The following is a response to the "joint statement" about The Pentagon issued by David Chandler and Jonathan Cole around January 1, 2011. The text of Chandler and Cole's essay appears in full in black. Comments from Craig Ranke of Citizen Investigation Team (CIT) appear in bold red font. Published February 3, 2011.

(If you have not yet done so, please read the short preface here before continuing.)

The Pentagon

A joint statement by David Chandler and Jonathan Cole

Overwhelming Evidence of Insider Complicity

If you watch our videos and read the links on this site you will understand why we assert that the weight of the evidence points to the fact that 9/11 was orchestrated by insiders…

with access to high tech military-grade nano-energetic materials (aka nano-thermite)
with access to the infrastructure of some of the most highly secure buildings in New York over an extended period of time
with the expertise to accomplish the most difficult demolitions in history
with the ability to manage public perception of the event despite numerous contrary contemporaneous eyewitness reports
with the ability to coordinate the take-downs of the twin towers with the airplane flights
with the ability to coordinate with the military to not intercept the airplane flights
with the ability to stage a highly coordinated cover-up, starting on the day of 9/11 itself
with the ability to prevent ANY investigation for many months
with the ability to stage-manage fraudulent investigations once the demand grew too loud (the 9/11 Commission report the NIST reports)

All of this evidence comes from the investigation of the World Trade Center, based on public evidence and the laws of physics. The evidence is overwhelming, consistent, persuasive, and broadly agreed upon by the “scientific wing” of the 9/11 Truth Movement. The concrete physical and video evidence leading to these conclusions narrows the field of possible perpetrators significantly.

While I have been convinced for years that the towers and Building 7 were brought down by controlled demolition, I don't feel that I have personally looked closely enough at the research to say for sure that nano-thermite was used. I have frankly become a little skeptical of it simply because a few of the main proponents have launched unprovoked, sustained, and extremely dishonest attack campaigns against CIT, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, and our work, most notably Jim Hoffman and Frank Legge. But again, I simply have not had time to go over all of the sometimes-pretty-technical research closely enough to have a strong opinion on it one way or the other. We have praised people like Jonathan Cole for their work in this area.

I agree with everything else stated here.

The Pentagon

There are also anomalies in the events at the Pentagon. The biggest anomalies, in our opinion , have gotten some of the least attention.

How could the Pentagon, the hub of the US military, have been so poorly defended that it could be hit in the first place, after the buildings in New York City had already been hit and other hijacked planes were known to still be in the air?
Why was Norman Minetta’s testimony about Cheney’s response to the approach of the aircraft discounted in the 9/11 Commission report?
Why was the target the newly reinforced west face of the building, occupied primarily by accountants that were tracing down what happened to the missing trillions of dollars announced just a few days earlier?
Why would the purported hijackers perform a difficult spiral descent to hit the face of the Pentagon that had the least number of people in it, and was opposite from the offices of the Pentagon high command?
Why would the purported hijackers risk mission failure by choosing a difficult ground level approach when they could have simply dived into the building?
How could an untrained pilot have performed the difficult maneuvers? Was the plane flown by some kind of automatic controls and/or guided by a homing beacon?

I don't agree that these “anomalies” have gotten “some of the least attention”. These issues are pretty much common knowledge among people who have looked into 9/11, from “truthers” to “debunkers”. They are featured prominently in many of the most popular “9/11 truth” documentaries, books, and websites, and have been for years. We have never tried to stop people from exploring these issues, and in fact our work (as well as the work of others) makes it clear what the answer to most of these questions is: Because the Pentagon attack was a false flag operation in the vein of Operation Northwoods, involving a plane swap and simulated plane crash.

Instead of these important questions, from very early on the focus has centered on what hit the Pentagon.

It is true that from “very early on” many people looked at the photographs of the Pentagon shortly after the alleged impact and felt that the damage was inconsistent with a 757 crash. It is also true that many people in this category jumped to the conclusion that some OTHER airborn craft/missile/etc must have hit instead, and thus theorized about “what hit”.

However, "what hit" is not a question that CIT has ever focused on or promoted. We have only found evidence for a single low-flying craft on the scene at the moment of the explosion: a large commercial-looking aircraft that was banking to its right on the north side of the gas station and therefore could not have hit the light poles or the building. The very question of "what hit" the Pentagon assumes that something did, while it is well known that we are convinced from our investigation that nothing (i.e. no airborn object/craft including the one seen by the witnesses) "hit" at all, and that the damage was caused by pre-planted explosives. We have been very explicit about this for years. (Chandler and Cole basically acknowledge that this is our view later in the essay.)

In fact, we feel that the Department of Defense purposely tried to lead 9/11 skeptics who were already correctly questioning the damage to the building down this incorrect "what hit" path. For example, we do not think that the alleged "leak" of the dubious five frames video was a real "leak" at all, but rather a deliberate disinformation campaign to get people to focus on missile and drone theories of "what hit". Likewise for Donald Rumsfeld's supposed slip of the tongue during an interview with Parade Magazine shortly after 9/11, where he is quoted as mentioning "the missile" which "damaged this building" (the Pentagon). The DoD itself mirrored a copy of this interview where Rumsfeld made this supposed gaff on their own website, and they have kept it online there for years, even to this day, helping to fuel the proliferation of missile theories.

The nearly unanimous testimony of over a hundred eyewitnesses, is that a large aircraft, consistent with a 757, flew very low at very high speed, clipped several light poles, and crashed into the face of the Pentagon at ground level. Still, speculation persists that the Pentagon was hit by something else, such as a Global Hawk or a cruise missile. The eyewitness testimony is consistent with the pattern of damage both inside and outside of the Pentagon. Read through the many eyewitness accounts.

Let's take this section a little out of order. They say:

Still, speculation persists that the Pentagon was hit by something else, such as a Global Hawk or a cruise missile.

It is true that "speculation persists that the Pentagon was hit by something else, such as a Global Hawk or a cruise missile". However, again, CIT does not promote these theories, and we have been vocal for years about the fact that we have found no independent, verifiable evidence to support them. Confirming or refuting these theories (and all theories) about what happened at the Pentagon on 9/11 was the whole reason we launched an independent investigation in the first place.

But let's look at the rest of this section. Again, Chandler and Cole say:

The nearly unanimous testimony of over a hundred eyewitnesses, is that a large aircraft, consistent with a 757, flew very low at very high speed, clipped several light poles, and crashed into the face of the Pentagon at ground level. [...] The eyewitness testimony is consistent with the pattern of damage both inside and outside of the Pentagon. [1] Read through the many eyewitness accounts [2].

[1]. 911research.wtc7.net/essays/pentagontrap.html
[2]. arabesque911.blogspot.com/2007/04/911-and-pentagon-attack-what.html
[Note from Craig/CIT: In the original Chandler/Cole essay, the two bold and underlined phrases are hyperlinks to these URLs. I have changed the format to footnotes here]

Absolutely false. Cole and Chandler do not even TRY to make a case for this. They do not even cite a single witness in their article, let alone quote any and explain how those witnesses supposedly support their claim.

Instead, they simply link to a blog entry by “Arabesque”, an anonymous blogger who appeared on the scene (internet) around the time that we launched our investigation and released The PentaCon (so circa late 2006/early 2007) and promptly began writing dishonest, convoluted attack articles against us, and who has been conspicuously absent from blogging for about a year and a half now.

In actuality, the "many eyewitness accounts" presented by Arabesque in the blog entry that Chandler and Cole cite are not full or even remotely full "accounts" at all, but snippets, and they are often unsourced, out-of-context, misleading, misattributed, and/or even doctored. The compilation of snippets has 659 footnotes to give it the appearance of thoroughness, but when one actually views the reference section they will notice that the vast majority of the footnotes are simply the name of a witness (or alleged witness) with NO link to, or even the name of, the source document so that the reader can easily view the snippet in context and verify what "Arabesque" provides. In some cases the people named are not witnesses at all, or the quotes attributed to them were actually written or uttered by someone else. To better understand what I mean, see for example this thread where we analyzed his section of supposed "light pole" witnesses.

We have repeatedly pointed these "errors" out to Arabesque and his/her/its promoters such as Chandler and Cole's Pentagon attack co-mentor Victoria Ashley (Jim Hoffman's wife) in the past, and yet "Arabesque" has failed to correct this disinformation for years, and they still promote it heavily to this day.

What is very clear is that there is a consistent and blatant ongoing cover-up at the Pentagon.

Yes, this is very clear. Why would they go to such great lengths?

Why did they confiscate and sequester ALL videos of the attack within the first hours, or in some cases even minutes, of the attack?

Why have they refused to release the majority of the videos?

Why were the Citgo video and Pentagon Gatecam videos that they did release manipulated?

Why have they denied that they even have any other clear videos of the impact, even though this is transparently absurd on its face, and there are even images from 9/11 showing cameras on top of the Pentagon?

Why have they released fraudulent data allegedly from a Flight Data Recorder (FDR) allegedly found inside the Pentagon which shows the plane too high to be physically capable of diving down to hit light pole #1 and level off to impact the generator trailer and enter the building low and level as required by the physical damage?

Why have they released fraudulent 84 RADES data which misrepresents where both the attack jet and the C-130 flew and when?

Why have they not acknowledged the location of the light poles in any official reports?

Why does the Virginia Department of Transportation claim that they have no documentation of the location of the light poles that were down on 9/11 and later replaced?

Why did they release the 9-1-1 tapes in New York, but not in Arlington/DC?

And so forth.

Could it be because the plane flew north of the Citgo gas station, as independently confirmed by all known witnesses who were in a position to see the station and judge this (over a dozen), including ALL known witnesses ON the gas station property, did not hit the light poles, and did not hit the Pentagon?

Chandler calls this notion "bizarre", "totally out of left field", and "not even remotely plausible"(Jan 2011 interview with John Bursill). Instead, he suggests that perhaps this is all part of a deliberate plan by the perpetrators to convince us that the plane didn't hit when it actually did. What luck for those perpetrators that all of these witnesses had the same false memory of where the plane flew in the final seconds just dozens of yards from them, and that so much of the physical evidence ended up suggesting that their matching "false" memories are right too (see below).

Those INSIDE the Pentagon have all the physical evidence and all the confiscated videos.

This is misleading. Yes, they do have control of the physical evidence and the confiscated videos, but this does not mean that none of the physical evidence is documented. For example, there is photographic and/or video evidence establishing/documenting:

the location of the downed light poles, and thus the south of Citgo (SoC) flight path required for the AA77 light pole and Pentagon impact theory that David Chandler and Jonathan Cole find so plausible and well-supported by the evidence. (The one that is independently and unanimously contradicted by eyewitnesses in a position to see where the plane flew in relation to the Citgo.)
the location and appearance of the C-ring hole.
that the base of at least one of the downed light poles was perfectly smooth, as though the damage had been prefabricated by a torch.
that the damage was at ground level.
that there was a lack of significant damage to the foundation despite the ASCE depicting the left engine of the plane burrowing into it.
the lack of damage to the lawn along the official flight path.
that the light poles, trees, and other obstacles on the north side flight path were completely in tact.
the lack of damage to Lloyde England's hood, despite the fact that his windshield was allegedly speared by the bulk of a 40+ foot light pole which was allegedly hit by an 82 ton Boeing jet traveling 530 miles per hour while England was traveling about 40 miles per hour in the opposite direction.
a large scratch in the road leading up to light pole #1 coming from the opposite direction of the plane, which jives with the notion that the downed light poles were staged.
etc.

And yes, there is even photographic evidence of a small amount of semi-recognizable parts which have never been positively identified as belonging to AA77, and also a significant amount of unrecognizable scraps of debris on the helipad.

They undoubtedly have the definitive proof of what hit the Pentagon, and how it was done, but they are not saying.

The statement presupposes that something hit the Pentagon. As I have already explained, I do not agree with this premise. We were only able to find independent, verifiable evidence for one low-flying object on the scene at the moment of the attack/explosion – a large commercial-type plane. We have conclusive evidence that this plane did not hit the building.

The problem with focusing on a protest of the Pentagon cover-up is that the population at large attributes to the military the right to keep secrets. Secrecy in wartime is understandable, if it is in furtherance of military objectives. It is not reasonable that the military should be allowed to extend this privilege to the cover-up of evidence of a monstrous crime, but the fact is, they can get away with it. The population is not willing to second guess military prerogative in matters like this. Therefore despite the absolutely blatant cover-up of the facts of 9/11 at the Pentagon, there is no public outrage, and there is no reasonable possibility that the public can be aroused on this issue.

Considering that the vast majority of the "truth movement" does NOT support the theory that AA77 hit the Pentagon, I think it is safe/fair/accurate to say that there is, in fact, just about as much public outrage about the Pentagon cover-up as there is the WTC cover-up (Chandler and Cole themselves admit later in the essay that it is "popular belief" that AA77 did not hit). But also, contrary to how Chandler and Cole frame things here, it is not just the "absolutely blatant cover-up of the facts of 9/11 at the Pentagon" which outrages millions around the world -- it is the evidence that we DO have which indicates that it was in fact a false flag operation. In fact, it is clear that more and more people are "aroused on this issue" each day by this evidence. This is why their next statement is so wrong...

Therefore the Pentagon is a dead-end for research. The puzzle of the Pentagon might be fascinating or intriguing, but as an avenue to determining the truth, it seems doomed to failure. The ones who want it covered up literally hold all the cards.

This is not true. There is an abundance of credible evidence in the public domain, some of which we have personally obtained and published, which establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that there was a large plane on the scene, that it flew over the Navy Annex, north of the Citgo gas station while banking to its right, did not strike any light poles, did not hit the Pentagon, continued on, and was seen flying away by multiple eyewitnesses. "The ones who want it covered up" did not hold these "cards".

Fortunately the evidence at the World Trade Center makes the investigation at the Pentagon almost irrelevant.

By that logic I could say the same of the World Trade Center evidence in light of the overwhelming evidence proving that the Pentagon attack was a false flag operation, but it would be foolish for me to do so, because there is clearly a strong synergy. Any evidence which proves a key element of the “official story” false only lends more credibility to other such evidence. The evidence we have uncovered doesn't make investigation into the World Trade Center “almost irrelevant”. It bolsters it and makes it even more important. And vice versa.

If anything essentially new (and verifiable) can be discovered at the Pentagon, fine, but the sparseness of information and the thoroughness of the cover-up at the Pentagon makes it an unlikely venue for significant new findings.

CIT has made "significant new findings" since the launch of our investigation which prove that 9/11 was a false flag black operation, and David Chandler and Jonathan Cole do not demonstrate otherwise in this ridiculous essay. That is why it is "very popular" for people to support us, as David Chandler himself admits.

The Honey Pot

On the other hand the mystery that surrounds the Pentagon makes it an attractive target of speculation and the subject of truly wild conspiracy theories.

This is a true statement, but also an empty one. The same is true of other aspects of the 9/11 attack as well. For example, “the mystery that surrounds” the WTC attack makes it “an attractive target of speculation and the subject of truly wild conspiracy theories”, as Cole and Chandler themselves note in the next breath. The fact that some people out there espouse unsubstantiated alternative theories does not discount ALL alternative theories. This is simple logic which one would think people like Cole and Chandler would be easily capable of. What matters is what the evidence proves.

(This kind of attractive diversion is sometimes called a “honey pot,” a “setup” to be discredited at a later time.) This is not the only instance of theories that seem designed to be easily discredited. There are groups that insist the towers at the World Trade Center were taken down by space lasers. Others claim no planes hit the Twin Towers at all: they were just holograms..

Right. See above.

What better way to tar the movement than to seed it with absurdly false theories that fuel a media circus, while making the Movement look ridiculous?

Sure, this is a good strategy for opponents of "the Movement" (including "the perps" themselves), generally speaking. However, since we have proof that the plane did not hit the Pentagon, the north side approach and flyover "theory" -- and the more general "theory" that the damage at the Pentagon was not caused by the impact of a large plane including AA77 -- are not examples of this. Far from being "absurdly false", they are demonstrably true. Not to mention widely accepted by the 9/11 truth movement (see next section).

Despite popular belief, the physical evidence does not rule out that possibility that it was American Airlines Flight 77 that actually crashed into the Pentagon.

Note how Chandler and Cole are admitting here that it is a "popular belief" that AA77 did NOT crash into the Pentagon. Presumably they mean within the "9/11 Truth Movement". I agree, this is clearly the case.

Confidently asserting otherwise, then being proven wrong and discredited for sloppy research, would be disastrous for the credibility of the solid science-based research at the World Trade Center.

It's really hypocritical for Chandler and Cole to be warning of "sloppy research" in the context of this particular essay, which is riddled with false and/or misleading statements, if not outright lies, and is in some places sloppy to the point that it is almost unbelievable that they could publish something so ignorant or dishonest.

I agree that "sloppy research" hurts credibility, but in the case of this particular essay/"joint statement", David Chandler and Jonathan Cole's sloppy research into the Pentagon attack mainly hurts the credibility of David Chandler and Jonathan Cole, not the body WTC research at large. Fortunately I don't think it really even undermines most of their own work on the WTC, which from what I have seen is, like our Pentagon research, largely "open-source" (i.e. does not require one to "take their word for it"). Regardless, there isn't a shoddy hit-piece that they can write which will make the towers and Building 7 seem to have fallen down as the result of a purely gravity-driven collapse.

Why, then, the strenuous push to focus the attention of the Truth Movement onto the Pentagon? Does it sound too cynical to suggest that we are being intentionally set up?

There seems to be a much more "strenuous push" to encourage, manipulate, and browbeat people into ignoring the Pentagon. For example, in this very essay, even though they state that there are "important questions" regarding the Pentagon attack, they go on to call investigation into the Pentagon attack an "almost irrelevent" "dead-end for research" that is "doomed to failure".   In his recent interview with John Bursill, he called it "a distraction". To the same end, Chandler and Cole's cohorts (and recently Chandler himself) attack CIT and others who reject the notion that the plane hit the Pentagon pretty much daily on sites like 911Blogger while denying their targets "right of reply", and indeed banning or censoring virtually anyone with the knowledge and inclination to defend us from the constant lies and distortions, or even just repeatedly expresses strong support for us.

On the other hand, we sure as hell are not trying to stop people from investigating the WTC -- or Shanksville or other facets of 9/11 -- and exposing the evidence.   Nor COULD we even if we did want to in the case of the WTC (which we don't). NO ONE could. The "Truth Movement" will NEVER ignore the WTC, nor should "it".

We must remember that we are in a situation where nearly 3000 people were murdered in a day not counting the thousands who have died since, and millions killed in the resulting wars. If agencies of the US government really are complicit, which the evidence shows to be the case, then the people who really know what happened are playing for keeps. Any movement with real potential for arriving at incriminating truth will certainly be highly infiltrated. This is not paranoia: it is a simple fact. The 9/11 Truth Movement must respond by policing itself and holding itself to the highest standards of intellectual rigor..

I couldn't agree more. We have much higher standards of intellectual rigor on this subject than the relatively small but aggressive clique of CIT detractors who purport to be part of the "The 9/11 Truth Movement". We also have higher levels of honesty, forthrightness, sincerity, and conviction.   This is why we have challenged many of the people who have written fraudulent attack pieces against us to debate us directly. It is no surprise that most, such as Jim Hoffman (an apparent Pentagon mentor to Chandler and Cole) , 911Blogger moderator Erik Larson, "Cosmos", Michael Wolsey, "SnowCrash" aka Michiel de Boer, etc., fail to debate us when invited, opting instead to launch dishonest attacks on websites where they know that we cannot respond directly. If they were "intellectually rigorous" and sincere they would have jumped at the opportunity to get to "expose" us and corner us in our supposed "con" artist lies. Common sense will tell you this.

It is no coincidence that after becoming the first of the aforementioned clique to agree to a public debate after months of sustained attacks against us online, John Bursill conceded pretty much every major point, and ultimately defeat in that debate. Of course, not long afterwards he went right back to attacking us, despite his promises to stop and his admissions that he and his comrades were out of line.

This is also why we have been banned from 911Blogger for years for no valid reason. We can successfully rebut this clique's bogus attacks. Plain and simple.

Later in this rebuttal I will challenge David Chandler and Jonathan Cole to have a public debate/discussion with me. Do readers think they will jump at this opportunity to "police" us and expose our "foolish theory" while demonstrating their superior "intellectual rigor"?

CIT (Citizen Investigation Team)

It is sometimes hard to tell the difference between simply foolish theories and intentionally planted foolish theories. The difference is generally speculative. The wisest policy is to avoid foolish theories altogether.

I agree with these statements generally speaking, but as the rest of their essay reveals, Chandler and Cole are making these statements in the context of attempting to characterize the north side approach and flyover as "foolish" when it is nothing of the sort.

I'd also like to note here how Chandler seems to be trying to play both sides of this issue. He is implying here that the flyover "theory" is "foolish", and in recent interview with John Bursill he called it "bizarre", "totally out of left field", and "not even remotely plausible". Meanwhile, he (falsely/misleadingly) claimed above that "The nearly unanimous testimony of over a hundred eyewitnesses, is that a large aircraft, consistent with a 757, flew very low at very high speed, clipped several light poles, and crashed into the face of the Pentagon at ground level... The eyewitness testimony is consistent with the pattern of damage both inside and outside of the Pentagon."

Yet in the same interview with Bursill he said:

"what happened at the Pentagon is a mystery" (59:04)
"it appears that the damage to the light poles is consistent with the kind of plane that American Airlines Flight 77 was all about. So in other words it seems plausible and I'm just arguing on plausibility here I'm not saying 'this is what happened" (1:06:23)
"My position in this is not that I am trying to say exactly what happened, I'm trying to say it is plausible for a plane like Flight 77 to actually hit the Pentagon and do the damage that's seen" (1:15:20)

Only arguing plausibly? Not trying to say exactly what happened? "A mystery"? Does he accept that there was in fact a large, low-flying plane on the scene, and that a large explosion occurred at the time that it reached the building, as reported by scores of witnesses? It seems clear that he does. If he doesn't, I'd love to hear why. If he does, there are really only two options here: it flew over or it didn't. If the notion of a flyover is "foolish", "totally out of left field", "bizarre", and "not even remotely plausible" then what's left? Seems like he is simply trying to pander to the overwhelming majority of the truth movement who don't buy the notion that a large plane (which was on the scene), let alone AA77, hit the building, while simultaneously acting like they're crazy.

The generally accepted story regarding the Pentagon is that American Airlines Flight 77 was hijacked and flown to Washington DC, did a very difficult downward spiral maneuver, approached the Pentagon flying essentially eastward along Columbia Pike, descended to very low altitude, knocked over several light poles, damaged a generator sitting on the Pentagon lawn, crashed into the west face of the Pentagon at ground level, at very high speed, and created a trail of damage inside the outer three rings of the Pentagon in perfect alignment with the exterior trail of destruction..

Here Chandler and Cole are simply repeating the official impact narrative (adding in that the "downward spiral maneuver" was "very difficult"), but who are they suggesting it has been "generally accepted" by? Earlier in the essay they state that the notion that AA77 did NOT hit is "popular belief", and in a recent interview with John Bursill Chandler said that it was "very popular" to "jump on board" with CIT. That can only mean that now they are stating the official impact narrative that they just laid out is "generally accepted" by the public at large, who obviously support the official story in all aspects, including the notion that the WTC towers simply collapsed. What's the point?

Enter CIT, the Citizen Investigation Team. This grass-roots-sounding organization....

Calling us a “grass-roots-sounding organization” is clearly meant to falsely imply that we really aren't one, or else at least plant that idea in the readers head. This kind of innuendo is repeated within this unprovoked mis-or-dis-information-filled assault. This particular line (calling us “grass roots sounding”) was devised by Jim Hoffman, whose attacks against us Chandler and Cole repeatedly parrot elsewhere in this hollow attack piece as well.

This highly abridged narrative told by Chandler and Cole, which jumps right from what is essentially a re-telling of the official impact story to CIT's "entrance", ignores the fact that for years millions of people around the world were already strongly doubting that AA77 or any large plane had struck the Pentagon on 9/11. In fact, many people were already fully convinced that this was not the case. As a result of the evidence that was already available raising these questions, we were driven to know for sure what the truth of the matter was, which is why we launched our investigation and traveled to Arlington. We did not simply come out of nowhere questioning an otherwise universally accepted AA77 impact story. People like Chandler who believe that a large plane which may well have been AA77 hit the Pentagon (as he clearly implies, despite his efforts to play both sides of the issue) have been in the extreme minority for years within the "Truth Movement", and still are to this day.

[CIT]] consists essentially of two individuals from California who fly back to Washington, conduct interviews with a number of witnesses on video who reconstruct the flight paths (from memory, years after the event) as being significantly further to the north than the generally accepted flight path.

This is true, but Chandler and Cole's attempt to downplay the credibility of the north side flight path described and illustrated by the witnesses seen in National Security Alert and others by noting that we conducted our interviews with them "years after the event" is #1 misleading (i.e., it's either a deliberate lie by omission or inexcusably ignorant) and #2 hypocritical. In a similar vein, they later state that "the witnesses accounts [that CIT presents] are far from contemporaneous with the events".

In National Security Alert at the 16:08 mark we clearly explain that: "Many of these same witnesses were officially recorded by the Center for Military History or the Library of Congress only weeks after the event placing the plane in the same location. This eliminates the notion that their accounts are inaccurate due to faded memory due to the amount of time between the event and their recorded independent interviews a few years later."

Throughout the presentation we cite the specific Center for Military History (CMH) catalogue numbers for each witness who was interviewed by one them, and the date that their official interview was recorded.

We also explain that Sgt. Lagasse is on record as far back as 2003 stating in an interview to Dick Eastman that he was on the "starboard" side of the aircraft, which means it was on the north side.

Did Chandler and Cole even pay attention to the video that they are so harshly attacking??

Furthermore, we even have an entire page on our website where we provide the names, interview dates, and links to read or listen to the official interviews, as well as witness quotes from the these official interviews where they describe the north side flight path just weeks after the event. http://www.citizeninvestigationteam.com/official-interviews.html

This is not buried or hidden on our site at all. It is linked to right on the Evidence page with the heading "Official Interviews" and an explanation of the page's contents. Go to our site and see how long it takes you to find it: http://www.citizeninvestigationteam.com

Didn't Chandler and Cole saying something about "sloppy research"?

Furthermore, despite the fact that Chandler and Cole seem to be trying to cast doubt on the credibility of our interviews with eyewitnesses by noting that we conducted them "years after the event" and "far from contemporaneous with the events", they hypocritically go on to promote a website containing interviews conducted several years AFTER our interviews, calling it "a great witness resource".

A north flight path is inconsistent with the trail of damage, both inside and outside the Pentagon, so this flight path would require that all the damage was intentionally and elaborately faked. CIT then asserts that since the north flight path is inconsistent with the damage in the building, the plane did not actually hit the building. Instead it pulled up and flew over the Pentagon perfectly timed with an explosion set off in the Pentagon.

This is one of the few reasonably fair and accurate statements in the entire essay. It indicates that they fully understand that a plane on the north side cannot possibly have caused the physical damage.

This has been readily admitted even by most of our most staunch detractors over the years as well, from alleged "truth movement" members to JREFers, including Chandler and Cole's apparent mentors on this issue like Frank Legge, Jim Hoffman, and the anonymous Arabesque.

However, just to be clear, one thing I do want to address here is the notion that the damage was "elaborately faked". This isn't totally accurate language. Not all of the damage was "faked", especially the damage to the Pentagon itself. There was a massive explosion and fireball which killed 125 people on the ground and damaged the building. The operation was designed to deceive people about the cause of the damage, but the damage itself was real. Much like at the WTC.

The plane was hidden by the explosion as it flew off and blended in with general air traffic. (How the passengers were disposed of is a question they don’t consider.)

Now Chandler and Cole are simply telling the reader what we allegedly have or haven't considered without bothering to ask us or to even peruse the Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) section on our website. Indeed the very first FAQ on our page addresses this question as best as we can and cites the Operation Northwoods documents as a precedent. It's very disappointing that they would actually speak for us without ever having the courtesy to reach out to us and ask us a single question at all, or even browse our website apparently. Either they felt they could read our minds, they had an agenda to smear us even if it meant making things up, or they have simply made reckless assumptions while failing to research them. I'd prefer to believe the latter, though none of these options are particularly encouraging given that these people are supposed movement leaders warning against "sloppy research" and calling for "intellectual rigor".

Interestingly, nearly all of the people they interview are certain that the plane hit the building and none directly confirm the flyover hypothesis..

First, as Chandler and Cole agreed earlier in the essay, it's impossible for a plane on the north side to cause the physical damage. Since physics (science) proves that this is the case, anyone who places the plane on the north side implicitly confirms a flyover, much like how the freefall of WTC7 confirms that it was brought down in a controlled demolition, even without direct testimony to the bombs being planted.

Second, we present at least one witness on record (Roosevelt Roberts Jr) who saw the "commercial aircraft" flying away "like it missed the wrong target" at "less than 100 feet" altitude "ten seconds tops" after the explosion, as well as evidence that others reported this immediately after the explosion (as attested to by Erik Dihle). This certainly does "directly confirm the flyover", even if Roosevelt himself did not understand the implications of what he saw at the time.

Regarding Chandler and Cole's statement that "nearly all of the people [CIT] interview are certain that the plane hit the building", they themselves acknowledge the fact that the north side approach and impact are mutually exclusive claims. All of them being independently mistaken about the north side approach given their various excellent vantage points would require simultaneous matching hallucinations. All of them being deceived about the plane hitting the building would require deliberate deception on the part of the same perpetrators who deliberately deceived people around the world into thinking that the towers weren't being blown up before their very eyes. This isn't rocket science, or even high school physics.

Furthermore, while they each had an excellent view of the plane as it passed by them at treetop level, many of the witnesses in question did not have a clear view of the impact point, or in some cases any view of the Pentagon at all, and/or they admit to running, flinching, or ducking for cover. This is explained and documented very clearly in National Security Alert.

For example:

"No one was really trying to look see if it actually was gonna hit the building or not hit the building. So everyone was running in the opposite direction for their lives"
- Darius Prather, ANC maintence worker

We sent our DVD The PentaCon to Sgt. Lagasse and Sgt. Brooks, and they stuck by the north side flight path, even AFTER being made aware of the implications. Sgt. Brooks called our video an "eye-opener", and admitted that "anything is possible" in terms of him being fooled about the impact. (This too is explained in National Security Alert). We also sent Arlington National Cemetary worker and eyewitness Darrell Stafford copies of The North Side Flyover and National Security Alert, and we know from a recent CNN piece that Mr. Stafford is sticking to the north side approach as well, which is not surprising because he is on record saying the same thing since 2001 and is corroborated by the witnesses in the absolute best locations to confirm or refute this detail out of the entire witness pool, proving that 9/11 was an inside job.

The best they can do is elicit sketches of northerly flight paths that actually differ significantly from each other.

There is so much wrong with this small sentence that it's hard to know where to start. The fact that Chandler and Cole failed to source these "sketches" or provide an image to support the assertion that they "differ significantly from each other" speaks volumes. A lack of quotes, links, sources, or substantiation for their claims is commonplace throughout this attack piece.

Here are the "sketches":

As seen in our video National Security Alert, these were drawn by eyewitnesses themselves on camera during our interviews with them, as they stood in the exact locations from which they witnessed the plane on 9/11.

These are not just any witnesses, however. These sketches were drawn by witnesses who were in key locations to judge where the plane flew in relation to the Navy Annex and Citgo station -- areas 1, 2, 3, and 4 in the image below.

As explained in National Security Alert, it would be very difficult for any one of these witnesses to get the location of the plane in relation to the Navy Annex and/or gas station wrong given their vantage points, especially the witnesses who were actually on the station property, who were in the best location out of the entire witness pool to judge which side the plane flew on with accuracy. The notion that they are all simultaneously incorrect about this general detail in the same way is not even remotely conceivable. And again, some of them are on record just weeks after the event placing the plane in the same location.

Here is a composite of the various "sketches" above, which, again, Chandler and Cole fail to supply (click image to open larger version in a new window):

Despite Chandler and Cole's claim that the paths drawn by the witnesses "actually differ significantly from each other", the illustrations are all well within a reasonable margin of error of each other considering the witnesses' different vantage points. What is clear if you watch their on-location interviews is that even if they understandably aren't able to nail the planes exact flight path down to the foot, they are not incorrect about the general placement of the plane on the north side of the station.

As Sgt. Lagasse explained:

Chandler and Cole's statement that "elicit[ing] sketches" is "the best [we] can do" is so obviously false that we can only marvel at the extremely level of dishonesty or ignorance necessary to make it. We did not simply "elicit sketches" from these witnesses: We interviewed most of them in great detail on camera in the exact location from which they witnessed the plane on 9/11, and released the interviews in long form. Everyone knows this. The "sketches" simply further clarify the flight path as described by the witnesses on-location in these very detailed interviews.

They compile their thirteen interviews in a feature-length video called “National Security Alert” (with an eyebrow-raising acronym shared with the National Security Agency: NSA), then further cherry-pick their witnesses and present the four who are most in agreement with their own views, and add a musical sound track for a second video they call their “Smoking Gun” version.

The innuendo isn't remotely subtle here. They are falsely implying that we have connections with the government simply due to fact that the initials of our video match with the initials of a government agency. The reality is the opposite: We deliberately chose that title to reclaim the phrase "National Security Alert" from those in government who have used it to terrorize Americans, and we'd be happy if we could reclaim the NSA acronym from them as well. We are not the first to do this kind of thing. For example, a few years ago there was the Project for a New American Citizen (PNAC), which hosted lectures from people like Steven Jones. Is that name and acronym "eyebrow-raising" as well? Please.

What's worse is they are mangling the very well-known timeline of the release dates of our presentations (release years, actually). In doing so they once again demonstrate astounding ignorance of -- or dishonesty about -- the evidence we have released. "The PentaCon (Smoking Gun Version)" was our initial presentation released in February of 2007. This is why it only included four witnesses. Our investigation continued, we spoke to more and more witnesses, and over the next couple years we released numerous full-length videos and video shorts centered around these newer interviews. Eventually, in June of 2009, almost 2 1/2 years AFTER The PentaCon, we released National Security Alert, which is a concise presentation pulling together much of the key evidence we had obtained proving a north side approach and flyover, including some of the older and newer interviews.

Naturally this means that the premise that we "further cherry-pick[ed]" the four witnesses from National Security Alert who "are most in agreement with [our] own views" for The PentaCon is a total falsehood. Furthermore, we did not "cherry-pick" witnesses who were "in agreement with our views" for National Security Alert in the first place. "Our views" about the north side approach came after and as a result of our on-location interviews, and as explained above: "...it would be very difficult for any one of these witnesses to get the location of the plane in relation to the Navy Annex and/or gas station wrong given their vantage points, especially the witnesses who were actually on the station property, who were in the best location out of the entire witness pool to judge which side the plane flew on with accuracy. The notion that they are all simultaneously incorrect about this general detail in the same way is not even remotely conceivable. And again, some of them are on record just weeks after the event placing the plane in the same location."

Think about it just for a minute. The Pentagon is completely ringed by major highways, including Interstate 395 which had stand-still traffic that morning. Any flyover of the Pentagon would have been witnessed by hundreds of people from all directions. If a plane flew over the Pentagon at low altitude leaving a major explosion in its wake, anyone who saw it would certainly think they were witnessing a plane bombing the Pentagon. Yet there were no such reports, and some who were questioned later, who were in a good position to see any flyover, said they did not see any such thing.

We present firsthand audio testimony obtained from the Center of Military History from Erik Dihle, who specifically stated on record in 2001 that immediately after the explosion "some people" (plural) were yelling that "a bomb had hit the Pentagon and a jet kept on going." His words. It's in National Security Alert.

We also present the testimony of Pentagon police officer Roosevelt Roberts Jr. who, although he did not see the plane approach due to being just inside a loading dock on the other side of the building, reports seeing a "commercial aircraft" with "jet engines" flying away "10 seconds tops" after the explosion at "no more than 100 feet" altitude "like it missed the wrong target, like it missed the landing zone".

We have also explained that although the 9-1-1 calls were released in New York there has been a deliberate cover-up of the 9-1-1 calls in Arlington/DC, which would reveal what people first reported before the propaganda set in."

Given these facts (and more) it's reasonable to conclude that others saw the plane fly away as well but that this information was either covered up or simply written off as anomalous and incorrect and not reported.

Chandler and Cole say that "some who were questioned later, who were in a good position to see any flyover, said they did not see any such thing", but as usual provide absolutely zero names, quotes, or analysis.

The plane was on the north side, and this is mutually exclusive with impact. We provide testimony from a witness who saw the attack jet flying away seconds after the explosion.

A lot of what they are saying here seems to just be them echoing Hoffman, and it is addressed in some detail later.

The CIT videos don’t qualify as scientific studies..

Our videos present evidence we have obtained from an independent investigation conducted by regular citizens over the course of several years. Science is utilized when needed, but crime investigations cannot rely on science alone. Because of this fact there are many other aspects of the on-going, worldwide, grassroots 9/11 investigation which "don't qualify as scientific studies" simply due to the nature of the inquiry, from study into the identities of the alleged hijackers to simply analyzing the contradictions, omissions, and distortions in the 9/11 Commission Report. That does not make such studies invalid or devoid of a logical methodology, and our investigation is likewise neither of these things.

The unsupported blanket statements below are apparently what they cite as their reasoning for making the accusation that our investigation is allegedly not "scientific"...

Their witnesses are not representative of the overall eyewitness pool, the witnesses accounts are far from contemporaneous with the events, and the conversational style of the interviews frequently leads the witnesses.

These are all very reckless and serious accusations that they have failed to back up with a single example, so I'm going to take them one by one.

1. "Their witnesses are not representative of the overall eyewitness pool"

Really? Why not? Which witnesses would be, how many would it take and why? Of course Chandler and Cole don't bother to even attempt to provide these relevant details because they are simply making unsupported accusations in a transparent attempt to cast doubt on our findings. The reality is that -- while we have spoken with several dozens of witnesses firsthand -- with regard to the critical question of what side of the gas station the plane flew, the body of witnesses we present is not only overwhelmingly strong but also comprehensive with 100% of the known witnesses to the plane who were on or immediately near the gas station's property represented, as well as witnesses who were, we contend, in the next best locations to answer this question, namely the ANC workers and Sean Boger. There are no witnesses on record who could see the gas station and say they watched the plane fly past the south side of the station, so it's not surprising that Chandler and Cole do not name or quote a single witness in this entire essay.

2. "the witnesses accounts are far from contemporaneous with the events"

As I already explained and documented in greater detail earlier , we make it extremely clear in both National Security Alert and on our website that a number of the witnesses are on record much earlier reporting the same flight path. Once again Chandler and Cole have demonstrated that they have, at best, not bothered to pay attention to the presentation they are so harshly attacking.   In the same earlier section I also pointed out the hypocrisy of them making this charge, yet going on to promote a website containing interviews conducted several years AFTER our interviews and calling it "a great witness resource".

3. "...and the conversational style of the interviews frequently leads the witnesses."

Surely readers will agree that the least Chandler and Cole could do is provide a single example to support such a lofty accusation. Actually, numerous examples would be appropriate given that they claim we "frequently" do this. Yet they failed to provide one. That is not to say that it would necessarily be impossible to find any examples where we could have worded a question better, but if so, it is the exception to the rule, not something that we do frequently at all, as we make a genuine effort to ask non-leading questions. I address this charge in more detail later in this response.

Who knows what conversations preceded the videotaped interviews to either shape or filter the testimonies?

The notion that we would be able to "shape or filter" the very detailed testimonies of these people in any significant way is pretty absurd, particularly since the witnesses were all in essence strangers to us until shortly before the on-camera interviews began. We are not capable of leading witness after witness to describe the north side flight path in such great detail and with such conviction. I think this is obvious to the overwhelming majority of people who watch the interviews. Another big problem with this theory is that, again, as explained clearly in National Security Alert and on our website, a number of these people are on record placing the plane in the same place years before we ever interviewed them; in some cases just weeks after the event.   Moreover, we have provided the witnesses with copies of our presentations and none of them have accused us of misrepresenting their claims, while some have openly affirmed that we represented their accounts honestly and fairly.

The “researchers” ignore the fact that none of their witnesses directly confirms their primary hypothesis: a Pentagon flyover.

See above. It is also very ironic for them to put "researchers" in scare quotes in the context of such a stunningly shoddy article.

Some of the witnesses contradict themselves, but this does not count against their credibility.

As usual Chandler and Cole provide no examples of witness contradictions to support their statement, so there is nothing specific for me to address here. We supply recordings of the detailed interviews so that people can determine each witnesses' level of credibility for themselves. We think the north side flight path is credibly established well beyond a reasonable doubt. It has been our experience that most people who view the interviews agree.

Furthermore, there is no mention of the voluminous eyewitness testimony that supports the conventional path in line with the path of destruction..

Now this is a doozy right here. I understand that they have not bothered to support virtually any of their claims so far in this entire essay, but this one? Come on. How could they NOT at least cite SOME examples of this alleged "voluminous eyewitness testimony that supports the conventional path"?

There are really only two possible answers: Chandler and Cole are simply repeating what they have been told/misled to believe without bothering to research it in any real depth themselves, or they are lying. I'd prefer to believe the former.

David, Jonathan, since your friends Jim Hoffman and his wife Victoria apparently hung you out to dry on this, let me speak to you directly and explain:

There are ZERO eyewitnesses on record who could see the Citgo station as the plane flew past it and place the plane on the "conventional path", i.e. south side of the station, where it had to be in order to hit the downed light poles, generator trailer, and building as already admitted by you. On the other hand, there are now over a dozen on record who could see the Citgo gas station and place the plane on the north side flight path.

If we were "cherry-picking" witnesses then the witnesses who "erroneously" place the plane on the north side would be greatly outnumbered by the witnesses who "correctly" place it on the south side.   It would therefore be much easier to find south side witnesses than north side witnesses. And yet, in nearly four years since the release of The PentaCon and our four initial north side witnesses, which Jim Hoffman baselessly called a "hoax" at the time, none of our detractors, who have spent a combined total of countless thousands of hours arguing against the north side approach online, have been able to locate and interview a single one. Meanwhile, every person that we have interviewed since releasing The PentaCon who could see the Citgo gas station corroborated the initial north side reports that Hoffman had quickly branded a "hoax". Why do you think this is?

Furthermore, all witnesses are not created equal regarding their ability to answer the question of which side of the gas station the plane was on. The majority of the witnesses could not see the Citgo as the plane flew past it. We have interviewed the witnesses who, out of the entire known witness pool, were in the absolute best locations to judge where the plane flew in relation to the Citgo, and they consistently said that it was on the north side.

Why are you and especially the people you are parroting so willing to make false statements to defend the "conventional flight path" and the theory that the plane (which you suggest also may have been AA77) hit the Pentagon, which has long been (justifiably) widely-rejected by the 9/11 Truth Movement?

Rather than subject their work to peer review, even internal peer review within the 9/11 Truth Movement, they simply disparage any who take issue with their methods or their results, and instead rely on a list of questionable endorsements.

Subject our work to "peer review"? We have published our work. It's there for all peers to review. Our findings are more suitable for a citizen jury than scientific peer review, as it does not take an expert or scientist of any sort in a court of law to determine the veracity and strength of eyewitness evidence. This is explained in detail in this thread, where it is also demonstrated that the alleged "peer review" process given to Frank Legge's dishonest opinion piece titled "What Hit The Pentagon?", which was published in the Journal of Nine Eleven Studies, was a complete sham.

The notion that we "simply disparage any who take issue with" our "methods" or "results" is incorrect as this very rebuttal shows. We are not "simply disparaging" David Chandler and Jonathan Cole - we are specifically explaining why so much of they say is false and/or misleading. Although we are proud of the more formal statements of support and praise that National Security Alert has garnered from some of our peers who have reviewed it, the validity and strength of our work does not "rely" on them.

They posted a literal “enemies list” on the internet in which they attacked the character of those who disagree with them. [Ed. Note: we are not yet on that list, but after posting this essay we will surely qualify.]

This is yet another false accusation by Chandler and Cole that they have once again failed to source.

They are referring to a thread titled "Face to the Name" where we invited people to post public photos of some of the shady characters on the ferociously anti-truth/pseudo-skeptic website JREF, who were publicly attacking us, and indeed pretty much ALL figures of the 9/11 truth movement, from behind anonymous usernames. Even though it went beyond the original scope of the thread, we did eventually end up including several already-public images of the otherwise rather elusive faces of a handful of individuals who claim they are members of the 9/11 Truth movement yet, like the JREFers, have launched dishonest, unprovoked attacks against us and the evidence we have presented, in some cases even working directly with JREFers in the process. Certainly it was our right to do so, and unlike Chandler and Cole, I will link to the thread for you here.

The thread has always been titled "Face to the Name" and had simply been given the subtitle of "know thy enemy" when it was first created as a repository for public JREFer images. The phrase "enemies list" was never used by us, so the fact that Chandler and Cole used the word "literal" and then included the phrase "enemies list" in quotes once again proves that they have utilized extremely sloppy research techniques for this extremely harsh attack piece, or else they are purposely trying to mislead their readers. I'd prefer to believe the former.

"Enemy" is defined as "a person who feels hatred for, fosters harmful designs against, or engages in antagonistic activities against another; an adversary or opponent". You can judge the aptness of this word for yourself, but regardless, we changed the subtitle to "images of CIT attackers and detractors" long ago because it was more consistent with the obvious premise of the thread, and also because propagandists who cannot refute the evidence for a north side approach and flyover were attempting to manufacture a scandal and conjure up images of Richard Nixon based around the simple use of the word "enemy".

Chandler and Cole apparently consider themselves our "enemies" by stating that they would "surely qualify" for inclusion on an "enemies list". However, since the "Face to the Name" thread is not an "enemies list" and has not even included the phrase "know thy enemy" in the subtitle for a long time, and since we have not posted in that thread in almost a year and a half, and since we never wanted to be "enemies" with Chandler or Cole, whose WTC work we respect, in the first place, and since Chandler and Cole's full names and faces are already relatively well known anyway, we have no inclination to add them to that thread. I commend them for being wiling to at least take credit for what they say instead of hiding behind internet usernames. However, why they would want to sign their names to this ridiculous essay is a mystery.

CIT has even gone so far as to disparage their own witnesses, accusing the driver of the taxi that was hit by a light pole of being a co-conspirator with the perpetrators of the crime.

Logical skeptics who have seen National Security Alert understand that Lloyde England's account has been proven false, and that the plane flew nowhere near the pole which allegedly speared his windshield while leaving his hood pristine after being hit by a 757 going 530 mph in the opposite direction.

We went back to Lloyde's house in 2008 to discuss this evidence with him directly and to give him a chance to respond publicly. Despite the fact that he was well aware that we had publicly stated that he was an accomplice to the crime ("whether willing, manipulated, or coerced", as we put it), he did not express outrage or tell us that he felt we had "disparaged" him, and as a matter of fact his FBI-employee wife Shirle AGREED with our statement that the plane "didn't hit the Pentagon and just kept on going" (which is mutually exclusive with Lloyde's story being true, and thus mutually exclusive with him NOT being an accomplice).

As for Lloyde, he spoke with us, took us to see his cab, and even made some rather revealing candid statements to us. We released a very thorough 95 minute presentation entitled "Lloyde England and His Taxi Cab - The Eye of the Storm" documenting this experience, clips from which appear in National Security Alert as well. People can watch that for themselves and see whether or not we are behaving in a reasonable manner. The majority of the feedback we have gotten has been extremely positive.

Saying that we accuse Lloyde of being a "co-conspirator" is misleading, because we have always made it clear that we are not blaming Lloyde for 9/11, and that he is not even remotely on the same level as the true perpetrators, planners, and executors of a crime of this magnitude.

If Chandler and Cole are actually professing their support and belief in the cab driver's story they certainly aren't attempting to make a convincing case for it.

CIT has gone out of its way to make themselves a highly divisive issue in the 9/11 Truth movement.

Wrong again. We have no desire to be divisive, and the notion that we have "gone out of our way to make ourselves a highly divisive issue" is even more grossly inaccurate. Unlike Chandler and Cole we have not published attack pieces against anyone "in the 9/11 Truth movement" and have merely responded to the voluminous attacks which have been leveled against us by "JREFers" and a relatively small but aggressive group of people who claim to be part of the "Truth Movement". Otherwise we prefer to stick to investigating 9/11 and providing evidence which further proves that it was a false flag operation.

The “Flyover theory” had recent success in getting main stream media coverage on the Jesse Ventura “Conspiracy Theory” show Jesse Ventura “Conspiracy Theory” show.

Yes, it was mentioned in passing during the course of the hour long episode, but the primary evidence supporting it was not included. No interviews with eyewitnesses to the plane were presented at all.

Whether CIT in fact represents an orchestrated attempt to splinter the 9/11 Truth Movement or not, it is having a splintering effect.

CIT represents no such thing. We are conducting an investigation into the Pentagon attack, and have obtained and published overwhelming evidence that it was a false flag operation. Chandler and Cole admit that it is already "popular belief" that AA77 did not hit the building, and we provided hard evidence to prove it, which has been very well-received and supported, by Chandler's own admission. If anyone is attempting to "splinter the 9/11 Truth Movement" it is the relatively small clique of individuals who devote so much of their time and energy to attacking us or spreading false information in support of an impact when they could be working to uncover more evidence exposing 9/11 as a false flag event or getting the word out about the evidence we, as a "movement", do have.

“Divide and Conquer” has a long history, going back to Caesar in the Gallic Wars, and Alexander the Great before him. CIT is attempting to become the public face of the 9/11 Truth Movement. If it succeeds, the 9/11 Truth Movement will be seen as vicious, mean spirited, crazy, and ultimately discredited.

It's not true that we are attempting to become "the" public face of the 9/11 Truth Movement. We are, again, simply conducting an investigation into the Pentagon attack and publishing our findings. If David Chandler or Jonathan Cole had bothered to speak with us or learn anything about us and the origins of our investigation before attacking us they would know that we did not go into our investigation with the goal or even desire to become public figures or even film-makers. Even after we ended up uncovering a critical "smoking gun" in the north side approach, we offered any and all of our footage and research to Dylan Avery, who had accompanied us to Arlington during our first trip, for inclusion in Loose Change: Final Cut for free. We would have preferred to stay behind the scenes as fairly unknown researchers and private citizens while others were "the face". However, even though we were ultimately shown and credited as two-thirds of the "Arlington Crew" in the credits for that film, the material was not covered in an honest or appropriate way. Most notably, the north side approach evidence, as well as the other corresponding evidence for the falsity of cab driver Lloyde's story, was completely omitted. It had become clear to us several months before Final Cut was released that this was going to happen, so at that point we had no choice but to compile it into a film ourselves and publish it using our real names to get it out into the public domain and in the hands of people fighting for 9/11 truth and justice.

As our investigation continued we kept getting additional corroboration for the north side approach and flyover, as well as uncovering other key information that debunked the "official story" on many other levels, so naturally we published that as well. The information got more and more attention, and thus we did personally as well, especially from people who were unable to refute the evidence, and who instead found it easier attack us personally.

We feel that the evidence for a north side approach and flyover is some of the most clear, easy-to-understand, compelling evidence proving that 9/11 was a false flag operation of the "MIHOP" variety out there, if not the clearest, so we created National Security Alert in 2009 as a concise presentation of the key evidence so that the information could reach a wider audience. This is very similar to what David Chandler has done with his new DVD "9/11 Analysis", which is "a compilation of the many short analysis videos David Chandler has produced and uploaded to the internet over the last few years, woven together with an interpretive narrative."

Like Chandler, we naturally want the information on our DVD to reach the widest possible audience because of our conviction in its strength and importance. Unlike David Chandler and Jonathan Cole, however, we are not launching unprovoked, and more importantly mis-or-dis-info-laced public attacks to try to tear down other researchers or "public faces of the 9/11 Truth Movement", so if anyone is trying to become "the" public face of the "9/11 Truth Movement" it is Chandler and Cole, not us. I have personally met or communicated with many other "public faces of the 9/11 truth movement" over the years and consider them friends and allies in the fight to expose the truth about 9/11. Many of them have praised and supported our work, some more publicly and formally, some privately or less formally. I support much of their work as well.

My concern, as well as Aldo's, has always been the evidence. This isn't about Craig Ranke or Aldo Marquis, and it never was. If anyone has a problem with our personalities, fine. But this evidence cannot be denied. If others who understand this want to take the time to become experts on it and become "spokesmen" for it in their own right, great. I know of a few people who have already done this, and we'd love to see that happen a lot more.

Finally, hopefully by now I don't have to point out the irony and hypocrisy of them warning that "the 9/11 Truth Movement" will be seen as "vicious, mean spirited, crazy, and ultimately discredited" in the context of an essay filled with false information presented in a rather "vicious, mean spirited" way, and which links to vitriolic hit pieces with titles like "Google Earth Exposes Pentagon Flyover Farce or Critiquing PentaCon (Smoking Crack Version)" and "To Con A Movement", and praising Jeff Hill.

If the Pentagon issue intrigues you, we highly recommend that you balance your reading with the literature that sets Pentagon theorizing into perspective.

The irony and hypocrisy of David Chandler and Jonathan Cole recommending that people "balance [their] reading" on this issue is amazing. Throughout this essay they are clearly parroting what they have read and heard from a handful of extremely dishonest CIT detractors, and have not taken any significant time to study our work for themselves or even check to see if the claims being made by their mentors were true. Either that or they are just dishonest themselves. I'd prefer to believe the former.

Here is a short recommended reading list. (All of the authors are on CIT’s enemies list, but read them and decide about their credibility for yourself.)

Again, we never had an "enemies list" as Chandler and Cole claim. Also, assuming that they aren't purposely lying, they must not have even read the "Face to the Name" thread that they failed to link to and are once again mischaracterizing here, because Jeff Hill does not appear there. Nor does anyone associated with the "American Memory Project of the Library of Congress". Furthermore, although we briefly mention "Arabesque" in two short sentences in response to a question from a forum member explicitly asking us whether or not we have any photos of "Arabesque", no such photos appear in the thread, since he/she/it is a completely anonymous (former) blogger with no public photos associated with him at all.

In conclusion, we urge you not to be taken in by divisive speculation masquerading as research.

Most ironic conclusion ever.

Recommended Reading

To Con A Movement by Victoria Ashley
www.911review.com/articles/ashley/pentacon_con.html

We know that Chandler recently met with Victoria Ashley and her husband Jim Hoffman in person, and it is obvious that throughout this essay Chandler and Cole echo their disinfo pieces against us, so I've addressed a number of her bogus claims already.   This particular essay, "To Con A Movement", is so long and so dishonest that it would require a response 10x longer than this Chandler/Cole response to untangle the mess line by line. The very first sentence alone for example has at least three lies in it. She writes:

"This essay examines the work of the Citizen Investigation Team (CIT), a team of two people who claim to prove that a complicated "magic show" occurred during the Pentagon attack on 9/11/01, fooling all of the witnesses and surviving victims of the event into believing that American Airlines Flight 77 (AA77) hit the Pentagon, when instead, it flew just over the building, obscured by a simultaneous explosion, and then somehow flew away, unnoticed by anyone in the area (the "flyover" theory)."

1. The deception did not "fool all of the witnesses and surviving victims" and Ashley knows it. See April Gallop, for example.
2. We do not claim that "AA77" flew over the building.   Ashley knows this, and it has been right in the very first FAQ question on our webpage since before she ever wrote this essay: "Also, let us be perfectly clear: we have never claimed that the low-flying plane seen by all of the witnesses that we interviewed was actually Flight 77, nor do we believe that to be the case."
3. We do not claim that the plane "flew away, unnoticed by anyone in the area", and Ashley knows it. We know people saw it, have always said so, and we provide direct evidence of it.

9/11 and the Pentagon Attack: What Witnesses Described
arabesque911.blogspot.com/2007/04/911-and-pentagon-attack-what.html

A Critical Review of ‘The PentaCon – Smoking Gun Version’
arabesque911.blogspot.com/2007/05/critical-review-of-pentacon-smoking-gun.html

These two blog entries are both by anonymous blogger "Arabesque". I touched on the first one earlier. A lot of the same issues apply to the second one. Go ahead and try to read it after watching National Security Alert in full and viewing our other videos and research and see if it debunks anything. Remember to check the footnotes and you'll see that "Arabesque" once again he fails to provide sources for his/her/its out of context snippets for the reader to check out, only names of alleged witnesses. Meanwhile, he/she/it once again trots out his bogus alleged "light pole" witnesses, for example.

Also, in his/her/its "Review", "Arabesque" writes: "The PentaCon argues that if the plane flew north of the CITGO gas station it couldn’t account for the damage at the Pentagon. While this is true, it assumes that the eyewitnesses correctly remembered what happened."

That was May of 2007. We have since released many interviews with witness after witness who corrborate the supposedly incorrect memories of the four eyewitness in The PentaCon,
who saw the plane on the north side, which, if true, means it "couldn't account for the damage at the Pentagon" by Arabesque's own admission.

Yet Hoffman and Ashley still promote Arabesque's discredited work and make many of the same claims themselves, and Chandler and Cole are now following the pied pipers.

As a side note, for all we know "Arabesque" could actually be Jim Hoffman, or Jim Hoffman working in conjunction with others such as his wife Victoria Ashley and/or Gregg Roberts. This certainly cannot be ruled out given that "Arabesque" is totally anonymous and has been heavily promoted by Hoffman and Ashley since shortly after he appeared on the scene (internet). They do make a lot of the same bogus and/or deceptive arguments, and it's interesting to note that "Arabesque" disappeared from blogging the exact same week that Hoffman began publicly attacking us. However, we simply do not know for sure.

Google Earth Exposes Pentagon Flyover Farce or Critiquing PentaCon (Smoking Crack Version) by Jim Hoffman
911research.wtc7.net/essays/pentacon/index.html

Prior to the release of National Security Alert, Jim Hoffman had only a brief mention of our work on his website, where he labeled our video The PentaCon "hoax-promoting" with a link to Arabesque and no original analysis. In 2007 I sent him an e-mail with the heading "hoax?" which ended with:

We are not disinfo and we are not pushing a 'hoax'. Arabesque's simplistic and naive 'debunk' falls flat and doesn't begin to counter what we have presented. We will debate you any time over the phone or on a radio show but hopefully you will objectively look at the data that we present in relation to the anomalous FDR and realize that we are on to something important here. I respectfully request that you remove us from your 'hoax' page and if you refuse I formally challenge you to a public debate or even invite you to civilly discuss the evidence with me privately over the phone."

Hoffman ignored this e-mail, as well as e-mails from others supportive of our work who made similar pleas (example), yet continued to label us a "hoax" on his website for years, even after we kept finding and publishing witness after witness who confirmed the north side approach.

We released National Security Alert on June 15, 2009, and it quickly received quite a bit of praise and attention. Six weeks later, Hoffman and Victoria Ashley, who are reportedly now married, released their his-and-hers hit pieces simultaneously on the same day, July 26, 2009. As with Ashley's article, the title of Hoffman's article is indicative of the tone. Ashley suggests that we're pushing a massive "con" job while Hoffman associates us with "smoking crack". Note the dichotomy: Ashley's article implies that we're evil genius con-men who are cunning and skillful enough to have conned a substantial portion of the truth movement while Hoffman's article suggests that it would take a delusional nutcase akin to a crack or PCP smoker in order to "take the flyover seriously". He explains his reference to "crack" in the title by claiming, "The level of disconnection from the reality of the situation needed to take the flyover seriously is such that, perhaps a more fitting title for a detailed defense of the flyover theory would be: 'PentaCon (Smoking Wack Version)' -- a reference to the dissociative drug PCP (Phencyclidine)."

How can we have masterminded such an effective and significant "con" job if someone would need to be disconnected from reality like a strung out drug addict in order to "take the flyover seriously"? Obviously if this were the case our work wouldn't be, by Chandler's own admission and his own words, "very popular", and we wouldn't have gotten and be continuing to get so many statements of praise from researchers, activists, scholars, engineers, pilots, etc.

A full response to Hoffman's article is beyond the scope of this rebuttal and will have to wait for another time, but one of the more egregious things wrong with it is the fact that he relies on unrealistic-looking, computer generated images (CGI) of the area around the Pentagon created from Google Earth that do not remotely represent the true point of view (POV) of someone driving on the highways. All trees, landscape, and even other structures in the area are removed. He claims that these images "show what would be seen at each vantage point for each of the five points in time", yet in the next sentence he contradicts himself and admits that this is not the case at all since "[Google] Street View shows visual obstructions such as trees and small buildings that are not realistically rendered in Google Earth."

In spite of this admission, he embeds the deceptive computer generated "snapshots" in the article, not the much more realistic images from Google Street view which DO show "visual obstructions such as trees and small buildings" (and walls, overpasses, fences, street signs, etc).

Furthermore, even though they are an improvement over his deceptive CGI, Google Street view images are also inaccurate because they were taken from a camera mounted several feet above the roof of a car.

For more accurate POV shots from the surrounding highways you would have to provide images/video from inside a car as we have in our presentation "CIT Jettin' Crosstown". Ironically, while promoting his deceptive hit piece article and CGI animations in a 2009 interview with Michael Wolsey, Hoffman referenced "CIT Jettin' Crosstown" by name (he calls it "Jetting Around Town"), and he went off on a rant calling it "deceptive", even though it's just a video of us driving around on the highways surrounding the Pentagon with no narration or analysis at all.

"...so I encourage people to take that tour [i.e., watch his inaccurate CGI animations -CR], and see what things actually look like. According to CIT, people cou-- I mean, just as an illustration of how deceptive this is, if you just read their material, you would think the only observers are ones that are on a very small portion of- of um- of twenty- of Route 27, the route to the west of the Pentagon, as if all these other sides of the Pentagon exist. And you don't get a sense of what the viewscapes are like or anything by taking THEIR guided tour, because it's-- it's so deceptively presented."
- Jim Hoffman (download mp3)

Watch the video yourself and you will see Hoffman's stunning dishonesty. We absolutely do include the other highways around the Pentagon, including Route 27, I-395, Route 110, and Columbia Pike, and again, unlike Hoffman, we provide real video images filmed from inside a car with no narration or analysis at all, as anyone who has seen the video knows. This is one of the many examples of Hoffman spreading disinformation about us, our research, and the Pentagon attack that is primarily geared toward people who will not actually check out his claims and sources, but will just take his word for it because he has gained their trust.

It's important to understand that most of the genuine potential witnesses in the area would be looking straight ahead and paying attention to the road and/or preoccupied listening to their radios about the events in New York, and that many who would have been in the best locations to potentially see the plane flying away would not have been alerted to the event until after the explosion. People weren't staring at the Pentagon completely unobstructed waiting for the plane to come in and then slowly stepping through the event one frame at a time as a tiny translucent fireball occurred, as seen in Hoffman's images.

Interestingly, Hoffman himself does basically acknowledge a lot of this in the text of the article, even though his images create the opposite impression. He says (underline added):
"The normal human reaction to hearing a blast is to immediately turn to look, and that reaction typically takes less than a second. Even considering the time it takes sound to travel from the explosion's center to the various vantage points, most bystanders and drivers alerted by the sound would look up to see the unforgettable sight of a jetliner fleeing the explosion as if it had dive-bombed the Pentagon. "

Notice that he is acknowledging that they would be alerted to the event "by the sound", which would take time to travel to them, and that their reaction of turning "to look", or "look[ing] up", would not be instantaneous -- there would be a natural reaction time, which Hoffman sets at "typically.. less than a second".

The speed of sound at sea level on an average day is 741 mph (sources: NASA, Wikipedia). That's 12.35 miles per minute, 0.206 miles per second.

The table below shows the approximate distances from the "explosion's center" to each of Hoffman's vantage points on highways 395 and 110, derived using Google Earth's measuring tool. By dividing the distances by 0.206 miles per second, we get the number of seconds that it would take for the sound to reach them. Hoffman says that it would take "typically... less than a second" for them to react to the sound, so let's just add 0.5 seconds for reaction time then -- a very fast reaction if you're preoccupied driving a car and watching the road and/or listening to the events at the WTC unfold live on the radio.

Vantage Approx. Distance
(miles) Corresponding time for sound to reach location +0.5 seconds reaction time

395_1 0.61 2.96 seconds 3.46 seconds

395_2 0.40 1.94 seconds 2.44 seconds

395_3 0.34 1.65 seconds 2.15 seconds

395_4 0.28 1.35 seconds 1.85 seconds

395_5 0.33 1.60 seconds 2.10 seconds

395_6 0.38 1.84 seconds 2.34 seconds

395_7 0.45 2.18 seconds 2.68 seconds

395_8 0.60 2.91 seconds 3.41 seconds

395_9 0.85 4.13 seconds 4.63 seconds

110_3 0.37 1.76 seconds 2.26 seconds

Do you see the problem here?

Hoffman's CGI images show the plane at five points in time:
0.0 seconds
0.2 seconds
0.4 seconds
0.9 seconds
1.8 seconds

This means that ALL of Hoffman's images show the plane during a time period when anyone at any of Hoffman's vantage points on 395 or 110 who was "alerted by the sound" would NOT yet be looking at the Pentagon!

Even for the two vantage points he gives on Route 27 to the north of the Pentagon, the total times (speed of sound + reaction) for locations 27_1 and 27_2 are 2.73 seconds and 1.66 seconds, respectively.

(The final vantage point that he shows, 27_7, is the closest of all, but it is immediately west of the Pentagon, and even Hoffman himself admits that anyone "positioned on the west side of the Pentagon close to the plane's flight path so that the explosion could obscure its escape" would be in the best location to be deceived.)

This is also taking for granted Hoffman's assertion that "the normal human reaction to hearing a blast is to immediately turn to look" as opposed to instinctively ducking or flinching first. For anyone who did that, the times would obviously be greater.

With all of this in mind, it's interesting to note the language of this sentence in his "Conclusion" (underline added):
The thunderous sound of the explosion would have guaranteed that most of the people in a position to see the event would have turned their heads to see the explosion and the plane in close proximity.

First, notice that he once again indicates that people would NOT be looking at the Pentagon at the time of the explosion, and that they would turn their heads as a result of the sound.

But more importantly, notice his choice of words: after they "turned their heads" they would see the plane "..in close proximity". Not "flying through the fireball" or even "flying OVER the Pentagon". Yet that is what he shows in his CGI.

In light of this, it's interesting to note that Hoffman also fails to adequately impart to his readers how utterly ubiquitous large, extremely low-flying commercial aircrafts are around the Pentagon -- a key piece of information that we cite as critical to the success of the operation. Planes are approaching and departing in the immediate airspace around the building every 2-4 minutes all day every day. A plane "in close proximity" is not the least bit unusual.

The proximity of planes to the Pentagon was explained as follows by north side approach witness Sean Boger, the Air Traffic Controller who was in the heliport tower right next to the alleged impact spot at the time of the attack, in his interview with the Center for Military History in November of 2001:
And [redacted] and I were talking, and I was like, I'm surprised that nobody has ever flown into the Pentagon, and I am not even talking about terrorists. I am just saying that Washington's airport is right on the other side of the Pentagon, and she said that you have been saying that for 3 years... And I am not even saying terrorists. I am just saying about aircraft that makes a mistake and actually flies into the building, because it is so close to the Pentagon... I mean, you can look up every day and you can actually see the landing gear on the aircraft. You can read the numbers on the aircraft and so it is that close. And she said you have been saying that for like 3 years.

Source: NEIT-299, pp. 9-10

Here is the same sentence from the "Conclusion" of Hoffman's article again, with the sentence that follows it included as well.
The thunderous sound of the explosion would have guaranteed that most of the people in a position to see the event would have turned their heads to see the explosion and the plane in close proximity. The same witnesses would have been riveted to the action as the plane departed from the scene, whether it made a spectacular banking turn to land at National Airport, or made an equally spectacular climb away from the Pentagon over the Potomac.

Again, as seen above, a plane in "close proximity" to the Pentagon is not an unusual sight at all, and there is nothing "spectacular" about a plane making a "climb away from the Pentagon over the Potomac". It is happening constantly, as all the locals know. They are very accustomed to it.

The "action" that people would have been "riveted" to would have been the massive fireball as the Pentagon exploded, not the extremely common sight of a low flying aircraft in "close proximity" to the Pentagon.

Furthermore, even if someone on the southeast or east side of the building did find a plane "in close proximity" odd, they would, within minutes, be inundated with media reports and eyewitness interviews claiming that a plane had flown into the west side of the Pentagon and caused the explosion. Before long they would see pictures of debris on TV or the internet. Many would also see pictures of or hear about light poles that were on the ground that were allegedly hit by the plane. They would then have to choose between:

1. Believing the truth, which is that most of these witnesses from the west side of the Pentagon were deceived by an amazingly brazen false flag black operation; that a handful were complicit and deliberately telling fabricated stories to help sell the deception; that the plane they themselves saw on the east side of the building was actually the same plane that those witnesses saw approach; that the light poles were staged in advance and not hit by the plane. Etc.

or

2. Accepting that the plane they saw must have been a different plane, like the ones constantly seen in "close proximity" to the Pentagon.

Given the massive psychological hurdle and tremendously horrifying implications of accepting option number one, it's easy to see why option two would be the natural choice, especially considering how common low-flying commercial planes are in that airspace, and how fast the whole event went down for them. (In fact this is exactly how Roosevelt Roberts reconciled what he saw. He assumed the "commercial aircraft" he saw flying away "ten seconds tops" after the explosion at "less than 100 feet" altitude was "another plane".)

This choice was further facilitated by fraudulent media reports which tried to make it seem like there WAS another plane on the scene at the time of the explosion which veered away at the last moment, when in reality the next plane to arrive was a C-130 several minutes later at a much higher altitude.

For much, much more information on this, see our video: The Pentagon Flyover: How They Pulled It Off.

American Memory Project of the Library of Congress — Interviews shortly after 9/11 by witnesses to various aspects of the Pentagon events. Note in particular the interviewing style compared to the CIT interviews. There is no leading the witness. There is no agenda to prove a particular point. The interviewees are allowed to express themselves freely and fully with no coaching. Several of the witnesses interviewed here are also on the CIT videos. Notice the differences in the overall tone as well as the details of their stories.

If one listens to the Library of Congress (LoC) interviews and views our interviews it most certainly will be clear that there is a very significant difference in "interviewing style", but also that it is nothing like what Chandler and Cole describe.

The LoC interviews are mostly of Pentagon police officers because they were conducted by Jennifer Brennan, who is the daughter of police officer Donald Brennan. It's clear that she approaches the interviews from a human interest level as opposed to an investigative level as we have done.

For example, unlike CIT she rarely if ever does any of the following:

Nail down the witnesses' PRECISE locations at the moment of the attack
Ask specific questions about the flight path of the plane or its location in relation to critical landmarks
Nail down specifics about the appearance of the plane
Ask about the plane's altitude at various points in the flight path
Ask about the plane's speed and how long it was in their field of view
Ask whether or not the plane was flying straight or banking, and if the latter, at what point, and to what degree
Ask the witnesses whether they personally saw the light poles get struck by the plane, or if they simply saw them on the ground after the fact
Determine whether or not the witness could actually SEE the impact point and claims to have literally watched the alleged impact, or if they simply saw the plane en route toward the building followed by a large explosion and fireball while not literally watching what happened at the instant the plane reached the building
Ask if they saw any other planes in the area, and if so, what they looked like, when they saw them, where they flew and at what approximate altitude.

This is not to fault Jennifer Brennan, because, again, she was not conducting an investigation, and was simply documenting the interviewees experiences on a human interest level.

While I won't claim 100% perfection given the sheer volume and scope of interviews we have conducted, we overwhelmingly ask non-leading questions, and unsurprisingly Chandler and Cole provide zero examples of us "leading the witness[es]", let alone "coaching" them. Earlier they claim that we do this "frequently".   We feel it is very obvious when watching our videos that we do not do this to any significant degree, and certainly did not and COULD not "lead" them to independently describe the north side approach in such detail and so emphatically. We have always hoped as many people as possible would watch our interviews in long form so that they can see for themselves that this is the case.

Furthermore, any honest person who actually does so will see that the notion that we do not "allow" the witnesses to "express themselves freely" is another blatant falsehood. We typically started by having them stand in the exact location where they were when they saw the plane on 9/11 and open-endedly asking them to describe what they saw. We ask for clarification on certain important details to make it clear what they purport to have seen and what they admit to having deduced. We then ask specific, overwhelmingly non-leading questions to try to determine the answers to questions like the ones listed above.

On our website we link directly to the LoC interviews with the witnesses who were interviewed by us as well. http://www.citizeninvestigationteam.com/official-interviews.html. By all means, listen to the interviews in full, compare, assess the "interview style" and content, etc. That is what they are there for. You will likely find yourself wondering what the heck Chandler and Cole are talking about.

We sent our DVD The PentaCon to Sgt. Lagasse and Sgt. Brooks, who were also interviewed by the LoC.   Both agreed that we presented their account fairly and accurately. They did not accuse us of having led them or forbidding them from "expressing themselves freely". Furthermore, they stuck by the north side flight path, even AFTER being made aware of the implications. Sgt. Brooks called our video, which featured our detailed interview with him, an "eye-opener", and admitted that "anything is possible" in terms of him being fooled about the impact.

Another great source for eyewitness testimony is provided on Jeff Hill’s website, pumpitout.com. He has made a project of locating and calling witnesses and letting them speak for themselves.

There is so much hypocrisy and absurdity behind making a statement and recommendation like this, particularly in the context of this essay, that it is once again hard to even know where to begin.

Earlier in this essay Chandler and Cole complain that our interviews were filmed "years after the event" and that the accounts are "far from contemporaneous with the events", yet they are now calling a website containing interviews conducted 2-4 years AFTER ours a "great source for eyewitness testimony".

Chandler went even further on 911Blogger shortly after the publication of this essay. On 1/3/2011 he gushed: "I urge you to listen to the recordings made for the Library of Congress in 2001 and contrast both the tone and content with the patently offensive, manipulative, so-called interviews conducted by CIT. I also ran across the telephone interviews of witnesses conducted by Jeff Hill, for the first time. (I have links at the bottom of the essay.) These interviews are amazing! Just listen to them!!!"

I've lost track of how many times throughout this essay Chandler and Cole fraudulently project the attributes and behavior of themselves or their cohorts onto us, and based on this 911Blogger post it appears that this M.O. is a regular thing for Chandler, at least when he is engaging in his libelous attacks against CIT. Jeff Hill's interviews with Pentagon witnesses are far from amazing, and more importantly exhibit ALL of the characteristics that Chandler falsely ascribes to ours. As a matter of fact it has been very obvious since shortly after he suddenly began calling witnesses that Hill is engaging in an all out disinformation campaign in support of the disproven notion that the plane hit the building, and also in an effort to malign myself, Aldo Marquis, Citizen Investigation Team, our supporters, and really ANYONE who knows that the Pentagon was not struck by AA77 on 9/11, meaning the majority of the 9/11 truth movement. He is very blatant about it.

Before I elaborate on that, let's first ask the question: Who is this person Jeff Hill?

Earlier in this essay, Chandler and Cole discussed what is known as the No Plane Theory (NPT), according to which the World Trade Center was not actually struck by planes on 9/11, and all of the videos showing this were faked, including the ones broadcasted live. They called it an "absurdly false claim" which "seem[s] designed to be easily discredited", thereby "fuel[ing] a media circus, while making the Movement look ridiculous".

In light of this, and their comments about how the 9/11 truth movement is "highly infiltrated", wouldn't you think that Chandler and Cole would therefore view the main promulgators of NPT with great suspicion?

Well, for YEARS Jeff Hill was one of the most staunch, vocal, and belligerent NPT promoters on Earth. His website, pumpitout.com, the very website which Chandler and Cole are now promoting, was until not very long ago a major portal for NPT, as seen in this archived copy of the site from 2008 (screen shot).   He also made an entire documentary that focused on and promoted NPT called "Continuous Pieces". Click here for a screen shot showing that he uploaded this NPT-pushing documentary to the popular BitTorrent site The Pirate Bay as recently as March 12, 2009, where it still remains as of this writing. (He has more recently released "v2.0", but that is not the one he uploaded to The Pirate Bay -- it is the original NPT one, which several people also still have up on YouTube if you want to see it.)

Here is a particularly disturbing recording of Jeff Hill harassing WTC attack witness Jay Maisel at 1:00 in the morning with his no plane theories:

This is the person that Chandler and Cole are promoting right after expressing their concern that "the 9/11 Truth Movement will be seen as vicious, mean spirited, crazy, and ultimately discredited" and also their view that NPT was and is basically disinformation "designed" to discredit "the Movement".

After his long stint as a "no planer" helping to, in the words of Chandler and Cole, "fuel a media circus, while making the Movement look ridiculous", Jeff rather suddenly renounced his long-held NPT beliefs, and began calling Pentagon witnesses not long after that.

It quickly became obvious that he was doing so with the blatant goal of trying to obtain statements which he and others could use in propaganda and/or disinfo videos, articles, and forum posts to support an impact of the large plane at the Pentagon and to smear CIT.   Hill himself even openly stated in his call to Daryl Donley that he was "just hoping to find a way to uh, like, discredit them 100%" -- "them" being people who think that the plane did not hit Pentagon, most specifically myself. (Hill identifies me by my full name to Donley within about 3 minutes of getting him on the phone and tells him that I am "going around saying that no plane hit the Pentagon... and that it flew over the Pentagon"). So, the fact that Chandler and Cole would falsely accuse us of "leading" and "coaching" the witnesses with an "agenda to prove a particular point" while praising someone like Hill who openly DOES do that is yet another example of their hypocrisy.

Hill had only called three Pentagon plane witnesses (Penny Elgas, Lincoln Leibner, and Alan Wallace) before we approached him to ask if he was familiar with our work and to assure that if he made any future calls that he would consider the evidence we had uncovered fatally contradicting the official story. That conversation at the Pilots for 9/11 Truth forum, which started May 2nd 2010, is documented here with a link to the original thread.

As you can see if you read that discussion from May 2 through May 13, we already had reason to believe just from his Wallace and Leibner calls that Jeff might be up to no good, and as it turned out he was very evasive, refusing to answer important and honest questions in any detail and contradicting himself within the few very brief answers that he did give. Instead, he waited a week and then made a few more sloppy and even more blatantly agenda-fueled phone calls, which he antagonistically posted saying "Here are two people that could possibly help your story if you twist it enough". This behavior pointed strongly to a lack of honesty, sincerity, objectivity, and forthrightness on this issue, as explained and backed up in detail in the two posts which followed that one in the thread.

Shortly after that, and because of it, I challenged Jeff Hill to a recorded debate, which was done via telephone on May 16th, 2010.

In this debate he admitted that he just started looking into the Pentagon but indicated that he was well aware of our findings prior to calling any Pentagon witnesses. At the 2:44 mark he said. "But I started to look into the Pentagon and I watched your videos you know I watched them when they came out before I've watched all of Rob Balsamo's videos. I watch every video I can find when it comes out. As soon as something comes out I like to watch everything."

In that aforementioned dialogue on the Pilots for 9/11 Truth Forum which preceded and prompted the debate, we had clearly explained (or rather reiterated) to Jeff that the question of whether the plane was north or south of the Citgo is (and has been for years) central to the Pentagon attack discussion since this is make or break for the official story.

Despite claiming to have already seen our videos, he stated in the debate that the north or south of the Citgo question wasn't a concern of his until we had brought it up to him on the Pilots forum, but that he now considered it an "important factor". At 8:33 he said, "I gotta admit that actual issue of which side of the gas station never really crossed my mind until you brought it to my attention again I realized ok this is an important factor."

At 12:18 he admitted that we provide enough evidence proving the plane was on the north side when he said, "I think there's enough witness testimony to say that it was coming from the north like Sgt Lagasse said."

In spite of this, he still failed to focus on the primary question that would corroborate or contradict the information we provide in most of his subsequent calls, opting instead to focus on fishing for pro-impact, anti-CIT propaganda fodder.   In fact, Hill has recently begun calling the north of Citgo vs south of Citgo question "irrelevant".   Meanwhile, he has spoken with multiple witnesses who have contradicted the required official flight path.

Hill sometimes pretends to be an impressionable and somewhat dimwitted "nobody from Canada" (his words) who is confused by "some stuff he read on the internet" and just needs to be disabused. See the deconstruction of his call with Lincoln Leibner and others here for example.

But more often, especially recently, he will quickly tell them about the flyover (usually in mocking tone while laughing, and without mentioning the evidence which supports it) and establish himself as someone who hates such "conspiracy theories" and those who subscribe to them, and who seeks to "discredit them 100%" (his words). When this is done at the beginning of the call it tips the witness off as to the kinds of statements and in some cases the "correct" answers he is looking for in order to "debunk" and cast doubt on these "theories".

Both approaches are different ways to encourage the witness to support the intended part of the official story (impact) and bad mouth so-called conspiracy theorist/theories. It is much like someone calling a witness to the WTC destruction who is unfamiliar with the evidence for controlled demolition and telling them that there are "people going around the internet" with "conspiracy theories" about that.   Does an emotional or even irate response from such a witness insisting that this controlled demolition theory is bullshit and disproved by "their own eyes" somehow negate the evidence contradicting their belief in a purely gravity-driven collapse? Or is it simply a predictable and understandable response for someone who was deceived as intended by this sophisticated, deceptive black operation/psyop and is unfamiliar with the evidence in question? The answer is clear: the latter.

Hill also likes to specifically give the witnesses our full names and ask if they have talked to us. If they say yes, he attempts to get them to talk badly about us and "conspiracy theorists"/"theorists" in general.   If they haven't talked to us or don't remember us, he at least makes sure to "poison the well" in the hopes that we will then not be able to call them back ourselves and ask any important questions that he deliberately failed to ask, or failed to ask in an honest, non-leading, and thorough way.

Another revealing characteristic of Hill's approach to interviewing Pentagon witnesses is his regular failure to take even a small amount of time to carefully read, let alone study and analyze, whatever previously-published accounts are already out there from the witnesses before calling them. As real truth-seekers conducting a serious investigation, this is something we do all of the time in preparation for our interviews so that we have a basis to start from and know what details in their account are in need of clarification or confirmation. It also enables us to notice if they contradict what they previously said or were alleged to have said, and to question them about the contradiction. This is a crucial thing to do for obvious reasons, yet Hill has no problem missing these discrepancies since his goal is simply to create propaganda, not to conduct a real investigation in search of the truth.

For instance, as explained here, Henry Ticknor is on record since 2005 stating that he was on Rt. 50, miles from the Pentagon, at the time of the attack. All Hill had to do to find this out was take one minute to Google his name or search the CIT forum before making the call, yet he didn't.   Ticknor even told him directly "I believe I was two miles from the Pentagon", and yet just 33 seconds later, Hill asks: "So you were on like-- you were on that highway between the Pentagon and, like, that gas station?" Ticknor responds, "No, I was on Arlington Route 50." To which Hill -- who, in addition to not bothering to read his extremely easy to find previously published accounts had apparently not even ever bothered to study a map of the area -- responds: "So would you be able to see it coming by the Citgo gas station?". (This is one of the rare occasions where Hill actually asks this. Ticknor predictably replies: "I don't know what Citgo gas station you're talking about.")

Another example: In his call to Allen Cleveland just this past month, Hill said to Cleveland: "see I'm not familiar with the area at all - I just look liked at a couple of pictures on google maps and stuff". This is after months and months of calling witnesses and trying to position himself as some kind of Pentagon attack truth-seeker. Why would he have not taken the time to familiarize himself with the area "at all" before calling witness after witness? Hill continued, "So I don't even really know where you were or where you saw the plane and all that stuff", even though it's plainly stated right in Cleveland's previously-published account. Even AFTER Cleveland gives him a very detailed run down of his experience seeing the plane and explosion in the distance while riding the metro rail, his interaction with other passengers, getting interviewed by the Washington Post shortly after getting off the train, etc., Hill asks him, "Are you the one that had the video of driving in your car or something?", indicating that he was barely even paying attention to Cleveland's story while fishing for statements he could use in his propaganda.

We could (and probably will eventually have to) write a much longer essay documenting his machinations, but in the interest of not making this already gigantic response any longer, maybe a few more examples will suffice.

EXAMPLE 1: STUART ARTMAN

On 7/7/10, Hill called previously-published witness Stuart Artman (mp3). It is clear from Artman's previously published account that he was not in a position to confirm or refute an impact or flyover, as he was on foot near the Washington Monument which is about a mile and a half away from the Pentagon in Washington DC on the other side of the Potomac River, and he is quoting as saying that he saw the plane fly "behind some trees" before seeing (according to the reporter) "the smoke from the Pentagon".

Artman indicated to Hill that he couldn't see the Pentagon, didn't see the alleged impact, wasn't even looking over that way at the time because he had "divert[ed his] attention to something else", and talks about seeing the "smoke plume", not even seeing the fireball, even though Hill tries to lead him to saying he saw the fireball.

ARTMAN: I was standing at the Washington Monumentt

HILL: Okay! Uh, like when you-- when you were at the Washington Monument, did you-- you saw the fireball come from the Pentagon and everything??

ARTMAN: Well, I saw the plane -- or A plane -- and if you just look around the sky you see planes all the time, so divert my attention to something else. And then it was only a mere-- few min-- seconds later if you will that I saw the smoke plume if you will coming from the Pentagon. Cause you can't see the Pentagon directly from the Washington Monument.
And yet Hill went around to numerous sites like the Prison Planet Forum and 911oz announcing his call to Artman and saying: "Stuart never actually saw the plane impact the Pentagon, but guess what? He never saw a flyover and if anyone would have seen the 'CIT flyover' it would have been him!"

When researchers on the 911oz forum explained the absurdity and dishonesty of Hill's statement in detail, he responded: "Reach for any excuse you want! Stuart saw the plane approach, a few seconds later he saw the smoke plume and no plane flying in the airspace of the Pentagon! the CIT flyover is garbage end of story :)"

EXAMPLE 2: ALLEN CLEVELAND

Hill repeated this exercise again recently with Allen Cleveland, who I mentioned a moment ago. It is clear from Cleveland's previously-published accounts that he was not able to literally see the plane as it reached the building, since he was over a mile from the Pentagon on a train "just pulling in on the subway station at national airport" with view obstructed by Crystal City highrises. He himself says: "I watched as the plane disappeared behind the line of buildings that make up Crystal city and watched as an incredible mushroom cloud appeared on the horizon."

Cleveland of course confirmed this to Hill right off the bat, 23 seconds into the call (mp3):

HILL: I was reading a report, uh, there's some little blurb from the Washington Post-. From what I get out of it, like, you didn't actually see it hit?

CLEVELAND: No. Cause you can't actually see it from Washington-- well-- from National Airport. Uh, I-- I saw the plane come in. And I see-- I saw it go behind Crystal City and I just tracked it with my eyes as it, you know, went behind the buildings and then I saw the explosion.

Here is the view facing the Pentagon from the Reagan Metro Station which he was "just pulling in on" (from the south, behind where the cameraman is standing). We posted it on our forum years ago and it is still there. As you can see, the Pentagon is not visible at all because it is over a mile away, beyond the visible buildings, as Cleveland himself indicated.

Hill of course focuses on telling Cleveland all about the people "on the internet" like "Craig Ranke" who are "going around" saying that the plane didn't hit the Pentagon. He gets Cleveland to agree that he would have seen the flyover, but given his location this is clearly not the case just because he saw the massive fireball, which has been described by some witnesses as several times the height of the Pentagon. (This is not to call Cleveland a liar - he has not studied our work; Jeff has.)

Nevertheless, Hill created threads on multiple forums (including his own) announcing and linking to the call and declaring things like: "Allen had a perfect view for the flyover! Only problem is he didn't see a flyover!" and "Allen Cleveland didn't see no stinkin flyover!"

As a matter of fact, he made the same basic announcement on 911Blogger right in Chandler's Pentagon "Joint Statement" thread: "Just got off the phone with Allen Cleveland who was at the National Airport subway station and would of had a perfect view for a flyover. The only problem is he didn't see no flyover!" (screen shot).

EXAMPLE 3: THOMAS TRAPASSO

Thomas Trapasso is another previously-published alleged witness who claimed to have seen the plane on its way to the Pentagon, but he has never claimed to have literally watched the impact. We mentioned Trapasso's account in our presentation "Flight 77 The White Plane", showing images from his complex on S Barton and explaining how he would not have been able to see the Pentagon at all from that location, which is over a mile away from it.

Trapasso reaffirmed his already-published location to Hill directly over the phone (mp3), and also explained to him that you can't even see the Navy Annex from there (which is much closer to him than the Pentagon). Hill asked, "Did you see it go past the Navy Annex or anything?"   Trapasso replied, "Well no I can't see the Navy Annex there because it's a wooded area with trees and everything."

Nevertheless, Hill went on to fraudulently cite him as an impact witness by including him in a video he made entitled "9/11 Pentagon Eyewitnesses - They Saw The Plane Hit!", which he and his friends post everywhere they can, including frequently embedding it on 911Blogger any time the Pentagon is discussed. (For example, Jeff "shure" Hill himself embedded it in the thread for this very Chandler/Cole essay.)

Also, during this relatively short call, as he has done with several other witnesses, Hill tried to dig up dirt on us and/or poison the well/bias the witness against me personally. He asked, "Did you ever uh get contacted by some guy named Craig Ranke? [...] He says he's part of the Citizens Investigation Team and he was uh looking into the Pentagon on 9/11".   Once he realized that he was not going to be able to get any dirt because Trapasso did not know who I was, Hill then went into a speech about witness Roosevelt Roberts Jr. and said, "They're (CIT) making it sound like he said that the plane never hit the Pentagon and it flew over the Pentagon and anybody that saw it hit the Pentagon was deceived into believing that." This is not only a misrepresentation of what we have reported about what Roosevelt Roberts Jr. said, but there is no reason for him to bring this up at all to a witness who does not know Roosevelt, was not near Roosevelt, and wasn't even in a position to see the Pentagon at all. The only point would be to either poison the well against CIT or provoke the witness into making emotional denouncements of the flyover which could later be taken out of context by propagandists such as himself to make it seem like Trapasso would have been able to see the flyover when this is obviously not the case.

EXAMPLE 4: STEVEN STORTI

On June 19, 2010, Jeff Hill called previously-published alleged eyewitness Steven Storti, who we had previously spoken to ourselves. In the call with Hill, Storti made a number of demonstrably false and libelous statements about us. The very next day, Jeff took his recording of Storti's misrepresentations and lies and edited it into a YouTube video, which he titled "Craig Ranke's CIT Flyover Theory and Credibility Busted", including a picture of my face as the thumbnail. He and a number of other people then posted and promoted it at various websites (example) as proof of our supposed dishonesty and shady behavior.

Among Storti's claims was that we had published a statement on our website or forum stating that we have "never been able to track [him] down" and that "after repeated attempts nobody was-- NOBODY among [our] research group was able to find [him]". This claim is patently false, which is why when Jeff Hill published this accusation the next day he did not QUOTE US saying any such thing to back it up, despite the fact that if such a statement existed it could have easily been found through one or two minutes of searching our forum/site. Considering that Hill waited until the day after speaking with Storti to publish the call (he usually publishes immediately), he probably did do this, came up empty handed, and then went ahead and shamelessly published his false claim anyway in a blatant attempt to demonize us.

More importantly, we published an open letter to Steven Storti on June 22, 2010, two days after Jeff published his Storti call and YouTube disinfo video. In this open letter we meticulously document our interactions with Steven Storti and very clearly demonstrate the falsity of his allegations in great detail with recordings, transcripts, copies of e-mails, etc. This open letter is an absolute must read for anyone who wants to understand our methodology for dealing with witnesses, and the absolute brazenness of Jeff Hill's disinformation campaign. Again, here is the link: http://z3.invisionfree.com/CIT/index.php?showtopic=1328

Hill was made fully aware of this immediately, and yet he refused to take the video down. To this day he keeps his video online as deliberate disinformation against us. He will not even link to my response/open letter in the description. In fact, a month or so ago someone tried to post a link to it in the comments section, and Jeff deleted the comment, banned the user from posting comments on the video, and then shortly thereafter completely deleted and disabled ALL comments on the video to assure that anyone who stumbles onto it while searching YouTube, Google, a 9/11 site, or his forum, or is simply sent the link, will most likely NOT find out that we had thoroughly set the record straight and proven Storti's allegations false.

He has now changed the title to "CIT - Craig Ranke's No Planer Flyover Theory Busted". This disinfo video has been repeatedly posted/embedded on sites like 911Blogger.com (example), despite the fact that the majority of the clique of users on there who obsess over us, attack us, and lie about us constantly with impunity on the site are undoubtedly aware that we proved it to be disinfo two days after it was created. It was even embedded in the comments section of the very Chandler/Cole piece that I am responding to. In the two instances that I just gave not a single person posted our rebuttal, and this is par for the course. This is, by the way, exactly why we are forbidden from posting there -- so that we cannot refute this kind of disinformation and fraudulent vilification, which is posted about us on a nearly daily basis on the site.

A final note regarding Hill, and Chandler's bizarre endorsement of him...

After he renounced his WTC No Plane Theory (circa mid to late 2009 I believe) and began his Pentagon disinfo campaign, Hill was not only publicly attacking CIT, but also AE911Truth and others. In September 2010, just a few months ago, he was publicly proclaiming on his "radio show" (podcast) that after years of looking closely at 9/11 there is in his opinion no proof of an inside job, suggesting that the towers may have come down due to fire after all, calling the work of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (AE911Truth) "crap", stating that Richard Gage and others are "corrupt" and have no proof, proclaiming that the 9/11 truth movement could just be "disinformation all over the board", and so on.

However, it seems that when Steven Jones' associate Frank Legge -- who had already published brazen anti-CIT/pro-impact disinfo -- began incorporating misleading, out of context witness statements garnered by Hill through deception and manipulation into his propaganda, and then Chandler and Cole praised his Pentagon witness calls, Hill, being the opportunistic chameleon that he is, realized that if he stopped attacking Gage, Steven Jones, AE911Truth, etc., and tried to blend in more with the "9/11 truth movement", he could, with Chandler and Cole's weight behind him, and with the help of the anti-CIT clique of alleged "truth movement" members, gain a bigger and better soapbox for his extremely vitriolic disinfo attacks on CIT, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, David Ray Griffin, etc. so that appears to be his new gameplan.

Now, just a few months after he was publicly calling AE911Truth (and Steven Jones) "crap" and saying that there is no proof of an inside job on his podcast, the most recent episode of that very same podcast (attacking CIT of course) is featured on the front page of 911Blogger.

The National Security Alert video and the The PentaCon: Eyewitnesses Speak, Conspiracy Revealed (Smoking Gun Version) are available to view online on various CIT web sites.

Right, thanks. Although they have shown that they are aware of where the "various CIT web sites" are located on the internet, their statements prove that they have not spent much time there bothering to research before publishing this shoddy attack.

Flight AA77 on 9/11: New FDR Analysis Supports the Official Flight Path Leading to Impact with the Pentagon

By Frank Legge, (B.Sc.(Hons.), Ph.D.) and Warren Stutt, (B.Sc.(Hons.) Comp. Sci.)

URL: journalof911studies.com/volume/2010/Calibration%20of%20altimeter_92.pdf

Since our joint statement was written Frank Legge and Warren Strutt have published a new analysis of the data from the American Airlines Flight 77 FDR (Flight Data Recorder). The previously published analysis omitted the last records and so appeared to be inconsistent with the official narrative of the flight path of AA77 into the Pentagon. This new analysis is consistent with the path of damage inside and outside the Pentagon and the vast majority of eyewitness testimony. The article is published at the Journal of 9/11 Studies.

As usual Chandler and Cole speak in extremely general terms about "the vast majority of eyewitness testimony" with no names, quotes, or analysis at all.

Pilots for 9/11 Truth is an organization of aviation professionals and pilots from around the world who are committed to seeking the truth surrounding the events of the 11th of September 2001. See the names and credentials of their members here.

These pilots analyzed the data released by the NTSB, allegedly from the "black box" of Flight 77, and concluded that it does not support the government's story.

This paper that Chandler and Cole are recommending, co-authored by Frank Legge, is being touted as a "peer-reviewed" paper debunking the analysis and findings of these pilots.

As explained here, this same "peer-review" claim was made last time Frank Legge published an article about the Pentagon in the Journal of 9/11 Studies, even though it contained a considerable amount of false and/or misleading information. After the initial publication of this supposedly "peer-reviewed'" paper it subsequently underwent multiple revisions to correct errors, and yet even after those revisions it still contained key misinformation (more properly called disinformation since it was pointed out to him after Version 2, and he is now on Version 8) which remains to this day. Read all about that episode here.

Although this new paper concerns the NTSB-released alleged black box data none of the authors have expertise in avionics at all. Credentialed people at Pilots for 9/11 Truth have already (just like last time) uncovered several errors and demonstrated why the conclusion is based on a faulty premise to begin with.

See here for a short explanation by FAA certified pilot Rob Balsamo of some of the errors he noticed right away, and see here for much more thorough analysis and commentary by an actual FDR expert and others.

This is what happens to a plane (F4 Phantom jet) striking an impenetrable barrier at 500+ mi/hr. A plane moving at this speed has 25 times the kinetic energy of a plane moving at 100 mi/hr. All that kinetic energy must be dissipated by the time it comes to rest. The results are not intuitive. In the case of a passenger plane hitting the pentagon, or a plane hitting the ground at Shanksville PA, if it is traveling at the same speed it has the same kinetic energy per kilogram of mass. Therefore the same degree of destruction is to be expected. This is the major fallacy of exercises such as “Hunt the Boeing” at the Pentagon. Look at this video then I invite you to “Hunt the Phantom”

This faulty analogy based on this Sandia test has been made for years by JREFers and Jim Hoffman.

To begin with, we as viewers can't "Hunt the Phantom" because the video does not show any aftermath photos. The videos all cut off as the dust cloud is growing, so we don't know what exactly remains after the dust has settled.

Nevertheless, in a recent interview with John Bursill, Chandler said that the plane "literally turns into confetti" and "goes up in dust", and that the pieces that remain "are a few inches across perhaps at most".

If that's the case, and if "the same degree of destruction is to be expected" at the Pentagon as Chandler says, then does he concede that the (relatively small amount of) semi-recognizable pieces photographed at the scene, which were never positively identified as belonging to AA77 or tail number N644AA, but which his apparent Pentagon co-mentor Jim Hoffman says "plausibly match parts of a 757", were planted?

Chandler's one paragraph long analysis does not take into account numerous variables like the thickness and composition of the targets and impact orientation. It's also predicated on the plane "traveling at the same speed" as the F-4 Phantom in the test. However, this would require the plane to have been flying 68 knots over the max operating speed limit (Vmo) for a 757 at sea level. The government claims that the plane was flying even faster than that, 460 knots, which is 110 Knots over its Vmo. Professional pilots have been willing to put their careers and/or distinguished reputations on the line to come forward saying this it is virtually if not totally impossible for the plane to achieve such speeds with the airframe staying in tact all the way to the wall, let alone controllable. Also, remember that the plane would have to hit five light poles at that virtually if not totally impossible speed and pull up to hit the building at ground level without damaging the lawn on the way in, or causing any significant damage to the foundation.

Why does Chandler apparently have no skepticism about the physics of this (or, for example, Lloyde's story, for that matter) while arguing in support of the disproven official impact narrative? His bias on this issue is very apparent.

We will be publishing a much more thorough analysis of this Sandia test analogy soon, so stay tuned for that.

Ultimately and more importantly though, even if this wasn't a faulty analogy, it is not very relevant anyway because overwhelming eyewitness testimony and other evidence proves that the plane flew on the north side of the Citgo station, could not and did not hit the light poles, generator trailer, or building, and was seen flying away by multiple eyewitnesses. We do not cite a lack of plane debris as proof in and of itself, or even the primary proof, that the plane did not hit.

CONCLUSION

I will conclude by saying that I have seen examples of both David Chandler and Jonathan Cole's research into the destruction of the WTC and found it to be excellent, professional, and certainly "scientific". This is what makes it so surprising and disappointing that they would resort to such a sloppy, unprofessional, aggressive, and libelous approach regarding the Pentagon attack, and specifically the findings of CIT.   It's particularly disappointing that they would resort to this without bothering to reach out to us even once for a dialogue, or spending much time at all studying our material (assuming that they actually believe the many fallacious things they wrote in this paper).

The content and simplistic nature of their essay leads me to believe that it was most likely written, above all, as rather emotional and off-the-cuff reaction to false information about Citizen Investigation Team, our work, and the Pentagon attack in general that they have been fed by people like Jim Hoffman and his wife Victoria. I prefer to hold that opinion before writing them off as deliberately dishonest like their apparent mentors on this issue.

I would like to formally challenge both David Chandler and/or Jonathan Cole to debate the issue with me in person and on video. I will come to them on my own dime. I will assume for now that when presented with the information in full, and when all of their questions/concerns are directly addressed, that they will revise their opinions and realize that they have had a hasty a reaction and have severely misjudged the situation here.

If they refuse to debate the subject with me directly, yet also refuse to retract the many untrue and in some cases defamatory things they have said and insist on leaving this extremely inaccurate essay up, I think this will speak very negatively to their honesty, sincerity, honorability, and forthrightness on this issue, especially given their calls for "intellectual rigor" and internal self-"policing" of the movement. Here's hoping that such refusals do not take place. Given the quality and importance of their WTC work and its synergistic nature to the evidence we have uncovered during our Pentagon investigation, we have no desire for the adversarial relationship they have chosen to initiate to continue.

Craig Ranke
Citizen Investigation Team
February 3, 2011