and other equipment to New York and Washington. ENC
• ±16:00: Urban Moving Systems van stopped, 5 Israelis (Sivan and Paul Kurzberg, Yaron Shmuel, Oded Ellner, and Omer Marmari) arrested at gunpoint. They had earlier been seen photographing themselves celebrating with the smoking towers in the background. They'll claim to be documenting the event for Mossad. RMN · SH (All but Ellner will later sue the US gov't, supposedly for torture and various other abuses. H) Most employees of UMS HQ in Weehawken were also celebrating the attack, according to one employee who wasn't. WC
• 17:25: 47-storey WTC7, aka Salomon Brothers Building, suddenly and neatly collapses. ENC This is a little strange; the only apparent damage was a few rather small fires in the SEC's offices. GR · 911R The tower nearest WTC7 was the one which practically telescoped, WTC1; and the other toppled away from WTC7. WTC6, the Customhouse, is almost between 1 and 7, and yet remained standing (barely). PH Partially-evaporated steel members will be found in the heap. Within the structural-engineering community, it's considered to be much more important to understand…We know [sic] what happened at 1 and 2, but why did 7 come down? [G quoting NYT] IMO this collapse has no explanation other than deliberate implosion. Even FEMA admits its own the fires did it explanation has only a low probability of occurrence. Further research, investigation, and analyses are needed but those were prevented by speedy removal and destruction of the evidence. Of all the collapses WTC7 was the most precise, with almost all the wreckage confined to the footprint of the building…The building had an unusual design because it had to be built over an existing three story tall electrical substation, leading to a large transfer truss through the middle of the building above the electrical gear. PP In PBS' America Rebuilds Silverstein claims the NYFD pulled the building more-or-less on his sayso. LT So why did FEMA try to explain it otherwise? (There was damage to neighboring buildings; e.g. CUNY/BMCC Fiterman Hall to the northeast:
  
  Verizon building to the northwest:
  
  So the implosion wasn't so tidy as I may have thought.)
  View of WTC6; WTC7 is the source of the smoke at top left, the base of WTC1 is visible at the top right.
  
• That lone "major damage" at 45 Park Place was floor beams taken out by landing gear. H
• ±19:00: Crews begin heading into Ground 0 to search for survivors and recover bodies. ENC
• 20:30: GWB addresses nation from Oval Office, vows to retaliate against those behind these evil acts. ENC
• 21:04: Kissinger places a comment to the Washington Post which turns out to be a near script for the next few months. [IM commenting on WP]
• [yeucgh. something's amiss here, i gotta research these times again]

  This is 75 minutes from the first big hint of the day's trouble, an hour after one primary target merged violently with the north tower, ... after the other found the south tower. And Andrews AFB, Washington's main air defense base, is only 10 miles away. Yet no intercept was even attempted.
  75 minutes after the first tower is hit, ?? minutes after the first hijacked aircraft deviates from its flight plan, the Air Force scrambles to defend Washington. [Later the story would change to they were up but too late.] ENC

  It only took <find> minutes to intercept Payne Stewart's jet in 1999. [yuck again—as I thought when I read the NTSB report, it took a lot longer than I'd heard. Some witnit overlooked the Eastern–Central timezone change.]
• VP Cheney literally confuses interception with shootdown to explain the delay in scrambling jets. While Presidential authority may be needed for a shootdown, interception is routine and standard FAA practice for aircraft deviating from their flight plans. (It may actually be Rummy that can order a shootdown; see June 1.)

Odds & Ends

ENC has Time's map of the flight paths, and an analysis of what the SS knew and when, their and GWB's odd behaviour given that knowledge, and the implications.

GWB rapidly promotes the attack from terrorism to act of war, saving the nuisance of evidence collection and due process and unreliable international criminal tribunals. PanAm 103 was left as terrorism, and there's been no end of bother sacrificing the obligatory scapegoats for that. Economist Sep 15–21 p 16

Flight attendants have innocuous code words for signalling pilots of trouble in the cabin. And aircraft transponders have a feature for returning a hijacked indication. But all the transponders went out before the code could be sent, indicating very rapid (well-rehearsed) takeovers. SMH

This time of September is usually a year's slackest travel days. It's argued that it gave the hijackers fewer passengers to contend with; but it also means airport security would have been least overworked, and the total passenger casualties would be lightest—mitigating the event somewhat to an architect struggling with his last shred of decency. SMH And the FBI found that one UA 93 hijacker had been disguised as a pilot and been invited into the cockpit. [93 citing an Australian article of which only the title is easy to find] I think that would have made the number of passengers relatively unimportant. And/But there's also a note about razor sharp ceramic knives which don't show on metal detectors, which would offset the risks of a less-busy security port. 93 (I'd wondered on 9/11 if there was such a thing…you can make a deadly if somewhat fragile edge on glass or flint, why not a ceramic?)

It's unlikely the Bush administration's flagship project, the National Missile Defense System, would have been of much use against a band of suicida[l] hijackers. (G FAA standard procedure wasn't much use either, especially since it was almot totally ignored. David Brin has similar pointed comments about the bureaucratic machine in general: `Throughout the 20th Century, the trend in our culture was monotonic, toward ever-increasing reliance on protection and coddling by institutions, formally deliberated procedures, and official hired guns…none of which availed us at all on September Eleventh. Rather, events that day seem to suggest a reversal, toward the older notion of a confident, self-reliant citizenry.' DB It is precisely the ordinary people of the country who have behaved with distinction. GU Maybe that's the reason so little is said about the UA 93 heroes, not the only but the most obvious effective 9/11 action by the public—it would distract from the attention-loving official agencies which love to tell us to leave all things to pros, i.e. them. The simple idea that ornery people were effective where the pros were not would be quite devastating to the latter's authority/credibility, whether or not there was a high-level plot. The early RC model of society comes to mind; of shepherd, his dogs, and the sheep. Well…the shepherd and dogs would be out a job if the sheep could fend for themselves.)

Carol Valentine's 2¢: `We are asked to believe that the culprits took four jet airliners, with four sets of crew and four sets of passengers—armed with (depending on the news reports you read) knives, plastic knives and box cutters. Given the crazy and unpredictable nature of humans, why would they try this bold plan when they were so poorly armed? ¶ A lady's handbag—given the weight of the contents most women insist on packing—is an awesome weapon. I know, I have used mine in self defense. Are we to believe that none of the women had the testosterone to knock those flimsy little weapons out of the hijackers' hands? And what of the briefcases most men carry? Thrown, those briefcase can be potent weapons. Your ordinary every-day New York mugger would never take the chances that our culprits took.'

A claim that long before 9/11 MSNBC documented that Osama was CIA-trained. There will be lameish denials of this link post-9/11.

The US has been having trouble with its steel industry lately. (It's well-known, even making it to a West Wing episode; but I've yet to sort out exactly what.) What if someone looked upon the WTC a little covetously as 200 Gg of good steel standing around doing nothing? And don't forget the <howmuch> of aluminium, the smelting of which still requires a lot of electricity (see <Washington Monument>), something getting pretty dear in the US. Furthermore, given the outcry against anyone profiting from the WTC scrap, this stuff may recycle unusually cheaply. Plus there's (Didn't I tell you I rank nothing beneath Washington, anymore??) I know, it'd probably be a drop in their bucket of demand, but… [AtF had a figure of 300 Gg and a mention that the scrap market was saturated by WTC and the prices rock-bottom.]

A pome, clearly meant to be sung. It's nondoctrinal (and far too long for the industrialised attention span), so it'll never make the bigtime.

Investigators are vaguely criticising the speed with which the WTC debris is being eliminated [TLC special on WTC collapse]. Some scoff that what? Two skyscrapers' worth of debris should be warehoused? [VS] Hey, there's a fair amount of room at Fresh Kills…it can be seen from the Moon [AtF]…it doesn't have to be kept forever, just long enough for credible study, instead of it being whisked out of the country as if there were something to hide or a desperate shortage of steel or something.

Several of the public call this day the new Pearl Harbour. (Even Economist Sep 15–21 p 15, but to the much-tattered yet still-flown dogma of surprise attack.) At the time, I scoffed at this; I thought September Eleventh was an attack by motivated persons tired of the US stomping all over dismantling democracy and stealing resources. (Contrary to American theory, I believe the best defense is nonoffense, as in not offending peoples by rubbing their noses in their own feces and saying they should be grateful for it.) But I've come to think the Pearl Harbour idea is more right than its holders probably thought (see 1941 Dec 7).

From ?? via TFK. Each outer wall is 280.7 m long. PF&F It's not clear whether the blue area is the part closed for renovations or by the fire.

Ground 0. Seven buildings, including the twin 110-storey towers (417 m and 415 m). The others: a 47-storey office building, two 9-storey office buildings, an 8-storey Customs office, and a 22-storey hotel. [SMH] From Reuters via TFK

From TFK and Boeing. They disagree on speed; I use Boeing's figures.

707-320B	757-200	767-200ER
46.6	47.32	48.5	Overall length (m)
44.42	38.05	47.6	Wingspan (m)
	13.6	15.8	Tail height (m)
	3.5	4.7	Interior cabin width (m)
271	236	236	Cruise speed (m/s)
152	116	179	Max. mass (Mg)
	43.49	90.77	Fuel capacity (kL) F

Noted 2002 Mar: `Merrill Lynch is one of many Wall Street brokerages doing a large-scale Linux deployment in an effort to cut their costs and boost revenue. Indeed, these banks have had a very tough year: Merrill's sales declined more than 10%, to G$38.7 last year, and profits dried up to 56¢/share from $4.06 in 2000. The company killed laid off 9000 employees last year to reduce compensation expenses.' Forbes

Even days and weeks after the WTC attack, why were news cameramen prevented from photographing the ruins from certain angles, as complained about by CBS Correspondent Lou Young, who asked, What are they afraid we're going to see?  BI

'K. So: Atta was trained in Venice FL at Huffman Aviation, owned by Rudi Dekkers, who's connected to the CIA. Britannia Aviation, supposedly operating out of Huffman's hangar, got the contract to run large regional maintenance facility at Lynchburg VA Regional Airport, although Britannia is worth about $750, has no employees, no assets, no FAA aircraft-maintenance license, and the very small Venice airport claims never to have heard of them. Yet they had been servicing for Caribe Air, a CIA proprietary carrier, which had lost craft in the infamous Mena AR seizure. Caribe is currently run by a Caribbean bank, Banc Caribe, a money laundry which may be Enron-connected. OLJ

The Venice Airport, now notorious for two Dutch-owned flight schools which trained three of the four terrorist pilots in the Sept. 11 attack, has been utilized in covert US operations since the earliest days of the Cold War, according to a top local law enforcement official.

Venice was even targeted by the Soviet Union in the event of nuclear war, because of the military nature of certain activities taking place at the Airport, the official said.

During the Vietnam War pilots were trained in Venice for the paramilitary operations of CIA-proprietary Air America, stated the official. So too were bush pilots, a decade-and-a-half later, during the conflicts in Central and South America during the Iran-Contra era.

The federal activity continues to this day.

It's not unusual to see a military Blackhawk helicopter touch down at the Venice Airport in the middle of the night, stated the official, who requested anonymity, and then take off again thirty seconds later, after dropping off its cargo or passengers.

Or you look up and all of a sudden there's 5000 soldiers from the 101st Airborne landing and taking off. Strange things have been going on out there for a long time.

What they're hiding down in Venice, Florida is that Mohamed Atta came to be there at the behest of the people responsible for these operations. [MCP Venice Airport Used for Covert Ops]

New Scientist would point out that the technology already exists to fly highjacked planes by remote control. Most modern aircraft have some form of autopilot that could be re-programmed to ignore commands from a hijacker and instead take direction from the ground, says Jeff Gosling of UC Berkeley. That doesn't say the feature is generally installed at present, but it does leave hanging wide open the possibility of taking remote control of a prepared craft, or via some backdoor/easter-egg type exploit. But then, why have hijackers at all? Well…presumably a cockpit crew finding themselves not in control of their craft would do their damndest to regain control and leave CVR and ATC records (possibly also FDR) of their efforts. Actual physical highjackers are needed to block that and muddy the water. (On the other hand, IIRC, none of the recorders has been officially found and the ATCs have been gagged.)

AtF: Discovery's After the Fall

Comment on the antitruss collapse theory: hogwash. I think the theoretician misunderstood the cores. They were load-bearing only, meaning weak laterally; thus the amount of wind load transferred to the core to deflect it as much as the skin tube is very small. The real question is whether the floors were strong enough to keep the skin tube square. (I admit the purported truss connexions seem weak for doing that job.) Someone should review the quantity-of-steel calculation and see if 30% is missing. I wonder if it's in the foundation steel, or the other buildings. The theory next-door to that does a little better. Although IMO also perfunctorily dismissing some things, it does raise points about whether a building that met fire code would fail as we're told the WTC failed. They conclude there must've been explosives for that reason; I point out that we shouldn't assume that the towers met fire code. (Was a suitable replica built and tested, or is there a closely comparable structure that has burned and not failed?)