Flight 93 Crash - 6

The question, in other words, is not “where are all the witnesses who saw planes crash into the World Trade Center towers?”, but rather “where are all the witnesses who didn’t see planes crash into the towers?” Where are all the people who saw the second tower explode for no apparent reason? And again, the argument that they have been silenced by the media just doesn’t cut it. We are talking here, without exaggeration, about thousands of witnesses. Have none of them blogged their stories? Have none of them approached a member of the 9-11 ‘Truth’ movement, which has been active in New York City since shortly after the attacks? Did none of the foreign tourists go home and tell their stories to a press that might be a little more willing to print such news items?

Does anyone really believe that it is possible, in this information age, to completely muzzle thousands of outraged New Yorkers? Every single one of them?! Along with, of course, the thousands of friends and family members that these witnesses would undoubtedly have told their stories to. Why are the offices of the 9-11 ‘Truth’ movement in New York not besieged on a daily basis by hordes of irate citizens who want the record set straight about the ‘fake’ plane crashes? Why are 9-11 skeptics not inundated with e-mails from those who witnessed the events live? Can any self-described 9-11 skeptic point to even a handful of such witness accounts that have surfaced in the nearly six years that we have been living in this post-911 world? How about just one such credible witness account?

And where, by the way, are the photographs and videotapes that don’t feature the insertion of the ‘fake’ planes? Even if we accept the not entirely implausible notion that all the mainstream media’s videotapes and still photographs were altered, and that the rank-and-file spectators who have released images into the public domain were actually government plants, there undoubtedly were real witnesses who captured either still or moving images of the events of that day. After all, there are a whole lot of tourists prowling through Manhattan on any given day, and tourists tend to carry cameras. The obvious question then is: where are the ‘unaltered’ images of the towers exploding without the presence of any aircraft? Where are the videos that show the very same scenes we all saw play out on September 11, except without airplanes? Surely such footage exists. Why then haven’t we seen it? Can someone please supply me with links to where I can find these provocative videos?

According to the ‘cartoon airplane’ camp, the website of the Bureau of Transportation – which, as a website administered by an agency of the federal government, is obviously a repository of The Truth – indicates that American Airlines Flights 11 and 77 did not fly on September 11, 2001. According to researcher Gerard Hologram Holmgren, writing back in November 2003,“This solves the question of what happened to them. Nothing. Because the flights did not exist.” The United Airlines flights, however, were quite real: “A search for UA flights from Newark on Sept. 11, 2001 shows 0093 to SF was scheduled at 8:00 and actually departed at 8:01 … A search for UA from Boston on that day shows 0175 to LA was scheduled for 8:00 and actually departed at 7:58.” (http://sydney.indymedia.org/print.php3?article_id=36354)

Holmgren and company later decided, of course, that all four of the flights were fake. The problem, however, is that the very same database that they claim ‘proves’ the nonexistence of Flights 77 and 11, also ‘proves’ that Flights 175 and 93 did exist. The obvious question, therefore, is: why did the conspirators choose to use ‘fake’ flight numbers for two of the ‘fake’ flights and real flight numbers for the other two ‘fake’ flights?  Why not use ‘fake’ flight numbers for all the ‘fake’ flights? Why complicate things by having half the ‘fake’ flights carry the numbers of flights that really did take off that morning (and therefore needed to be disposed of in some covert way)? Or, if the argument is to be that none of the 9-11 flights left the ground that day, then why is it that United Airlines was able to successfully list their fake flights but American Airlines was not? And why is it that while the conspirators are powerful enough to silence the media, academia, the scientific community, etc., they were not powerful enough to have had the BTS database brought into compliance with the official story before it could be ‘discovered,’ some two years after the fact, by an alleged 9-11 skeptic?

Speaking of 9-11 skeptics, it has occurred to me, while working on this post (at, I might add, a rather blistering pace that has left me feeling a bit fatigued), that perhaps the reason that the ‘truth’ movement has heaped so much scorn and derision upon both the passenger lists and the reported phone calls placed from Flight 93, is to discourage serious researchers from looking too closely at the details of those phone calls and passenger lists – for perhaps hidden in those details is something approximating the truth of what happened on September 11, 2001. And the truth, needless to say, would be a most unwelcome addition to the 9-11 ‘truth’ movement.

There are many out there in that movement, by the way, who will say that positing that there were real hijackers aboard the 9-11 flights – or even that there were real 9-11 flights – is an exercise in disinformation designed to slyly lend support to the official story. They would say such things, that is, if there were any 9-11 skeptics/scholars/researchers out there who ever commented on, denounced, praised, critiqued, linked to, shit upon, or otherwise acknowledged any of the original 9-11 research that has been posted on this site. But as we all know, there are no such persons out there, apparently because the ‘movement’ is far too busy these days discussing holographic airplanes, space-based weapons, mini-nukes, and various other avenues of ‘research’ that can collectively be described - and quite charitably, I might add - as “a steaming pile of horseshit.”

Perhaps, though, I have painted with too broad a brush here. To be fair, not everyone who hangs a “9-11 Skeptic” shingle over their door these days is pitching Star Wars weapons and cartoon airplanes, though a sizable faction does appear to be. Have I mentioned, by the way, that the most verbally aggressive member of the holographic-airplanes team, Gerard Holmgren, just happens to be the brother of David Holmgren, who appears to be, for lack of a better description, Australia’s answer to Mike “Peak Oil” Ruppert (www.holmgren.com.au/). That’s probably just one of those wacky coincidences that we occasionally stumble upon while cruising down the Conspiracy Superhighway, so we probably shouldn’t attach too much significance to the fact that ‘Peak Oil’ seems to walk hand-in-hand with other forms of 9-11 disinformation.

Anyway, as I started to say, there is another faction of the skeptics’ community that remains unimpressed with the newfangled ideas being introduced and/or endorsed by the Scholars-come-lately in the crowd. Some among this other faction, however, spend a lot of time bemoaning the fall from grace of some of the ‘old school’ skeptics like Mike Ruppert and Dan Hopsicker, who were, we are assured, the ‘real’ skeptics in the crowd. If we could just turn the clock back to the days of yore when ‘real’ investigators were steering us in the fruitful direction of, for example, Delmart “Mike” Vreeland, then we would, I guess, be making real progress. Or something like that.

Truth be told, there never were any real 9-11 skeptics who attained any prominence within the ‘skeptics’ community. The movement has been fully controlled from the very start and continues to be so today. The only thing that has changed is that the bullshit that was being shoveled by the ‘old school’ skeptics appears to have been largely replaced by the horseshit being spread by the new wave of fake skeptics. Some people seem to have a preference for one or the other. To each his own, I guess, but from where I stand, it all looks and smells about the same and I do my best to avoid stepping in either one.

To digress a bit further here, it should be noted that there is a perfectly obvious agenda behind the new wave of theories concerning the demolition of the Twin Towers. All of the newfangled theories being dumped into the marketplace of ideas – mini nukes, microwave weapons, space-based weapons, etc. – share one thing in common: unlike conventional controlled demolitions, they do not require meticulous and time-consuming planning and preparation. As such, these far-fetched scenarios serve as something of an insurance policy for the conspirators: in the unlikely event that it should ever become necessary to admit to the deliberate demolition of the towers, the powers-that-be will be able to claim that the decision to implode the towers was a spontaneous one – which was, of course, undertaken with the intention of minimizing loss of life by preventing the massive structures from toppling over and decimating a huge swath of Manhattan. It was, you know, one of those difficult decisions that we hope our fearless leaders never have to make, blah, blah, blah, and luckily they were able to whip out some previously undisclosed ‘black’ technology to do the job, yadda, yadda, yadda, so it’s actually a good thing – don’t you think? – that they brought those towers down, even if they did have to lie about it, though in retrospect we can see that that was probably for our own good, what with the wounds being so fresh and all …

And that, my friends, is how the deliberate demolition of the towers could be sold to the American people. Rest assured that, presented with such a bill-of-goods, John Q. Public would undoubtedly do what he does best: buy it and consume it with gusto.

Anyway, as I started to say before rudely digressing from my original digression, there is a very slim possibility that this post will be denounced by some 9-11 skeptics as a covert endorsement of the official story. In the unlikely event that that should come to pass, I would like to point out – preemptively, of course, because that is how we, as Americans, like to do things – that if the scenario outlined here is accurate, there are several clear indications that this had to have been an inside job:

All of these indicators of state sponsorship are, of course, in addition to the compelling evidence already reviewed in this series, including the curious collapses of three World Trade Center buildings; the absence of any convincing evidence of a passenger jet crash at the Pentagon; the wildly inappropriate responses/non-responses of the U.S. military, NORAD, the FAA, various Bush administration officials, Bush’s Secret Service detail, and, lest we forget, George Bush himself; and the apparent downing of United Airlines Flight 93, which is the topic we now return to.

One question concerning Flight 93 that begs for an answer is: what happened to the rest of the plane (and, of course, the plane’s contents, including the passengers)? Officially at least, only a small fraction of the plane was ever recovered, leaving nearly 100 tons of aircraft unaccounted for. Since it seems very unlikely that either a crash or a missile strike would have reduced nearly the entire plane to confetti, the obvious question is: what became of all the wreckage?

That, alas, is not an easy question to answer. The problem arises from the fact that the alleged ‘crash’ site, along with a large swath of the surrounding countryside, was sealed off from public view in near-record time. As one early report noted, “The curious were kept more than 3 miles from the crash site.” (Ken Zapinski “A Blur in the Sky, Then a Firestorm,” St. Petersburg Times, September 12, 2001) A veritable “army of 400 troopers, 16 mounted police officers and three helicopters” was quickly assembled to secure the perimeter of the restricted zone. (Tom Gibb “FBI Ends Site Work, Says No Bomb Used,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 25, 2001) Some residents were barred from their homes for the duration of the search. At least seven people were arrested in the first two weeks after the attacks for committing the unpardonable sin of trying to breach the perimeter to get a look at the purported final resting place of Flight 93.

The FBI was clearly quite concerned with keeping prying eyes away from the alleged crash site. What were they afraid might be seen? While the curious were kept at bay, an unknown number of FBI agents (along with, undoubtedly, various other shadowy government operatives) presumably occupied themselves with finding evidence. To aid in those efforts, “A self-piloting helicopter developed by Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute was sent to Somerset County yesterday afternoon to aid the FBI in its investigation of Tuesday’s crash of United Airlines Flight 93. The 14-foot-long helicopter is outfitted with a laser rangefinder that can quickly produce a highly detailed, three-dimensional map of the impact crater and the surrounding spread of debris … the aerial map can include objects as small as one or two inches in diameter … The aerial map may help identify key evidence faster than it might be found by physically canvassing the area.” (Byron Spice “Self-Piloting Copter from CMU Aids in Mapping Somerset Crash Site,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 13, 2001)

So the FBI was clearly also quite worried about possibly leaving some speck of evidence behind. And yet, with no shortage of manpower, technology or commitment, some 90% of the plane was allegedly never recovered. How could that be? Two possible answers come to mind: there never was any plane, or at least not one that blew up near Shanksville, Pennsylvania; or considerably more airplane wreckage was recovered than has been, or ever will be, officially acknowledged.

As previously stated, it seems reasonable to conclude that something exploded in the air over Shanksville. A fair amount of debris was recovered, much of it by rank-and-file citizens who gathered it from around their nearby homes and farms. And if there was nothing more for the government to conceal than a small crater serving as a fake crash site, then why was such a large area cordoned off? What were all those state and federal agents so diligently guarding? And what was it that searchers were looking for?

Though impossible to verify, my best guess is that they were searching for exactly what they found: large chunks of Flight 93 that came to rest far from the alleged crash site. The existence of these pieces, of course, could not be officially acknowledged since it would be difficult to explain how a light breeze could transport bulky pieces of aircraft fuselage over great distances. And it certainly wouldn’t have been difficult to ‘disappear’ the troublesome wreckage given the extraordinary level of security around the restricted zone.

Another lingering question surrounding Flight 93 concerns the precise time that it crashed/exploded. There are three relevant times to consider here: 9:58 AM, the time at which all communications from the plane reportedly ceased; 10:03 AM, the time that, according to the official story that eventually took shape, Flight 93 plowed into the ground; and 10:06 AM, the time that was initially widely reported and accepted as the time of the ‘crash,’ until the 9-11 Commission said otherwise, with the alleged CVR (cockpit voice recorder) to back up their claim.

According to one media report, “A Daily News investigation has found a roughly three-minute gap between the time the tape goes silent – according to government-prepared transcripts – and the time top scientists have pinpointed for the crash. Several leading seismologists agree that Flight 93 crashed last Sept. 11 at 10:06:05 a.m., give or take a couple of seconds. Family members allowed to hear the cockpit voice recorder in Princeton, N.J., last spring were told it stopped just after 10:03.” In the same report, we find that “’The seismic signals are consistent with impact at 10:06:05,’ plus or minus two seconds, said Terry Wallace, who heads the Southern Arizona Seismic Observatory and is considered the leading expert on the seismology of man-made events. ‘I don’t know where the 10:03 time comes from.’ Likewise, a written study commissioned by the Department of Defense – carried out by seismologists from Columbia University and the Maryland Geological Survey – also determined impact was at 10:06:05.” (William Bunch “Three-Minute Discrepancy in Tape,” Philadelphia Daily News, September 16, 2002)

There would seem, at first glance, to be a bit of a conflict between the seismic data and the official 9-11 Commission report.

In September 2002, however, the ever-popular Terry Wallace spoke with Discover Magazine and in doing so he may have unwittingly solved the mystery of the three-minute discrepancy: “’The UA flight produced a significant signal, consistent with a fully-loaded jet that was intact, or nearly intact, on impact.’ That finding disputes rumors that the hijacked jet was shot down, he says, because a missile or other explosion would have broken the craft into smaller pieces that would have caused less seismic disturbance. The Pan Am crash [sic] over Lockerbie, Scotland, which blew apart in midair, produced only a faint signal, even though the crash [sic] occurred close to an array of ground-motion sensors.” (Lauren Gravitz “Seismic Waves: The Ultimate Black Box,” Discover Magazine, September 2002)

What we know then, thanks to Mr. Wallace, is that the destruction of an airplane in the air will not produce a significant seismic signal. We also know that the vast majority of the available evidence clearly indicates that Flight 93 was indeed destroyed in the air. We can therefore safely conclude that the seismic event that occurred at 10:06:05 AM on the morning of September 11, 2001 was not directly related to the termination of Flight 93. What did produce that significant seismic signal, needless to say, was the explosion that created the legendary crater near Shanksville – an explosion that a witness described as “like an atom bomb hit.” (“Flight 93 Passenger Said He Planned Action,” ThePittsburghChannel.com, September 12, 2001)

What we are obviously dealing with here are two separate events. One of those events, the creation of the Shanksville crater, occurred at precisely 10:06:05 AM. But that tells us only that at 10:06:05 AM on the morning of September 11, 2001, some type of explosive device, likely an air-to-ground missile, was detonated on the ground near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, either to destroy a large portion of the plane that had landed there, or simply to create a crude, improvised ‘crash’ site. This would have occurred, we can reasonably infer, sometime shortly after the actual destruction of Flight 93.

We are left then with two possible times for that event: 9:58 AM and 10:03 AM. Unfortunately though, dear readers, I don’t really have the time right now to delve into such picayune details. The problem, alas, is that I inadvertently stumbled upon a completely different avenue of research and it has proven rather difficult to pry myself away from that venture. But I have no doubt that I will, at some point in time, return to the 9-11 saga to address some additional issues.