**EYEWITNESS ACCOUNTS: **
Boeing 757 or military craft?
Many eyewitnesses saw some kind of craft hit the Pentagon. Was what they saw a Boeing 757-200 or was it a missile?
http://www.gupistan.com/gallery/1/tomahawk2.gif
Image of tomaHawk missile
Eyewitnesses confirm having seen something fly into the Pentagon. However, their accounts differ largely when it comes to describing the nature of the aircraft in more detail.
**We heard what sounded like a missile » **
Several eyewitnesses testify to having seen a large airliner. An anonymous woman interviewed by CNN on September 11 confirms having seen “a commercial plane”. Army Captain Lincoln Liebner told the AFP: “I saw this large American Airlines passenger jet coming in fast and low.” Since our article: Pentagon: Hunt the Boeing! And test your perceptions! went on-line, many other eyewitnesses have come forward on the internet.
However, other accounts reported in the American press, immediately after the event, speak of a smaller aircraft that, in flight, was very unlike a commercial airliner, and even resembled a winged missile.
The aircraft “appeared to hold about 8 to 12 people” and “sounded like the high-pitched squeal of a fighter”, explained Steve Patterson to the Washington Post, on September 11.
«That may have been the plane. I have never seen one on that (flight) pattern»
Tom Seibert, a network engineer at the Pentagon, told the Washington Post: “We heard what sounded like a missile, then we heard a loud boom.”
«There wasn’t anything in the air, except for one airplane, and it looked like it was loitering over Georgetown, in a high, left-hand bank", explained U.S. Army Brigadier General Clyde Vaughn, director of military support, to CNN. "That may have been the plane. I have never seen one on that (flight) pattern.»
**« It was like a cruise missile with wings » **
Just after the attack, Mike Walter, journalist at USA Today, explained to the Washington Post and CNN that “it was like a cruise missile with wings”.
Danielle O’Brien, air controller at Washington’s Dulles airport, from where American Airways flight 77 took off, explained that the craft that hit the Pentagon had the speed and maneuverability of a “military plane”. Her account was published on the ABCnews site and used on the National Air Traffic Controllers Association site. We reproduce an extract of it here:
« I noticed the aircraft. It was an unidentified plane to the southwest of Dulles, moving at a very high rate of speed … I had literally a blip and nothing more. »
O’Brien asked the controller sitting next to her, Tom Howell, if he saw it too.
« I said, ‘Oh my God, it looks like he’s headed to the White House’, » recalls Howell. « I was yelling … ‘We’ve got a target headed right for the White House!’ At a speed of about 500 miles an hour, the plane was headed straight for what is known as P-56, protected air space 56, which covers the White House and the Capitol.»
« The speed, the maneuverability, the way that he turned, we all thought in
the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was
a military plane » says O’Brien. « You don’t fly a 757 in that manner. It’s unsafe. »
« The speed, the maneuverability, the way that he turned, we all thought in
the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was
a military plane »
« The plane was between 12 and 14 miles away » says O’Brien, « and it was just a countdown. Ten miles west. Nine miles west … Our supervisor picked up our line to the White House and started relaying to them the information, [that] we have an unidentified very fast-moving aircraft inbound toward your vicinity, 8 miles west. »
Vice President Cheney was rushed to a special basement bunker. White House staff members were told to run away from the building
« And it went ‘six, five, four’, And I had it in my mouth to say, three, and all of a sudden the plane turned away. In the room, it was almost a sense of relief. This must be a fighter. This must be one of our guys sent in, scrambled to patrol our capital, and to protect our president, and we sat back in our chairs and breathed for just a second », says O’Brien.
But the plane continued to turn right until it had made a 360-degree maneuver.
« We lost radar contact with that aircraft. And we waited. And we waited. And your heart is just beating out of your chest waiting to hear what’s happened, », says O’Brien. « nd then the Washington National [Airport] controllers came over our speakers in our room and said,‘Dulles, hold all of our inbound traffic. The Pentagon’s been hit.’ »
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On September 11, the State Department for Defense confirmed that a Boeing 757 had crashed on the Pentagon. Eyewitnesses indeed talk of a flying craft. But there is no absolute consensus that this craft was an airliner. Maybe the official version of events subsequently influenced eyewitness accounts. Two French newspapers, Le Monde and Libération, have both published counter-arguments to our own. Both cite Steve Patterson and Mike Walter to prove how wrong we were to doubt the Boeing 757 hypothesis. Such accounts, those first reported in the American press, should, however, open up new lines of enquiry. The first said that the aircraft «appeared to hold about 8 to 12 people»and «sounded like the high-pitched squeal of a fighter.». The second said that it «was like a cruise missile with wings.»…
This begs the question: What evidence is available to determine the nature of the craft ? Please read the article that follows: The evidence: One hole, 2 ½ yards in diameter
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