Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Metal Fire

                   
The intense fire in the northeast corner opening of the 81st floor is still present. An unusual flame is visible within this fire. In the upper photograph in Figure 9-44 a very bright white flame, as opposed to the typical yellow or orange surrounding flames, which is generating a plume of white smoke, stands out. The intensity of this flame is considerably brighter than normal flames. It was easily identified in numerous photographs and videos shot from long distances at which the surrounding "normal" flames were not visible. The brightness of the flame, along with the white smoke, suggests that some type of metal is burning. Aluminum will burn, but in normal fires it usually melts instead because the metal surface is protected by an oxide layer that must be breeched before ignition can take place. Aluminum oxide melts at high temperatures (2054C) that are not typically reached in normal fires. There were limited quantities of other metals on the aircraft that might also burn. Whatever the metal, the ignition of a metal fire is an indication of the significant heating of debris that took place in the northeast corner of the 81st floor due to the prolonged intense burning in this area following the aircraft impact.
NISTNCSTAR1-5A_chapter_9_AppxC - p. 344. (pdf p.48 - 55Mb)

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Sunday, September 24, 2006

Dialysis

Don't blame the Afgans for all out drug problems
April 10, 2001
By Rory Cahill

Lefty and Yank Basher

A good mate of mine, Jack Barton, (from News Views and Abuse too!) just got back from a trip to Afganistan, where he met, among other Afgan identities, Ahmed Shah Masood, "Tiger Of Panjshir" and the military leader of the Northern Alliance that is fighting those sculpture-vultures the Taliban. Jack works as a freelance journalist and has travelled widely, including many "hotspots" such Croatia in 1991 and Chiapas State, Mexico in 1994, when the Zapatistas under Subcommandante Marcos occupied the entire province.

To say he knows his shit is an understatement.

The Sunday Herald Sun printed a number of his stories while he was in Afganistan but the best and biggest story for mine, well, just isn't being told.

Afganistan produces about 60-70% of the worlds heroin, supplying all of Western Europe, Russia and increasingly Australia. Shah Masood has done a deal with the Russians to stop trading smack and opium and in return the Russians are arming him to fight the goat-loving peasants that are the Talibs. This is undeniably a good thing.

But in the 90% of Afganistan held by the Taliban, a strange thing has occured. Desperate to win international aid and have Clinton's limited 1998 sanctions removed, the Talibs actually cut opium production by 97% in 2000-01, mainly by burning crops and confiscating farming equipment.

This has resulted in about 100,000 poor peasants, denied the one cash crop that grows in the harsh Afgan soils, becoming refugees and heading to Pakistan to join 1.5 million of their compatriots who have been sheltering in squalid camps since the Russians invaded in 1979.

This season there will be no opium harvested in Afganistan and thus a major drop in world-wide heroin supplies, with accompanying crime waves as addicts steal more and more to pay for more expensive, less pure heroin.

One would think the Americans would be over-joyed by this, especially seeing as George Dubya "Coke And Whisky And Coke For Me Thanks" Bush is now resting his boots on the Oval Office table, especially as not-so-subtle messages were sent indicating the US would drop the sanctions if the Taliban cut the drugs.

Alas, no! Due to its racist and inept ways, the US is convinced hepatitic old Usuma bin Laden personally directs ALL international terrorism from his cave near Kandahar, despite the fact he is on dialysis and the Taliban have taken all his satellite communications equipment away.

That there are 2 billion Muslims on Earth and some of them, like the Chechen Mujahideen currently defeating the Russian Army for the second time in five years, are the best guerilla fighters in the world, seems to elude the US - clearly Usuma bin Laden and his 500 ageing supporters are the root of all evil!

So, because the strictly Muslim Talibs won't betray their culture, religion and nation by giving bin Laden up to the Yanks to be tried by a kangaroo court in Washington, the US has jacked yet harsher sanctions onto poor old Afganistan.

The result? The Taliban are feeling, quite correctly, that the Americans cannot be trusted to keep their promises and have now embarked on a massive, industrial scale preparation for Season 2001-2. They are going to grow more opium and sell more smack to more Western kiddies than in anybody in human history. Jack saw new heroin labs and opium storage sheds being constructed!

What a great result all around. The Taliban will never, ever again bother with anything the West says, hence their glee in blowing the Buddhas at Bamiyan. Usuma bin Laden will never be brought to trial for his ALLEGED involvement in the 1998 embassy bombings and the world will be flooded with yet more smack. [...]
Crikey.com, April, 2001 (Aust.gov pandora archive)
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July 02, 2001
MUSHARRAF, BIN LADEN & THE LASHKAR
by B.Raman

[...] Independent reports from Islamabad and Peshawar suggest that :

  • Bin Laden, who suffers from renal deficiency, has been periodically undergoing dialysis in a Peshawar military hospital with the knowledge and approval of the Inter-Services Intelligence, (ISI) if not of Gen.Pervez Musharraf himself.
  • The recent circulation of copies of bin Laden's video cassette showing him and his followers undergoing training in Afghan territory and the interview of Bakr Atyani, a correspondent of the Middle East Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) with bin Laden and his aides Abu Hafas al-Masri and Ayman al-Zawahiri, leader of Egypt's outlawed Jihad group, were organised by Pakistani military and ISI officers manning the Taliban's newly-created intelligence agency, which has replaced the Khad, the intelligence agency of the Najibullah regime. In this interview, during which bin Laden was present but did not speak, his two aides warned that "the coming weeks will hold important surprises that will target American and Israeli interests in the world." The interview was reportedly recorded by a camera supplied by the ISI officers of the Taliban's intelligence agency since the correspondent was not allowed to carry any recording equipment when he transited Peshawar on his way to Kandahar to interview bin Laden and his aides.

[...] However, the Taliban has questioned the authenticity of the video cassette and the claims of the journalist to have interviewed bin Laden's aides. Despite this, William B. Milam, the outgoing US Ambassador in Islamabad, contacted the Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan, Abus Salaam Zaeef , on June 29 and reportedly warned him that in case of a new terrorist attack against American interests by groups associated with bin Laden, Washington would hold the Taliban directly responsible, hinting thereby that any retaliatory strike by the US could be directed against the Taliban's headquarters.
South Asia Analyst Group, July, 2001
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September 19, 2001
Who did it? Foreign Report presents an alternative view

Israel’s military intelligence service, Aman, suspects that Iraq is the state that sponsored the suicide attacks on the New York Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington. Directing the mission, Aman officers believe, were two of the world’s foremost terrorist masterminds: the Lebanese Imad Mughniyeh, head of the special overseas operations for Hizbullah, and the Egyptian Dr Ayman Al Zawahiri, senior member of Al-Qaeda and possible successor of the ailing Osama Bin Laden.
http://www.janes.com/....shtml
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Nov 01, 2001
Ailing bin Laden ‘treated secretly for kidney disease’

ADAM SAGE IN PARIS; OVERSEAS NEWS
London Times

KIDNEY stones rather than Stealth bombers could deal a mortal blow to Osama bin Laden it appeared yesterday after reports that the al-Qaeda leader recently smuggled himself into an expensive Gulf hospital. Needing urgent treatment for his ailing kidneys, bin Laden, 44, is said to have checked into the American Hospital in Dubai in July. {and/or a peshwar military hospital] Among those with him, it is thought, was Dr Ayman Zawahiri, who as well as being his personal physician is al-Qaeda's second-in-command.
http://www.wanttoknow.info/011101londontimes
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Friday, September 15, 2006

77 and 93 on 911

"unlike everything else that has been reported" - Daily Press

The statements of the witnesses, the FAA administrator, the Pentagon employees and the C-130 pilot, condensed into the following compendium of industrial-strength extracts, were not selected because they are the most frequently ignored testimonies (which they are); but because they are mutually-compatible, non-contradictory, and convergent on a highly-plausible explanation of flights 77 and 93 that was already published in July of 2001 by James Hatfield:

[...] According to counter-terrorism experts quoted in Germany's largest newspaper, [Bin Laden's] attack on Dubya might be a James Bond-like aerial strike in the form of remote-controlled airplanes packed with plastic explosives. James Hatfield, July 3, 2001

Concordant also with the vast majority of Pentagon witness reports (including those lacking a C-130) and with the apparent rarity of debris in high-resolution post-impact images, this remote-controlled and explosives-packed hypothesis was, for me, "like a domino effect"---a really bad day for planes near Steve.

77 + C-130

'Horrific' Image Still Haunts Surry Woman Disaster Viewed From Arlington by Terry Scanlon, Daily Press September 14, 2001

The image of a jet slamming into the side of the Pentagon continues to haunt Pam Young and Keith Wheelhouse. The brother and sister had just finished burying her brother-in-law at Arlington National Cemetery when they witnessed the final seconds of American Airlines flight 77.

"The ball of flames just sticks in your mind, and all you think about is those people inside the building," said Young, of Surry County. "And you're standing in the middle of Arlington cemetery, and you don't know what's coming next."

Next was a wave of heat as the roughly two dozen stunned funeral attendees froze briefly before scurrying out of the wide-open graveyard. "It was a ball of fire and all you smelled was diesel. And the smoke was incredible," Young said. "It was horrific."

Perhaps more remarkable is her insistence that a second plane was flying near and along the same path as the hijacked jet. Her brother, Wheelhouse, of Virginia Beach, spotted the planes first.

The second plane looked similar to a C-130 transport plane, he said. He believes it flew directly above the American Airlines jet, as if to prevent two planes from appearing on radar - while at the same time - guiding the jet toward the Pentagon.

Wheelhouse's account of a second plane is unlike everything else that has been reported about the attack. Some initial reports on television said a second airliner might be headed for the Pentagon, but authorities later dismissed that. A Norfolk-based FBI agent interviewed Wheelhouse Wednesday evening.

A possible explanation for the second plane could be a plane landing at nearby Ronald Reagan National Airport. The Pentagon is between the cemetery and the airport. But Wheelhouse insists he was not confused by other air traffic.After the attack on the Pentagon, reporters in Washington saw Air Force planes patrolling the skies over the capital.

Wheelhouse said it's possible the second plane was a military plane, but the military has not said it had a plane shadowing the hijacked jet.

Regardless, the image of the two planes taking aim at the Pentagon is fixed in Wheelhouse's mind. And even though he returned to work Thursday, like his sister, he's struggling to forget Tuesday's terrorist attack. And living near Oceana Naval Air Station hasn't helped soothe his nerves."I do have a tendency to look up," he said.


Hampton Roads Woman Says She Too, Saw Plane Following Jet That Hit Pentagon by Terry Scanlon, Daily Press, September 15, 2001

Another Hampton Roads native says she saw a second plane in the air over the Pentagon as a hijacked jet plunged into the five-sided military fortress Tuesday. Kelly Knowles, a First Colonial High School alumnus who now lives in an apartment a few miles from the Pentagon, said some sort of plane followed the doomed American Airlines jet toward the Pentagon, then veered away after the explosion. Her account of the attack is similar to that of a Surry woman and her Virginia Beach brother, who were at Arlington National Cemetery at the time.

"Thank God somebody else saw that. There was most definitely a second plane," Knowles said. "It's so frustrating because nobody knows about the second plane, or if they do they're hiding it for some reason."

FBI spokesmen say they have not heard about it, although both Knowles and Keith Wheelhouse, the Virginia Beach man, were interviewed by FBI agents. A Pentagon official said late Friday no other plane was flying with the jetliner. But he said it was possible a military plane was in the area at the time of the attack.

Tuesday morning, Knowles, 22, was watching the stunning live images of the of the World Trade Center burning from her apartment building about four miles west of the Pentagon. From behind the wall of windows in her 14th-floor bedroom she has an unobstructed view of the five-sided military fortress and the capital city directly behind it.

Planes never pass over her Fairfax County apartment, she said, so when a low-flying, high-speed plane buzzed the high-rise, she jumped up, ran to the windows and saw the rear of a jet heading toward Washington, D.C. A few seconds later, a second plane that seemed to be chasing the first passed over at a slightly different angle, she said.


Northern Virginia resident John O'Keefe was one of the many commuters who witnessed the attack on the Pentagon. [...] "The first thing I did was pull over onto the shoulder, and when I got out of the car I saw another plane flying over my head, and it scared ...me, because I knew there had been two planes that hit the World Trade Center. And I started jogging up the ramp to get as far away as possible. "Then the plane -- it looked like a C-130 cargo plane -- started turning away from the Pentagon, it did a complete turnaround. New York Lawyer, September 12, 2001 (web archive)

USAToday.com Editor Joel Sucherman saw it all: an American Airlines jetliner fly left to right across his field of vision as he commuted to work Tuesday morning. [...] Off to the west, Sucherman saw another plane climb steeply and make a sharp turn. "I thought, 'Is this thing coming around to make a second attack? If there is another explosion, we're toast.'" e-Week, September 13, 2001 (web archive)

My [Scott P. Cook] office is located on the fifth floor of the Portals building, at 1280 Maryland Avenue SW, Washington DC. It's the southernmost building at the end of 14th Street, right at the Tidal Basin and Maine Avenue.[...] As we watched the black plume gather strength, less than a minute after the explosion, we saw an odd sight that no one else has yet commented on. Directly in back of the plume, which would place it almost due west from our office, a four-engine propeller plane, which Ray later said resembled a C-130, started a steep decent [sic] towards the Pentagon. Cloth Monkey, September 2001

Philip Thompson: ...on my way to work Sept. 11, I saw an American Airlines jet come overhead and slam into the Pentagon [...] I was sitting in heavy traffic in the I-395 HOV lanes about 9:45 a.m., directly across from the Navy Annex. I could see the roof of the Pentagon and, in the distance, the Washington Monument. I heard the scream of a jet engine and, turning to look, saw my driver's side window filled with the fuselage of the doomed airliner. It was flying only a couple of hundred feet off the ground - I could see the passenger windows glide by. The plane looked as if it were coming in for a landing - cruising at a shallow angle, wings level, very steady. But, strangely, the landing gear was up and the flaps weren't down. I knew what was about to happen, but my brain couldn't quite process the information. Like the other commuters on the road, I was stunned into disbelief. The fireball that erupted upon impact blossomed skyward, and the blast hit us in a wave. [...] Then a gray C-130 flew overhead, setting off a new round of panic. I tried to reassure people that the plane was not a threat. All around me people began to panic, fleeing for their lives. http://www.militarycity.com/sept11/911_1068139.html, September 2002

Albert Hemphill: Within moments there was a very loud bang, which seemed to come from the direction of Henderson Hall. At least, all the heads turned towards Henderson. It is possible that this was a secondary explosion from the Pentagon or possibly an F-16 going supersonic. [...] The only large fixed wing aircraft to appear was a gray C-130, which appeared to be a Navy electronic warfare aircraft, he seemed to survey the area and depart in on a westerly heading. Our Net Family, September 2001 [web archive]

Allen Cleveland: 10/28/2001 12:42 AM Pacific Daylight Time (From E-Mail) Dear Mr. King, I recently read your book "The Final Mission: Spooky 8". Had I known it existed I would have read it a long time ago. I know that you personally do not care whether a reader believes your story or not, but I would like you to know that I Personally believe what you have written for the most part. I,unlike yourself do not have any past history with Special Ops, but I do have a pretty keen mind for the way that our Government works as a whole. I just wanted to tell you that I Loved your book and was able to read it in 3 days time on the metro rail here in DC. I honestly believe that your book is probably one of the best I have ever read. I do prefer Non-fiction over Fiction, so I more than likely will not be reading your second book.(I hope you don't take offense to that.) I think you're a great Author and a soldier deserving respect.Whether people believe your story or not. I was also stationed at Fort Sill OK. 133rd Ord.Co.(I had a 111 GT score which would have allowed me to go else-where, but my MOS was needed there(MLRS-Repair/Maint) I will also add that I knew atleast 3 other people with GT scores of above 120 whom I served with on active duty while there.) Pretty sad that this DON guy believes, you have to be some kind of genious to do work that takes more heart and commitment than anything else. You've earned my respect by just being in the military. I was also stationed at Redstone Arsenal AL. with the EOD and Electronics School Toftoy Hall. I know this is a long e-mail, but I would also like to tell you a little info on the Septmber 11th terrorist attacks which occured as you know not far from where I am writing this to you now. I live in Woodbridge VA.(I'm sure you are aware of the geography) I was on my way into work on the 11th. Riding the metro-rail from Springfield VA. to DC.. I had just gotten off the phone with a close friend of mine who let me in on the details of the World Trade Center incidents which had taken place a few moments earlier. I was approaching the national airport stop, when I looked off to the right (I was facing backwards on the train)When I saw a large jet approaching Crystal city.(I was one of very few people that actually saw the Plane at the pentagon prior to its actual impact) I noticed that it's flight pattern was different than others I had come to recognize over riding the rail for many years. I knew that it was not headed for a landing strip. I actually had to look over my shoulder to see if I was mistaken and I unfortunately realized all too soon that I was about to witness one of the most historic moments of our lifetime. 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. I shouted HOLY SHIT!!! as the other passengers looked at me I pointed out the window to let them know what had happened. That is when it all set in and everyone realized what happened.No one else on my Car had seen what I saw. The reason I am telling you this is because the [reported] details of this one crash were not accurate from what I witnessed first hand and what I have gathered from others whom I know, saw what I saw.

Soon after the crash (Within 30 seconds of the crash) I witnessed a military cargo plane (Possibly a C-130) fly over the crash site and circle the mushroom cloud. My brother inlaw also witnessed the same plane following the jet while he was on the HOV lanes in Springfield. He said that he saw a jetliner flying low over the tree tops near Seminary RD in Springfield, VA. and soon afterwards a military plane was seen flying right behind it. I think this was also a reason for the false threat of another plane about to crash which caused rescuers to have to evacuate for a short time after the initial crash. I have done my research onthis and according to time magazine it took 24 minutes before Norad was supposedly notified about this particuliar jet and fighters were scrambling to intercept at that time. Isn't it odd how there is Not a single mention of this aircraft in ANY of the articles written about this crash? Also if you had not noticed... There is not a single picture or live footage of the actual jet prior to its crash at the Pentagon. Nor is there any of the one that crashed in Pennsylvania. But if Anyone who rides the metro-rail knows, there are plenty of Video cameras all around National airport at the parking Garages and the high level security buildings found all around Crystal city. (3 of which I have personally found pointed directly towards crystal city which would have given a great line of site shot of that jet prior to the crash as well as any other plane which might have been following it. I personally believe that the government new full well that this was about to happen and they are hiding something a lot bigger than they are willing to let out. I was interviewed at Washingtonpost.com and gave them my full story, but they did not print it as I have told you [*].

I also find it interesting that one of the planes engines in the pennsylvania crash was supposedly found 5 miles prior to the crash site (This information I'm unsure of). The only thing that I'm aware of that might cause that would be a heat seeking missle. A weapon which I am pretty familiar with form Ord.training. I'm not saying that the government new exactly what was about to happen, but I do believe that they are definitely hiding something here. Many of my friends in intelligence have said the same. I work in a Gov. building in DC., but my heart is right there with you and your team. I hope you and those who served with you are doing well. Take care. Allen Cleveland [web archive]

* On a Metro train to National Airport, Allen Cleveland looked out the window to see a jet heading down toward the Pentagon. "I thought, 'There's no landing strip on that side of the subway tracks,' " he said. Before he could process that thought, he saw "a huge mushroom cloud. The lady next to me was in absolute hysterics." washingtonpost, September 12, 2001

Another Arlington [Cemetery] worker who declined to be interviewed in front of the media told a story that the military historians had not heard in the 244 interviews they had conducted through last week. The man said a mysterious second plane was circling the area when the first one attacked the Pentagon. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 12, 2001


"We didn't know - it was classified!" (October Surprised)

C-130 Crew Saw Pentagon Strike, Official Confirms TERRY SCANLON and DAVID LERMAN DailyPress; Newport News; Oct 17, 2001

[Keith Wheelhouse] and at least two other witnesses to the Pentagon attack were troubled that Pentagon spokesmen had until now said they were unaware of a C-130 being in the area at the time. In the days immediately following the Sept. 11 hijackings, the Pentagon had no knowledge of the C-130's encounter, because all reports were classified by the Air National Guard, [!] [Lt. Col. Kenneth McClellan] said.


'We have planes. Stay quiet' - Then silence Michael Ellison in New York The Guardian, October 17, 2001

[...] At 9.36 the national airport [Dulles] instructs a military C130 (Golfer 06) that has just departed Andrews air force base to intercept the flight and identify it. At 9.38 AA77 crashes into the south-west side of the Pentagon.


Explosives Evident

A personnel attorney at the Pentagon, [Gilah] Goldsmith was riding a shuttle bus to work on Tuesday, Sept. 11, when she learned of the attack on the World Trade Center. [...] "We saw a huge black cloud of smoke," she said, saying it smelled like cordite or gun smoke. Jewish Bulletin News, September 21, 2001 [web archive]


WASHINGTON, D.C. --- The airliner crashed between two and three hundred feet from my office in the Pentagon, just around a corner from where I [Don Perkal] work. I'm the deputy General Counsel, Washington Headquarters Services, Office of the Secretary of Defense. A slightly different calibration and I have no doubt I wouldn't be sending this to you. My colleagues felt the impact, which reminded them of an earthquake. People shouted in the corridor outside that a bomb had gone off upstairs on the main concourse in the building. No alarms sounded. I walked to my office, shut down my computer, and headed out. Even before stepping outside I could smell the cordite. Then I knew explosives had been set off somewhere." Timothy McSweeney's, September 19, 2001


Did Not Capture

Hotel employees sat watching the film in shock and horror several times before the FBI confiscated the video as part of its investigation. It may be the only available video of the attack. The Pentagon has told broadcast news reporters that its security cameras did not capture the crash. Gertzfile, September 21, 2001 [web archive]

Velasquez says the gas station's security cameras are close enough to the Pentagon to have recorded the moment of impact. "I've never seen what the pictures looked like," he said. "The FBI was here within minutes and took the film." National Geographic, December 11, 2001 [web archive]

CNN's Jamie MacIntyre: "witnesses told me the day this happened that the plane -American Airlines Flight 77 - came in extremely low, but I'm not sure I realized how low it was until I saw these sequence of pictures that CNN obtained rom....uhhhh.....that were taken by a Pentagon security camera." CNN, March, 2002


Lazy Holding Pattern?

New radar evidence obtained by CBS News strongly suggests that the hijacked jetliner which crashed into the Pentagon hit its intended target. "Radar shows Flight 77 did a downward spiral, turning almost a complete circle and dropping the last 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes." .... "That is not the radar data that we have seen," Fleischer said, adding, "The plane was headed toward the White House." CBS, September 21, 2001


On Flight 77: 'Our Plane Is Being Hijacked' By Marc Fisher and Don Phillips Washington Post Staff Writers Wednesday, September 12, 2001 About an hour after takeoff from Dulles International Airport yesterday morning, Flight 77, a Boeing 757 headed for Los Angeles with 64 people aboard, became a massive missile aimed at the White House. The target would change suddenly, but the symbolism was equally devastating. [...] just as the plane seemed to be on a suicide mission into the White House, the unidentified pilot executed a pivot so tight that it reminded observers of a fighter jet maneuver. The plane circled 270 degrees to the right to approach the Pentagon from the west, whereupon Flight 77 fell below radar level, vanishing from controllers' screens, the sources said.

Aboard the hi-jacked planes, Reporter: Mark Easton, CHANNEL 4 NEWS [webarchive] September 13, 2001 [...] In the skies over the city flight AA77 was heading straight for the White House when at 9.38 it suddenly veered 270 degrees to right away from White House and headed towards the Pentagon, It crashed into the west side two minutes later. Just before the crash a civilian plane was filmed over the city apparently banking hard and there were reports of a military plane circling the US capital. Moments later, the Department of Defense was hit.

The Day the FAA Stopped the World TIME, Sep. 14, 2001 By SALLY DONNELLY [...] At approximately 9:37 am, controllers in the tower at Washington's National Airport likely used their secure hotline phone that reaches the Secret Service contact in charge of protection of the White House and informed them that an unidentified plane was hurtling towards the area.

Bush: "We're At War" By Evan Thomas and Mark Hosenball, NEWSWEEK [prisonplanet archive] Sept. 24 [2001] --- [...] At the White House on that beautiful, clear morning, the occupants were running for their lives. Vice President Dick Cheney had already been hustled into a bunker designed to withstand the shock of a nuclear blast when, at about 9:30 a.m., Secret Service men told staffers leaving the West Wing to run, not walk, as far away as possible. "There's a plane overhead, don't look back!" shouted a policeman. Agents were yelling at women to shed their high-heeled shoes so they could run faster. Several staffers saw a civilian airliner, reflecting white in the bright sunlight, appearing to circle nearby. Perhaps unable to spot the White House [!], the hijackers at the control of American Airlines Flight 77 dive-bombed the Pentagon instead.

America's Chaotic Road to War by Dan Balz and Bob Woodward Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, January 27, 2002 [...] Meanwhile, American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 that had taken off from Dulles International Airport, turned away from the White House and flew back across the Potomac River, slamming into the Pentagon at 9:39 a.m.

C-130 witness, Scott P. Cook: "It was a 757 out of Dulles, which had come up the river in back of our building, turned sharply over the Capitol, ran past the White House and the Washington Monument, up the river to Rosslyn, then dropped to treetop level and ran down Washington Boulevard to the Pentagon." (op.cit.)

C-130 witness, Allen Cleveland: My brother inlaw also witnessed the same [C-130] following the jet while he was on the HOV lanes in Springfield. He said that he saw a jetliner flying low over the tree tops near Seminary RD in Springfield, VA. and soon afterwards a military plane was seen flying right behind it. (op.cit.)

Tom Hovis (ref) Being a former transport type (60's era) I cannot understand how that plane hit where it did giving the direction the aircraft was taking at the time. As most know, the Pentagon lies at the bottom of two hills from the west with the east side being next to the river at 14th street bridge. One hill is at the Navy Annex and the other is Arlington Cemetery. The plane came up I-395 also known as Shirley Hwy. (most likely used as a reference point.) The plane had been seen making a lazy pattern in the no fly zone over the White House and US Cap. Why the plane did not hit incoming traffic coming down the river from the north to Reagan Nat'l. is beyond me. Strangely, no one at the Reagan Tower noticed the aircraft. Andrews AFB radar should have also picked up the aircraft I would think. Nevertheless, the aircraft went southwest near Springfield and then veered left over Arlington and then put the nose down coming over Ft Myer picking off trees and light poles near the helicopter pad next to building.


93 + C-130

Business jet, military cargo plane were in area of hijacked United Flight 93 By Bill Heltzel and Tom Gibb

Two other airplanes were flying near the hijacked United Airlines jet when it crashed in Somerset County, but neither had anything to do with the airliner's fate, the FBI said yesterday. In fact, one of the planes, a Fairchild Falcon 20 business jet, was directed to the crash site to help rescuers. The request for the jet to fly low and obtain the coordinates for the crash explains reports by people in the vicinity who said a white or silver jet flew by moments after the crash. A C-130 military cargo plane was also within 25 miles of the passenger jet when it crashed, FBI spokesman Bill Crowley said yesterday, but was not diverted. Post-Gazette, September 16, 2001 [renamed original]

Unanswered questions: The mystery of Flight 93 Independent.co.uk, August 13, 2002 [web archive]

The fate of United Airlines Flight 93 ... holds no mystery for Lee Purbaugh. He saw what happened with his own eyes. He was the only person present in the field where, at 10.06am, the aircraft hit the ground.

"There was an incredibly loud rumbling sound and there it was, right there, right above my head --- maybe 50ft up," [-] "It was only a split second but it looked like it was moving in slow motion, like it took forever. I saw it rock from side to side then, suddenly, it dipped and dived, nose first, with a huge explosion, into the ground. I knew immediately that no one could possibly have survived."

[...] Some conspiracy theorists will say that the plane was shot down by a missile, perhaps a heat-seeking missile that honed in on one of the plane's engines – a theory possibly substantiated by the 2,000yd flight of the 1,000lb engine part, but arguably refuted by consistent eye-witness accounts, including Lee Purbaugh's, that when last sighted the plane was not emitting smoke.

Others might say, as they have done about a TWA flight that fell to the sea in 1996 after taking off from New York, that the plane was a victim of electromagnetic interference. In the case of the TWA flight, the argument, put forward in a series of exhaustive articles written in the New York Review of Books by the Harvard academic Elaine Scarry, is that it happened accidentally. However, as Scarry's articles relate, documentation abounds showing that the Air Force and the Pentagon have conducted extensive research on "electronic warfare applications" with the possible capacity intentionally to disrupt the mechanisms of an aeroplane in such a way as to provoke, for example, an uncontrollable dive. Scarry also reports that US Customs aircraft are already equipped with such weaponry; as are some C-130 Air Force transport planes. The FBI has stated that, apart from the enigmatic Falcon business jet, there was a C-130 military cargo plane within 25 miles of the passenger jet when it crashed. According to the Scarry findings, in 1995 the Air Force installed "electronic suites" in at least 28 of its C-130s – capable, among other things, of emitting lethal jamming signals.


THE DOMINO EFFECT

Lt. Col. Steve O'Brien started his day at the controls of a Minnesota [Air] National Guard C-130 cargo plane. He and his crew were heading back to the Twin Cities after moving military supplies around the Caribbean. About 9:30 a.m., O'Brien throttled the lumbering plane down a runway at Andrews Air Force Base, just southeast of the District of Columbia.

"When we took off, we headed north and west and had a beautiful view of the Mall," he said. "I noticed this airplane up and to the left of us, at 10 o'clock. He was descending to our altitude, four miles away or so. That's awful close, so I was surprised he wasn't calling out to us.

"It was like coming up to an intersection. When air traffic control asked me if we had him in sight, I told him that was an understatement - by then, he had pretty much filled our windscreen. Then he made a pretty aggressive turn so he was moving right in front of us, a mile and a half, two miles away. I said we had him in sight, then the controller asked me what kind of plane it was.

"That caught us up, because normally they have all that information. The controller didn't seem to know anything."

O'Brien reported that the plane was either a 757 or 767 and its silver fuselage meant it was probably an American Airlines jet. "They told us to turn and follow that aircraft - in 20-plus years of flying, I've never been asked to do something like that. With all of the East Coast haze, I had a hard time picking him out.

"The next thing I saw was the fireball. It was huge. I told Washington the airplane has impacted the ground. Shook everyone up pretty good. I told them the approximate location was close to the Potomac. I figured he'd had some in-flight emergency and was trying to get back on the ground to Washington National. Suddenly, I could see the outline of the Pentagon. It was horrible. I told Washington this thing has impacted the west side of the Pentagon."

O'Brien asked the controller whether he should set up a low orbit around the building but was told to get out of the area as quickly as possible. "I took the plane once through the plume of smoke and thought if this was a terrorist attack, it probably wasn't a good idea to be flying through that plume." [!]

He flew west, not exactly sure where he was supposed to land. [!]

Somewhere over western Pennsylvania, O'Brien looked down at a blackened, smoldering field. "I hoped it was just a tire fire or something, but when I checked with Cleveland center, he told me he'd just lost a guy off the scope pretty close to where we saw it. By then, we were able to patch in AM radio, so we heard about all the planes. It was like a domino effect - a really bad day for airplanes." Minnesota Star-Tribune, September 11, 2002

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Tuesday, September 12, 2006

More Molten Metal Magic

1
Recovery worker reflects on months spent at Ground Zero
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service
May 29, 2002

[...] When [Joe] O'Toole signed on for trade center duty in January, he thought it would be a 30-day assignment. But after one month, he volunteered for another. And another. And another. And another. [...] Underground fires raged for months. O'Toole remembers in February seeing a crane lift a steel beam vertically from deep within the catacombs of Ground Zero. "It was dripping from the molten steel," he said.
cache
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2
[...] A veteran of disasters from the Mississippi floods Mt. St. Helens, [Ron] Burger said it reminded him most of the volcano, if he forgot he was in downtown Manhattan. "Feeling the heat, seeing the molten steel, the layers upon layers of ash, like lava, it reminded me of Mt. St. Helen's and the thousands who fled that disaster," he said. "It could have been a tornado or an avalanche or a volcano."

Ground Zero was a disaster site like no other---with hazards everywhere. Shards of steel lay upon shards of steel, shifting and unstable, uncovering red hot metal beams excavated from deep beneath layers of sub-floors, exposing further dark crevasses.
http://www.neha.org/9-11%20report/index-The.html
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3
Ironworkers' Job of Clearing Ground Zero Is Over, but the Trauma Lingers
By COREY KILGANNON
November 11, 2002

[...] The four men sat on a sunny sidewalk in Greenwich Village on a recent workday and ate their lunch staring at the steel skeleton of a building going up on West Third Street. One of them commented on how much easier it was to eat a sandwich in front of steel that was strong and straight and new, not molten and mangled and laden with debris.
NYT
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4
Reflections in the Wake of September 11:
Visit to Ground Zero, New York City
by Father Edward A. Malloy, CSC

[...] Eddie and I walked down into the depths of the South Tower, Building Two, which was the first to collapse. Large front end loaders were engaged in their task. Gigantic cranes were lifting pieces of steel weighing tons, some of which were being placed on the back of semi trucks. Firefighters atop a number of ladder trucks were spraying in the areas of greatest smoke. The average temperature beneath the rubble is said to be 1500 F. so that when steel is brought up it is molten and takes two or three days to cool down.
http://www.nd.edu/~ndmag/reflect/malloydiary.html
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5
RICH GARLOCK: Going below, it was smoky and really hot. We had rescue teams with meters for oxygen and carbon dioxide. They also had temperature monitors. Here WTC 6 is over my head. The debris past the columns was red-hot, molten, running.
PBS, September 2002
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6
TWO WEEKS AT GROUND ZERO
By Guy Lounsbury

[...] My particular part was to help maintain security in and around the perimeter of the site.
[...] Two weeks after the attack, one fireman told us that there was still molten steel at the heart of the towers' remains.
home.nycap.rr.com
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7
At Ground Zero
NIH'ers Respond to Tragedy in NYC
By Rich McManus
Photos by Van Hubbard, Susan Orsega, Rich McManus

[...] Ed Pfister's Diary: [...] I spent several hours tonight, walking "the pile" and attempting to soak it all in for the last time and find a bit of closure...deep below ground a portion of the pile was still on fire and boiled with molten material. Sometimes, open flame would erupt as a crane pulled debris out and air rushed in. Fire hoses constantly poured streams of water causing huge billowing steam clouds to rise up over the site into the huge lights above.
http://www.nih.gov/news/NIH-Record/10_30_2001/story01.htm
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8
Reluctant hero narrates horror of N.Y. mission
September 11, 2002

[...] Interim Bryan Fire Department Chief Mike Donoho was one of those sent to "ground zero," as the World Trade Center site quickly became known. [...] Here is Donoho's story, as told to Eagle staff writer John LeBas:

[...] What you had were large columns of steel that were just stuck into massive amounts of molten steel and other metals, that had just fused together from the heat and bonded together from the strength of the collapse.

We dug and we dug and we dug, and we cut and we cut and we cut, and we did not see anything that resembled any type of furniture, any type of personal belongings. We found some pieces of things like a telephone, things like that. I think we found credit cards a few times, and we found a couple of stuffed animals. But you would expect to see, like, a bunch of desks, a bunch of chairs. The only way I can explain it is, if you take a car and put it in one of those machines where they crush it and make it look like a cube, and you can't recognize what it is, that's what the whole area looked like. It looked like a massive, molten mess that had been fused together, like a car that had been cubed and crushed.

With all that heavy, heavy stuff, there were wires, rebar, concrete. Most of it was just steel. A lot of what we were walking on was just molten steel.
http://www.theeagle.com/septanniv/091102firefighter.htm
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9
MAGIC AT GROUND ZERO
by Ben Robinson
edited by David Groves
October 17, 2001

On October 4, I was called to do an indoor street performance by the New York City police department.
[...] Turns out, after someone works at Ground Zero, their clothes are trashed, and they put on these interim clothes that are piling up in donations. The workers go through three pairs of rubber boots a day because they melt in the three-week-old fire of molten metal and jet fuel.
The health hazards are everywhere: the fire, molten metal, the lack of breathable air and 3000+ decomposing bodies. And, I'm working for these brave souls
http://www.illusiongenius.com/11-01.html
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10
It is 4 a.m. in New York City as four researchers from the School enter the site of the World Trade Center disaster on foot. Each is lugging from 50 to 90 pounds of air-monitoring equipment onto Ground Zero. In the dark, the tangled pile of wreckage takes on a distinctly hellish cast.

"Fires are still actively burning and the smoke is very intense," reports Alison Geyh, PhD. "In some pockets now being uncovered, they are finding molten steel."
John Hopkins Public Health, Late Fall 2001 Magazine
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11
They came to help at Ground Zero. What they experienced they can't forget
By Marci McDonald

[...] Lee Turner, a bewhiskered paramedic, leads a tour with a mix of pride and disdain. For six years, he helped build it, corralling old culvert pipe, rusted refrigerators, and even a wrecked school bus. For six years, he and 185 other members of a federal urban search and rescue squad known as Missouri Task Force 1 (MO-TF1) had trained on it, unpaid, waiting for the call to be deployed.

[...] In the predawn darkness of September 12, barely 18 hours after MO-TF1 got the order for its first deployment, he jumped off an Army truck at the World Trade Center site and stared at a smoldering rubblescape that stretched as far as he could see. "There was nothing but acre after acre of twisted steel and this sticky white dust," he recalls. "We'd never seen anything like it."

[...] Turner himself crawled through an opening and down crumpled stairwells to the subway, five levels below ground. He remembers seeing in the darkness a distant, pinkish glow–molten metal dripping from a beam–but found no signs of life.
usnews
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12
Red Hot Debris. The removal of debris from the collapsed area requires the safe lifting and maneuvering of very heavy steel beams, often twisted and tangled from the force of the collapse. Some beams pulled from the wreckage are still red hot more than 7 weeks after the attack, and it is suspected that temperatures beneath the debris pile are well in excess of 1,000°F.
http://www.liro.com/lironews.pdf
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13

"Thermal Imagery of the progression of molten steel hotspots
from September 18 to September 25"
GeoNews, October, 2001
http://web.gc.cuny.edu/ees/october2001.pdf

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The Iraq Deconstruction Project

Kurdish leader threatens Iraq secession
By YAHYA BARZANJI,
Associated Press Writer
Sun Sep 3, 2006

The leader of the Kurdish region in northern Iraq threatened secession Sunday as a dispute over flying the Iraqi flag intensified.

Massoud Barzani on Friday ordered the country's national flag to be replaced with the Kurdish one, sparking harsh words in Baghdad.

"If we want to separate, we will do it, without hesitation or fears," Barzani, president of the Kurdish region, said during an address to parliament.

He tempered his comments slightly by saying that Kurdish leaders already have voted to remain in a united Iraq. But government leaders in Baghdad fear the Kurds are pushing for independence from the rest of Iraq.
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John Pilger Detects the Salvador Option
Newstatesman
Thursday 4th May 2006

[...] Now that al-Zarqawi has been replaced by "sectarian violence" and "civil war", the big news is the attacks by Sunnis on Shia mosques and bazaars. The real news, which is not reported in the CNN "mainstream", is that the Salvador Option has been invoked in Iraq. This is the campaign of terror by death squads armed and trained by the US, which attack Sunnis and Shias alike. The goal is the incitement of a real civil war and the break-up of Iraq, the original war aim of Bush's administration.
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Biden: Split Iraq Into 3 Different Regions
Sen. Joseph Biden Proposes Partitioning Iraq Into Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni Regions
By LIBBY QUAID, The Associated Press
Mon May 1, 6:06 AM ET

WASHINGTON - The senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee proposed Monday that Iraq be divided into three separate regions Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni with a central government in Baghdad.
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Bus Bomb Disrupts Iraq Calm
CBS,
March 4, 2006

Quote: "Iraqis were living in harmony until the occupiers and those who came with them arrived in this country. They are responsible for igniting sectarianism."
- Cleric Ahmed Hassan al-Taha
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Sectarian cleansing in Baghdad neighborhoods
Retaliation between Sunnis, Shiites seen as another indication of civil war
MSNBC, March 1, 2006

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The sectarian cleansing that drove 68-year-old Abbas al-Saiedi from his home may be as alarming a sign of a country on the brink of civil war as the killings that have swept Iraq in the past week.

Masked gunmen carrying rocket-propelled grenade launchers and automatic rifles kicked down the gate at his house, fired into the air and told the Shiite he had 48 hours to get his family out of the predominantly Sunni neighborhood in west Baghdad.

Al-Saiedi’s story, a tale of fear and desperation told to The Associated Press on Wednesday, represents a growing phenomenon of religious cleansing in which members of each Muslim sect are driving the others from neighborhoods where they have long lived side by side. [...]
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Daniel Pipes
February 28, 2006

Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition's responsibility nor its burden. The damage done by Saddam will take many years to repair. Americans, Britons, and others cannot be tasked with resolving Sunni-Shiite differences, an abiding Iraqi problem that only Iraqis themselves can address.

The eruption of civil war in Iraq would have many implications for the West. It would likely:

  • Invite Syrian and Iranian participation, hastening the possibility of an American confrontation with those two states, with which tensions are already high.
  • Terminate the dream of Iraq serving as a model for other Middle Eastern countries, thus delaying the push toward elections. This will have the effect of keeping Islamists from being legitimated by the popular vote, as Hamas was just a month ago.
  • Reduce coalition casualties in Iraq. As noted by the Philadelphia Inquirer, "Rather than killing American soldiers, the insurgents and foreign fighters are more focused on creating civil strife that could destabilize Iraq's political process and possibly lead to outright ethnic and religious war."
  • Reduce Western casualties outside Iraq. A professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, Vali Nasr, notes: "Just when it looked as if Muslims across the region were putting aside their differences to unite in protest against the Danish cartoons, the attack showed that Islamic sectarianism remains the greatest challenge to peace." Put differently, when Sunni terrorists target Shiites and vice-versa, non-Muslims are less likely to be hurt.

Civil war in Iraq, in short, would be a humanitarian tragedy but not a strategic one.
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Op-Ed: The Three-State Solution
November 25, 2003
New York Times

Leslie H. Gelb, President Emeritus and Board Senior Fellow Council of Foreign Relations

President Bush's new strategy of transferring power quickly to Iraqis, and his critics' alternatives, share a fundamental flaw: all commit the United States to a unified Iraq, artificially and fatefully made whole from three distinct ethnic and sectarian communities. That has been possible in the past only by the application of overwhelming and brutal force.

President Bush wants to hold Iraq together by conducting democratic elections countrywide. But by his daily reassurances to the contrary, he only fans devastating rumors of an American pullout. Meanwhile, influential senators have called for more and better American troops to defeat the insurgency. Yet neither the White House nor Congress is likely to approve sending more troops.

And then there is the plea, mostly from outside the United States government, to internationalize the occupation of Iraq. The moment for multilateralism, however, may already have passed. Even the United Nations shudders at such a nightmarish responsibility.

The only viable strategy, then, may be to correct the historical defect and move in stages toward a three-state solution:

Kurds in the north,
Sunnis in the center
and Shiites in the south.

[...] This three-state solution has been unthinkable in Washington for decades. After the Iranian revolution in 1979, a united Iraq was thought necessary to counter an anti-American Iran. Since the gulf war in 1991, a whole Iraq was deemed essential to preventing neighbors like Turkey, Syria and Iran from picking at the pieces and igniting wider wars.

But times have changed. The Kurds have largely been autonomous for years, and Ankara has lived with that. So long as the Kurds don't move precipitously toward statehood or incite insurgencies in Turkey or Iran, these neighbors will accept their autonomy. It is true that a Shiite self-governing region could become a theocratic state or fall into an Iranian embrace. But for now, neither possibility seems likely.

[...] A strategy of breaking up Iraq and moving toward a three-state solution would build on these realities. The general idea is to strengthen the Kurds and Shiites and weaken the Sunnis, then wait and see whether to stop at autonomy or encourage statehood.
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A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties
by Oded Yinon

This essay originally appeared in Hebrew in KIVUNIM (Directions), A Journal for Judaism and Zionism; Issue No, 14--Winter, 5742, February 1982, Editor: Yoram Beck. Editorial Committee: Eli Eyal, Yoram Beck, Amnon Hadari, Yohanan Manor, Elieser Schweid. Published by the Department of Publicity/The World Zionist Organization, Jerusalem.
[...]

Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets.
Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul,

and Shi'ite areas in the south
will separate from
the Sunni
and Kurdish north
.


The goal is the incitement of a real civil war and the break-up of Iraq, the original war aim of Bush's administration.
- John Pilger

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Saturday, September 02, 2006

Molten Metal Migration

These photos were taken at Ground Zero, the World Trade Center site in New York, on September 13, 2001. They were taken by someone named "Ed" who was allowed into the area by a member of the emergency response crew, at a time when all civilians -- including most journalists -- were forbidden to enter the area. As a result, these photos are just about the only close-ups ever taken of the World Trade Center site so soon after the 9/11 attacks.


Red Hot Debris.

The removal of debris from the collapsed area requires the safe lifting and maneuvering of very heavy steel beams, often twisted and tangled from the force of the collapse.

Some beams pulled from the wreckage are still red hot more than 7 weeks after the attack, and it is suspected that temperatures beneath the debris pile are well in excess of 1,000°F.
http://www.liro.com/lironews.pdf





"Left: Thermal Imagery of the progression of molten steel hotspots from September 18 to September 25 "
GeoNews, October, 2001
http://www.geo.hunter.cuny.edu/geonews/october2001.pdf


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Are You Confused?

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, left, stands with Mark Bingham during McCain's presidential campaign visit last year to the Bay Area. Bingham, 31, of San Franisco, was aboard hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 which crashed outside southwest Pennsylvania. Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001. McCain is one of 15 senators co-sponsoring a bill that would award the 44 passengers and crew members with the Congressional Gold Medal, Congress' highest civilian honor.
(AP Photo/Oakland Tribune)
http://web.knoxnews.com/web/kns/news/breaking/wtc/1101.html
Senator McCain's introduction to Popular Mechanic's "Debunking 9/11 Myths"
Debunking the debunkers - Charles' Goyette Show, Wednesday August 02 (mp3 - 5.5Mb)

Mohamed Atta, a 65-year-old lawyer and the father of Mohamed Atta, the 33-year-old man who has been named by the FBI as one of the suspects aboard American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to hit the World Trade Center, displays the Arab newpaper Al-Awsat showing a video grab showing his son entering the departure gate at Boston's Logan airport Sept. 11, 2001. The elder Atta said he spoke to his son a few days after the suicide attacks, but was confused over the exact timing and would provide no details.
(AP Photo/Amr Nabil)
http://web.knoxnews.com/web/kns/news/breaking/wtc/1283.html

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