The Pentagon footage did not “disappear.” The FBI collected nearby recordings as evidence reviewed them and later released footage through FOIA. Most cameras were low-frame-rate security cameras aimed at entrances, gates, parking lots or businesses—not high-speed cameras trained on the sky. The Pentagon gate camera captured only a blurred frame immediately before the explosion because it recorded roughly one image per second. Poor footage is not missing footage. The FBI’s released Pentagon video More importantly, the case does not depend upon CCTV. Flight 77 was tracked by radar; its flight-data recorder was recovered inside the Pentagon; numerous independent witnesses saw a large American Airlines passenger jet; the aircraft struck light poles and a generator before entering the building; Boeing 757 wreckage was recovered; and the remains of passengers and crew were identified. A missile cannot explain all of that—or the disappearance of Flight 77 and everyone aboard it. The maneuver was not a series of impossible “sharp turns.” Flight-recorder and radar data show one broad descending turn taking several minutes and covering miles. It would have been reckless and difficult to perform accurately, but it was well within a 757’s physical capabilities. Saying that some unnamed “professional pilots” disagree does not override the actual recorded flight data. NTSB Flight 77 flight-path study The “two-car-garage hole” is another misleading photograph. It shows only one visible opening after smoke, fire, debris and the façade obscured much of the impact area. The wings and tail were lighter structures that fragmented rather than cutting out a cartoon airplane-shaped outline. Structural engineers found a damage path approximately 75 feet wide and 230 feet long, with around 50 columns destroyed or seriously impaired. The exterior wall then collapsed about 20 minutes later. That is far more damage than a two-car-garage hole. American Society of Civil Engineers’ Pentagon findings The $2.3 trillion claim is also being misstated. Rumsfeld did not announce that $2.3 trillion in cash had disappeared on September 10. He referred to longstanding Pentagon accounting-system problems involving $2.3 trillion in transactions that could not initially be supported by adequate audit documentation. The issue had already been publicly reported before September 2001. It did not mean a vault containing $2.3 trillion was missing, and the records were distributed through multiple computer and accounting systems not stored in one conveniently targeted office. GAO testimony on the Pentagon’s financial-management problems Even if some accounting employees worked in the damaged section, that proves nothing about why it was hit. The aircraft approached the Pentagon from the direction dictated by its flight path; it struck the outside ring at ground level. If conspirators wanted to destroy financial evidence, crashing an aircraft into one portion of a five-sided building would be an absurdly unreliable method especially when electronic records, backups and documents existed elsewhere. The missile theory therefore requires us to believe that a missile somehow left Boeing wreckage, passenger remains, a 757 flight recorder, knocked down light poles with a 757-sized path, was seen as an American Airlines jet by numerous witnesses and that the real Flight 77 and its 64 occupants simultaneously vanished. That is not a simpler explanation. It is a collection of additional mysteries invented to avoid the evidence.
