PentVideo

“The Pentagon has told broadcast news reporters that its security cameras did not capture the crash. The attack occurred close to the Pentagon’s heliport, an area that normally would be under 24-hour security surveillance, including video monitoring.”

Bronco Bingham and Attorney Hodes filed a FOIA Request on October 14, 2004. They requested all videotapes in any office of the FBI that showed the Pentagon crash, including the CITGO station and the Sheraton National Hotel videos that were confiscated by the FBI on 9/11.

There were denials and excuses for four months, including the final March 7, 2005 correspondence. The FBI responded with, “A tape was found but [if] released would interfere with enforcement proceedings.”[i]

The FOIA request brought up that stills from the parking lot video had already been released to CNN. But the FBI claimed those stills were leaked by the Pentagon and had not been officially released.

The American color standard is 29.97 frames a second (30 drop-frame) with timecode [hrs:min:sec:frames]. Because the object frame (1) and impact frame (2) have identical timecodes, no accurate estimates can be made, but it’s under a second. Many of frames have been removed. Why were the most revealing frames removed? Because the sequence has been altered, speed relationships are distorted and looking at a GIF presentation is misleading.

This frame should raise several suspicions. This is the only view that shows the attacking aircraft, however it is conveniently behind the yellow container, and only a vague portion of a vertical stabilizer is shown. There is another problem with the official story, a 757 is over 155 feet long and cannot fit completely behind that container.

The tail fin of the 757 would be larger and project much higher than that shown in Frame 1. There is a trail of white vapor coming from the right side, which is indicative of solid-propellant rocket fuels (jet engines and turbojet-types only produce white vapor trails at very high altitudes).

Also just to the right of the frame there is a raised highway about 15 feet higher than the Pentalawn. So if the aircraft in the image is literally hovering inches off the grass as shown, then the aircraft pilot would have to have made a grass hugging 15-foot downward maneuver within hundredths of a second. That is impossible with a 757, no matter how much flight manuals our terrorist hijacker Hani Hanjour read (He was considered by his instructors as being unable to fly a Cessna).

There is a 15 foot embankment in front of the Pentagon (Photographer: unknown).

In this image, the supposed tail of the plane has disappeared, but the trail of white vapor extends now to the Pentagon. The explosion blast comes before the Pentagon’s facade. There were two construction trailers at that location. The whitish color is characteristic of solid explosives. Could the construction trailers have been filled with explosives and fuel and then detonated? This would explain the explosion qualities.

In this frame, the explosive blast is extending. Now a large orange fireball has replaced the whitish color. The video images clearly show a blast occurring in front of the wall. If so, where is the damage to the helo-control tower and the pristine grass? There wasn’t any.

If the plane, or even just the wings had somehow burned up, then they would still be visible, or parts of it. Surely these massive wings would not burn in a nanosecond. A few small pieces of debris, are seen flying in the air. Are these construction trailer pieces? It would be consistent. Where are the vehicles of the FBI and Secret Service? …the two Presidential limousines? …police motorcycles? These were seen and reported by the firemen on site of the helipad.

Immediately upon release of these pictures, NBC, BBC, and other mass-media networks described these pictures as showing “Flight 77” and even stating that they showed the American Airlines jetliner “bouncing” from the Pentagon lawn to the building.

There are any number of curious anomalies in these images, perhaps the most obvious of which is the fact that the date/time stamps, added after the fact, are off by about thirty-two hours. The second frame differs from the other four in a number of ways: it is brighter, shifted slightly to the left, and obscured in all corners. The second frame also has the same time stamp, 17:37:19, as the first frame.

The frames per second portion of the time stamp were purposely omitted. The words “plane” and “blast” along with the times were subsequently added to each carefully selected frame. Other more informative frames were not released. The frames that were selected were done to avoid disclosing the true identity of the object and in hindering calculations of important facts like airspeed.

Another curious feature of the images can be observed by focusing your attention on the upper left corner of each frame — where it can be clearly seen — a pattern of condensation drops that are quite consistent in frames #1, #4, and #5, but much different in frames #2 and #3, as though the drops dispersed and then inexplicably returned to their original position! Another curiosity is that the helicopter control tower that can be seen in silhouette in front of the fireball in frames #3 and #4 is incongruously painted a bright orange in frame #2.

Someone working for the government invented these images. Shadows were delineated with a black “Photoshop-type pencil” and then filled with the same gray hue, there is no variation of the shading, nor does the width of the “pencil” change. These are easily detected signs of a forgery. What more proof does someone need? Is this unsophisticated “Photoshoped imaging” not enough?

What then are we to make of these images? Only one of the five purportedly shows an airplane about to crash, and it is of such poor quality. There is little question that the images have been manipulated in various ways, rendering them all but useless. However, governmental credibility on what happened at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 is continually being damaged by these actions. The more they try to cover-up, the more they incriminate themselves. The most likely scenario is that these doctored photos were deliberately leaked because of public pressure clamoring to release some of their video evidence. As well as, further detract 9/11 investigators from the truth.

On inspection, this sequence of frames does not support the government’s claim that a 757 hit the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. In fact, they probably caused many inquisitive minds to explore other plausible scenarios to explain the destruction that occurred there.

It is unacceptable that they released only these five “Photoshoped” frames, and that should have drawn public protest.

The government claimed that, “...the closed circuit television security camera nearest to the point of impact had been destroyed by the crash.”⁷⁸ Unfortunately for the government, this is an easily dispelled lie, since the only thing that matters is the videotape or digital video images, which is not stored with the camera. Therefore it was irrelevant if the camera was damaged!

Several “silent witnesses” know the truth but have been confiscated by agents.

After the Pentagon attack, the video cameras and tapes at a nearby CITGO, the Sheraton Hotel along I-395 and Virginia DOT cameras were all confiscated by the FBI and they have yet to disclose any of the contents that were recorded by those cameras.

Hotel [Sheraton] employees sat watching the film in shock and horror several times before the FBI confiscated the video as part of its investigation. It may be the only available video of the attack. The Pentagon has told broadcast news reporters that its security cameras did not capture the crash.[ii]

If this report is true, then something important was captured on that video. The FBI has never revealed the images from this camera. That was five years ago, if no images were captured, the FBI should release it and allow this matter to be put to rest.

There is a CITGO gas station located at the entrance of the Pentagon with a surveillance video camera pointing in the direction of the impact zone. This camera would have viewed the entire event. That should have ended the controversy. Velasquez, the owner of the gas station said his security cameras are close enough to the Pentagon to have recorded the moment of impact. “I’ve never seen what the pictures looked like,” since, “The FBI was here within minutes and took the film.”[iii] This indicates also that the FBI was in the vicinity of the Pentagon when it was attacked.

The Virginia Department of Transportation is housed close to the Pentagon. It has several surveillance cameras positioned to monitor freeway traffic along Interstate 395. There is reason to believe that one of those cameras captured an image of the incoming aircraft as it flew only a few feet above frightened motorists. The company that manufactures and maintains this closed circuit TV system is the Arinc Company.

The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) CCTV system used to manage the Northern Virginia freeway network had cameras in place that observed the September 11 crash site at the Pentagon. This CCTV system and the VDOT Smart Traffic Center were used as a command center for emergency responders and cleanup and recovery crews following the incident.[iv]

However, when 9/11 researchers inquired of the cameras and the videos, they denied that the cameras had “observed” any incident. And no recorded images are available.

Is there a “smoking gun” video laying somewhere in hiding or was it destroyed?

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[i] “FBI response to FOIA Request by Bronco Bingham and Attorney Hodes,” 7 March 2005, <www.flight77.info/>

[ii] Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough, “Notes from the Pentagon,” The Gertz File (The Washington Times), 21 September 2001.

[iii] Bill McKelway, “Three Months On, Tension Lingers Near the Pentagon,” Richmond Times-Dispatch, 11 December 2001.

[iv] Arinc Company website “Did you know?” ARINC, 2001, <www.arinc.com/products/rail_control_ctr/cctv_systems.html> (19 March 2006).