Does hard, factual, fully verified evidence support the USA
government's assertion that American Airlines Flight 77 (a Boeing 767)
crashed into the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001? I'm not talking
about circumstantial evidence such as the known fact of AA#77 having
gone missing. I'm not talking about confused and contradictory
eyewitness accounts. I'm not talking about the obvious lie told by Ted
Olson about his wife calling collect from a seatback phone.

I'm talking about full crash site evaluation and
verified, public, documented debris recovery, as well as complete
assessment of the supposed hijacker pilot's skill level - does it all
add up or not? Despite the strict exclusions of my question wording, I
am not biased and I am open to all conclusive, documented, verified,
openly inspectable evidence on this event, wherever it points.

Hello and thank you for your question.

I'm sure you're aware of the skepticism, in some circles, about the
fate of Flight 77.  For example
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/flight77.htm
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/WTC_practiced.htm

Your question is asked and answered fairly well at
Truthorfiction.com
http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/p/pentagoncrash.htm
and also at the Snopes site mentioned in the comments

I won't repeat their arguments here.  But it does appear the the
Flight 77 flight recorder was recovered at the scene, and there is
testimony (below) that the plane was tracked on radar as having turned
toward Washington before the crash.  That seems to be the most
tangible evidence that you're going to find.

Certainly the passenger list included some suspicious characters:
"All five of the American Airlines Flight 77 hijackers were selected
for security scrutiny. Hani Hanjour, Khalid al Mihdhar and Majed Moqed
were chosen via the CAPPS criteria, while Nawaf al Hazmi and Salem al
Hazmi were made selectees because they provided inadequate
identification information. Their bags were held until it was
confirmed that they had boarded the aircraft."
http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing7/9-11Commission_Hearing_2004-01-27.htm

Regarding the flight recorder:
"Information from the flight recorder recovered from Flight 77
indicated that the pilot had input autopilot instructions for a route
to Reagan National Airport. It should be noted the flight management
computer could be programmed in such a manner that it would navigate
the aircraft automatically to a location of the hijacker's choosing,
not merely a commercial airport, at a speed and altitude they desired,
provided the hijackers possessed the precise positioning data
necessary.

By using the sequence waypoints dialed into the computer, the
hijackers could also approach the target from the direction they
wanted. Financial records indicate that one of the hijackers had
purchased a global positioning system, perhaps for the purpose of
acquiring precise positioning data on al Qaeda's 9/11 targets. They
had also purchased a Boeing flight deck video and flight simulator
software program. Flight manuals were also found among their
belongings."
Id.

And the radar:
"At 9:09, Langley F-16s are directed to battle stations, just based on
the general situation and the breaking news, and the general
developing feeling about what's going on. And at about that same time,
kind of way out in the West, is when America 77, which in the meantime
has turned off its transponder and turned left back toward Washington,
appears back in radar coverage. And my understanding is the FAA
controllers now are beginning to pick up primary skin paints on an
airplane, and they don't know exactly whether that is 77, and they are
asking a lot of people whether it is, including an a C-130 that is
westbound toward Ohio. At 9:11 FAA reports a crash into the South
Tower. You can see now that lag time has increased from seven minutes
from impact to report; now it's nine minutes from impact to report.
You can only imagine what's going on on the floors of the control
centers around the country. At 9:11 -- I just mentioned that -- 9:16,
now FAA reports a possible hijack of United Flight 93, which is out in
the Ohio area. But that's the last flight that is going to impact the
ground.

At 9:24 the FAA reports a possible hijack of 77. That's sometime after
they had been tracking this primary target. And at that moment as well
is when the Langley F-16s were scrambled out of Langley.

At 9:25, America 77 is reported headed towards Washington, D.C., not
exactly precise information, just general information across the chat
logs; 9:27, Boston FAA reports a fifth aircraft missing, Delta Flight
89 -- and many people have never heard of Delta Flight 89. We call
that the first red herring of the day, because there were a number of
reported possible hijackings that unfolded over the hours immediately
following the actual attacks. Delta 89 was not hijacked, enters the
system, increases the fog and friction if you will, as we begin to
look for that. But he lands about seven of eight minutes later and
clears out of the system.

At 9:30 the Langley F-16s are airborne. They are 105 miles away from
the Washington area; 9:34, through chat, FAA is unable to precisely
locate American Airlines Flight 77; 9:35, F-16s are reported airborne.
And many times, reported airborne is not exactly when they took off.
It's just when the report came down that they were airborne. At 9:37
we have the last radar data near the Pentagon. And 9:40, immediately
following that, is when 93 up north turns its transponders off out in
the West toward Ohio, and begins a left turn back toward the East.

At 9:49, FAA reports that Delta 89, which had been reported as
missing, is now reported as a possible hijacking. So again he is --

MR.: That's 9:41, sir. 

MR. SCOTT: I'm sorry, 9:41. Again, he is in the system. He is kind of
a red herring for us.

Now, the only thing that I would point out on this chart is this says
9:43, American Airlines 77 impacts the Pentagon. The timeline on the
impact of the Pentagon was changed to 9:37 -- 9:43 is the time that
was reported that day, it was the time we used. And it took about two
weeks to discover in the parking lot of the Pentagon this entry camera
for the parking lot, which happened to be oriented towards the
Pentagon at the time of impact, and the recorded time is 9:37. And
that's why the timeline went from 9:43 to 9:37, because it is the best
documented evidence for the impact time that we have."
http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing2/9-11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-23.htm

I'll conclude by conceding that there will never be evidence
sufficient to put debates along these lines to an end.  A good search
formula to find the debate is
://www.google.com/search?q=pentagon+flight+77+recorder&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&as_qdr=all&start=10&sa=N
which yields plenty of people who do not accept that the flight
recorders were truly found at the scene.

My search terms in answering your question were:
pentagon flight 77 crash site

Thanks again for bringing us your question.

Richard-ga

Hello seeotter,

This is a very difficult question to answer with any authority.
However, I wanted to provide this link for you to investigate.

http://www.asile.org/citoyens/numero13/pentagone/erreurs_en.htm

Hunt the Boeing! And test your perceptions!

 
As everyone knows, on 11 September, less than an hour after the attack
on the World Trade Centre, an airplane collided with the Pentagon. The
Associated Press first reported that a booby-trapped truck had caused
the explosion. The Pentagon quickly denied this. The official US
government version of events still holds. Here's a little game for
you: Take a look at these photographs and try to find evidence to
corroborate the official version. It's up to you to Hunt the Boeing!


I find it very interesting that I have never seen any piece of an
aircraft taken from the Pentagon crash site!

Regards,

-=clouseau=-

You may want to follow that site up with this one ...

http://www.snopes2.com/rumors/pentagon.htm

-K~

It was announced that the flight data recorder and cockpit voice
recorder ("black boxes") from Flight 77 were found in the wreckage of
the Pentagon. That seems to me like solid evidence that the plane, as
reported, had crashed on that site.

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Sep2001/n09142001_200109142.html

For reasons of national security, detailed information from the
recorders has not yet been made public. Of course, conspiracy
theorists can always say that the recorders were planted there to make
it appear that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon when, according
to the conspiracy theorists, no such thing had happened.

It is not possible to prove the facts of a case like this to
everyone's satisfaction. There will always be those who say that
evidence was fabricated.

An eyewitness account - as you requested, it is not confused, but utterly clear.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/05/uttm/main520861.shtml

I find your answer to be excellent and informative, Richard. Thank you
for providing some thought-provoking material.

Here's my response to the so-called answer that I paid 25 USD for. I'm
not asking for a refund (you are allowed to request one). But I rated
the answer poorly. My comments appear on it are as follows.

From the official GoogleAnswer person, I received a repoint to the web page:

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/p/pentagoncrash.htm

cited as presumably definitive (I'm not going to discuss the Snopes
analysis which is laughably weak). The truthorfiction site doesn't
even come
close to examining the deep issues and contradictions that 
abound in this unsolved crime. Typically for "debunking", it simply
parrots official assertions and press releases and presents no new
independent evidence or inference whatsoever.

I'll just deconstruct a couple of examples (a number of the Q's in the
Q/A format are actually red herrings and straw men).

From the site:

"6.  "Can you find the aircraft's point of impact?

We're not sure what this question is supposed to mean.  There are
plenty of pictures that show clearly where the airplane hit the
building.  For some reason, the creators of the web site chose two of
the pictures that don't show it clearly.  Dick Bridges, the deputy
manager for Arlington County was quoted by AP on September 14, 2001,
as saying that both of the "black boxes" for flight #77 were found
"...right where the plane came into the building."  If the recorders
didn't get much beyond that, the plane not only struck the building at
that point, but the ground as well.  The cockpit voice recorder was so
badly damaged that it didn't yield any information."

This answer asserts and supports the position that the black boxes
were found at the point of impact (at or near the outer wall of the
outer ring), and "didn't get much beyond that".

Now consider the following documented exchange:

Question: "That seems to indicate that it came to rest in ring C, the nose cone."

Evey: "The plane actually penetrated through the ... E ring, D ring, C
ring. The nose of the plane just barely broke through the inside of
the C ring, so it was extending into A-E Drive a little bit. So that's
the extent of penetration of the aircraft."
-DoD News Briefing on Pentagon Renovation (9/15/01)

Now consider: How did the voice box get "stripped off" at the impact
site, when the fragile nose cone is said to have ended up penetrating
up to six heavily reinforced walls? I'm not saying there is absolutely
no possible scenario to reconcile these observations. But I am saying
that a LOT more thought and analysis needs to go into this.

Now for fun let's randomly pick another Q/A pair from that site:

3.  In response to the question of "Where is the Boeing," the answer
is "in pieces."
There was plenty of evidence of the airplane at the site including
debris from the plane, as mentioned above, the remains of the
passengers, and the cockpit data and voice recorders.  Associated
Press Military Writer Robert Burns reported on September 13,2001, 
that members of congress who had visited the Pentagon crash site were
told by rescue officials that much of the fuselage of the Boeing 757
remained intact inside the damaged Pentagon.

At the September 14th Pentagon press conference, James Schwartz,
assistant chief of the Arlington County Fire Department was
questioned:

Q: Have they been able to tell you, when they got to that part,
whether or not there were any, you know, recognizable elements that an
aircraft itself had crashed into the building, or is it all pretty
much vaporized? Are there are any -- is there a tail, is there a wing,
is there anything there? Schwartz: I certainly would not use the term
"vaporized," but there's not a lot of the aircraft that is
recognizable at all.

Compare: "much of the fuselage of the Boeing 757 remained intact
inside the damaged Pentagon" and "there's not a lot of the aircraft
that is recognizable at all".

Again, I'm not saying that these things are necessarily
irreconcilable. I'm saying that a LOT more work needs to go into
investigating and reconstructing exactly what happened, without
circumstantial preconceptions.

The citation of 5 video frames as a support for the official
hypothesis is also interesting, in that the DOD has never acknowledged
releasing those, the time stamp on them is wrong, they don't show
anything remotely resembling a Boeing 767 or its outline, and as far
as I can tell they have no status in this discussion whatsoever. These
points are not made when the video can be dropped into the discussion
as casual evidence for the USA military/government's official cartoon
"boxcutter 9-11" story, but when a detailed analysis of the video
shows that no Boeing appears in it, you'll hear a huge chorus
debunking those frames using exactly my words above. So, it's another
red herring.

I could go on and on and on. The supposed pilot Hani Hanjour had shown
little interest in learning to land a plane, and was certainly never
trained to land a Boeing 767, yet what is piloting an aircraft down a
grassy slope, level across a lawn, and horizontally into the first
floor of a building but an extremely advanced form of high-stress
'landing'? It exhibits most (not all) the elements of a landing.

These kinds of patronizing, "Move along folks there's nothing to see
here" types of debunking-the-idiotic-mass-delusions types of websites
are investing neither the evidentiary nor inferential legwork needed
to get to the bottom of this unsolved and under-analyzed crime.

For an event that has "changed everything" and propelled the United
States into a condition of Orwellian Perpetual War, I think that at
least some furhter agressively rational clean-slate investigative
effort, (rather than simply attempts to buttress one privileged and
unproven theory), is called for on the part of our (supposedly)
rabidly anti-establishment, pit-bull mainstream media.

"Crime is common but logic is rare"
--Sherlock Holmes

"One drawback of an active mind is that one can always conceive
alternate explanations which would make our scent a false one."
--Sherlock Holmes

Thanks for the excellent quote on overly active minds. 

Over-ly and under-ly used minds are equally dangerous. As is emotion.
That's why we need to rely strictly on evidence and inference.

The truthorfiction site made some hay of the fact that (supposedly)
9-11 conspiracy theorists don't mention the missing plane (if it
didn't hit the Pentagon where is it?), quote below:

"1.  If it was not American Airlines flight 77 that hit the Pentagon,
then where is the airplane and the 64 people who were aboard?
None of the conspiracy sites answers that question.  Few of them even ask it."


I would note in passing that my question does mention that fact, as
circumstantial but inconclusive evidence that can be interpreted as
favoring the USA military/government's cartoon 'boxcutter 9-11' story.
Very good - it's an indirect point in their favor.

But more deeply I would note the following. Suppose you assert that
Santa Claus exists, with all his normal trappings and functions. Then
suppose I question that assertion and suggest that your evidence isn't
good enough. If you then respond by saying "Well look - there are all
those presents under that kid's Christmas tree - explain THAT!. Why
are you not accounting for that fact, in your challenge to my Santa
Claus assertion?"

I can properly respond: The one making the assertion has the burden of
proof. The one attempting to establish a theory (btw, Al Qaida is a
conspiracy, but it's a Government-Approved Conspiracy so that's OK)
must adduce strong evidence in its support and withstand 'negative'
challenges that don't pose an alternative. That's how logic works.

As for overly-active minds, I submit that if the sheep-like
populations of 1930's Germany and Japan had been a bit more mentally
active and questioning about events and motives of their leadership in
the runup to World War II, they might not have found themselves with
their countries utterly and completely destroyed around them, in 1945.

I will follow where good evidence and inference leads me. But I'm not
getting anything conrete from this exchange. Anyway, the GoogleAnswer
person should thank me heartily - 25 good USD for a minute or two of
surf-and-paste.

-See Otter

"In some ways she was far more acute than Winston, and far less
susceptible to Party propaganda. Once when he happened in some
connexion to mention the war against Eurasia, she startled him by
saying casually that in her opinion the war was not happening. The
rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the
Government of Oceania itself, 'just to keep people frightened'. This
was an idea that had literally never occurred to him."
-- Orwell, "1984"

I did not want to spend a lot of time searching, but I recall reading
that recorders ("black boxes") are located in the TAIL of the
aircraft.  The rational was that this was the part of the aircraft
that is most likely to survive a crash.

Thanks Liner. At least that's a concrete observation.

See Otter: I empathize with you, and commend you for asking the
obvious questions that others turn away from so seemingly easily. It
sounds like you've found most of what's available on the web already,
but just in case, here's a page that I thought was very coherent,
unlike some of the others that have been listed here. It includes
eyewitness accounts, photos, and some sound logic. It's not what you
asked for exactly, but it makes the skeptic's case very well, and
includes some tidbits I haven't read elsewhere:

http://davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr7.html

Had you seen this already? What is your opinion of it?

I defy any rational person to read every article linked on the site below:

http://members.fortunecity.com/911/

as I have done, and then come back here and tell me that 9-11 should
not be more aggressively investigated by the government and media than
it has been.

I'm not saying that you have to agree with me that 9-11 was a USA
military/government inside job (though it obviously was). Keep your
own ever so wise, mature, and patronizing neutrality on that. You are
above all this trailer park conspiracy hogwash, right? You are too
smart - too "presentable, acceptable, respectable, and vegetable" to
fall for such tabloid titillation - aren't you?

But, try to keep a straight face while telling me that all questions
are now either fully answered or not worth pursuing further, and that
the media and mil/gov have done all that can be done, and that there's
nothing to be learned by any further investigation of this crime. Try
to tell me that with a straight face. Try to tell me that the supposed
greatest event since Pearl Harbor, the even that has launched the USA
into Orwellian Perpetual War, the even that "changed everything" isn't
worth talking about any more. Not worth as much ink and investigative
budget as Whitewater or OJ? Just try to tell me that.

Whoever I hear that from, I have one message for you - You are to be
congratulated. You have won the victory over yourself. You love Big
Brother.

SeeOtter: Thanks for the link. I haven't read all of the site yet, but
started to sample it. Very interesting, and very convincing, though
marred sometimes by over-reaching, which only detracts from the many
valid points. I posted a reply to one of the pages at:

http://vancouver.indymedia.org/news/2003/03/38927_comment.php#116104