By Cheryl Seal

One of the things that has bothered me since the morning of 9/11 is how little attention the Pentagon tragedy received. All you could hear screamed from the media and White House for months was WTC! WTC! WTC! Heroes of Flight 93! Heroes of Flight 93! It was an endless litany - education through repetition. In fact, 9/11 became synonymous, almost forcibly, with the WTC. Yet over 200 people died at the Pentagon, including the ill-fated passengers on Flight 77 - right at the heart of the city that is the symbol of our democracy. Why so little focus on this tragedy?

I believe it is because of all the events of 9/11, the crash of Flight 77 into the Pentagon was the most telling...it was the hottest, smokiest of the smoking guns. The key to the whole mystery may well lie in this five-sided building built by FDR's administration.

First, here's a little long-overdue background on the Pentagon.

The History of the Pentagon

When war broke out in Europe in 1939, even before the U.S. entered the conflict our War Department was gearing up for the possibility. However, there was no real home for the Department of Defense - it was scattered across D.C. in 17 different buildings. Back then, there wasn't a whole lot of red tape to cut through - when the green light was given to come up with a place to put the DOD, by God, they came up with a plan - in four days! In this relative blink of an eye, Brigadier Gen. Brehon B. Somervell developed a scheme for a three-story humongous complex capable of housing 40,000 workers (it later grew to five floors after WWII broke out).

But, Somervell's plan for a five-sided structure was not, as one might expect, symbolic, or an effort to create a stylized giant chevron. Instead, it was the most practical idea that suggested itself: the 67-acre site chosen (a former Dept. of Agriculture Farm on the Potomac) was bound on five sides by five existing roads. Voila! The Pentagon.

Cost estimates for the original project was $35 million - about what a couple of out buildings for storing old munitions might cost now! Believe it or not, the project was considered highly controversial. Some complained that it took up land intended for the expansion of Arlington Cemetery. Others said the DOD shouldn't be housed outside the District of Columbia, while some (we jaded 21st centurians would have to laugh at this) complained that the cost was too high.

One problem Congress wrangled over was what to do with the building once WWII was over. Although some wanted to turn it into a warehouse, most people assumed that the building would become a veterans hospital. It is very telling that no one believed there would be a need for 40,000 defense department workers after the War. That was because no one foresaw that war was soon to become a way of life, in one form or the other, for Americans. This shift to an all-war (ours or someone else's we help to arm), all the time focus can be traced to the Cold War mentality that many in high places locked into during the 1950s - Kissinger, Bush Sr., Nixon, Cheney, etc - and never left (and have never allowed the rest of us to leave).

In any case, the classic monster of a building (over 6.5 million square feet!) that we call the Pentagon was begun in 1941 a few months before Pearl Harbor (the appropriations biill was signed by FDR in Aug. 1941) Spurred to heroic efforts by the declaration of war in December, the construction crews - 13,000 men at one point - completed the building in an astounding 16 months. As with all government projects, the final cost was nearly three times higher than first estimates (it came in at $83 million).

Because a war - a bona fide one - was on, reinforced concrete was used instead of steel in most of the building's structure (in contrast to the WTC, which was a mass of steel beams). There were no elevators - instead, concrete ramps go between levels. The finished building consists of five nested concentric pentagons (called rings) covering 29 acres, with a 5-acre courtyard at the heart. The building is really a small town - with its own shopping concourse, banks, and even its own subway station.

In 1993, the Clinton adminstration pushed forward with efforts to upgrade the Pentagon, for many reasons, not least of which was the growing concern over terrorist attacks. In addition to new plumbing, the upgrade included putting in heavy duty fireproofing in the walls, reinforceing the walls, and improving security in general. The final reconstruction strategy called for the work to be divided into five "wedges," each wedge encompassing a corner and a rectangle of the building. The first wedge to be tackled was the one facing west, covering 1.2 million square feet. By September 2000, work on this wedge was about 70% complete.

The wedge was supposed to have been completely done by July 2001, but, as with rebuilding any old "house," more problems kept being uncovered. For example, all sorts of interesting goodies were found in the walls: a secure vault no one knew about, old whiskey bottles (hmm, wonder who went to such lengths to hide their booze!), and other items. Then of course, there were supports that needed more reinforcement, asbestos to be removed, etc.

Among the improvements made to Wedge One: Blast resistant windows and brick backup walls behind the building's limestone outer facade. These inner walls contain a metal fabric mesh similar to the mesh used in vehicle air bags. This mesh was designed specifically to CONTAIN DEBRIS FRAGMENTS in the event of a blast.

The Bloody Morning of September

On the morning of Sept 11, 2001, about 20,000 people were at work in the Pentagon. Almost no one was in Wedge one, except workers who were moving furniture in - the last step before the wedge was reopened for business. When the news of the planes hitting the WTC came, Pentagon personnel were horrified and clustered round radios and television sets to follow the coverage. One man remembered remarking to another worker that he feared the Pentagon was vulnerable to all types of terrorist assaults. Then, at 9:43, there was a huge explosion and fire and smoke rose from wedge one. By evening, it would be known that at least 180 people had been killed, including the 64 passengers on Flight 77.

So, what is wrong with the whole Pentagon disaster picture? For starters, here are a few interesting facts:

As mentioned in "Smoking Gun 2 & 3," the Bush administration had PLENTY of information that would lead them to believe the Pentagon and other major national landmarks were at high risk of a terrorist attack, especially in the summer and fall of 2001. Many warnings had come over the previous 8 years that the Pentagon could be a target of a terrorist attack, not only that but part of a multiple-strike terrorist attack. In fact, this possibility seemed so plausible that in November 2000, a disaster response exercise was held by the Military District of D.C. that simulated a plane hitting the Pentagon.

So, Sept. 11 finds Bush and several other key administrators safely removed from D.C. - Bush, at a Florida elementary school, is strategically NOWHERE NEAR a national landmark that morning. John Ashcroft has stopped flying on commercial airliners and is in the wilds of Missouri, via private jet, fishing. Cheney is at an "undisclosed location" (his bunker, probably). Jeb Bush, from Sept. 7, has the Florida national guard on standby. A collection of top CEOs of companies based at the WTC are attending a charity event at Offutt Air Base in Omaha at 8:00 AM on 9/11 (rather odd time, doncha think?)See http://sanfrancisco.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2002/02/04/story3.html for the only unscrubbed story on this event we could find. There at Offutt, these captains of business - Bush's favorite kinda people, were safe and sound. It was also to Offutt (what an amazing coincidence, eh!) that Bush fled himself later that day. (And he even makes it part of the "legend of 9/11"!!: http://www.whitehouse.gov/president/september11/01.html). Rumsfeld is at the Pentagon - but in the wedge FURTHEST from what will be the point of impact.

So, while the Bush administration and its pals were maneuvering into the safest possible positions, the folks at the Pentagon (and the workers and "expendable" CEOs at the WTC, of course) were left to their fate, no warning given to them at all. Given the above info on the administration's awareness of the threat to the Pentagon, it seems reasonable to expect that the MINUTE the news was heard about the WTC being hit that the Pentagon should have been evacuated IMMEDIATELY as a precaution until further notice. At the very least, after the SECOND TOWER was hit! At that point the multiple-strike scenario should have been so hideously obvious. Yet the workers were left at their posts like sitting ducks.

Was this incompetence, intent to kill, or....was it something else? Let's try applying a different hypothesis and see how the pieces fit.

HYPOTHESIS: That person or persons unknown in the Bush administration were involved in planning the attack on the Pentagon.

Let's comare the likely objectives of the Perpetrator(s) according to this hypothesis to actual events.

PERPETRATOR's GOAL:
A. minimize loss of life while creating a terrorist event of frightening proportions:

ACTUAL EVENTS:

1. Published reports following 9/11 say the number of passengers on all four hijacked flights was remarkably light - under half capacity. There were just 64 people on Flight 77. (Possible modus operandi: A computer hacker could have manipulated the bookings for these flights in such a way that they would appear to have been full (and thus not accepting more passengers) after a reasonable number of people had been booked - not so few that anyone might be alerted to a glitch in the booking program, but few enough to minimize victims.)

2. The plane struck the almost empty, but newly-reinforced, fire resistant wedge. In fact, the plane underwent an elaborate maneuver to be able to line its trajectory up with Wedge One - not only that, but to strike the newly-reinforced, collapse-resistant WALL in wedge one. A suicide pilot would likely have made a beeline for the building and done a nosedive into the top, which would have caused more random damage.

3. No one in the Pentagon had been put on alert - from the time of the Bush's receipt of the Aug. 6 memo to the morning of 9/11, when, for over 40 minutes, it was known that a hijacked plane-turned-mobile-bomb was in the air.

CONCLUSION: In their own sick way the perpetrators tried to keep the loss of life minimized. They kept the number of passengers on the planes to a minimum, then made sure the plane would hit Wedge One, a well-reinforced fire-resistant area where few people would be that day. In addition, they did not issue alerts because they assumed emergency evacuation might place workers in greater danger - many may actually have sought shelter, ironically, in the newly reinforced Wedge. (in an interesting side note, it has been pointed out by some observers that the planes that hit the WTC seemed to aim for the top 1/4 of the towers, as if to avoid destroying the towers and, again, in a bizarre, perverted way, to minimize loss of life).

PERPETRATOR'S GOAL:
B. Eliminate any trace of the plane - a challenge because of the special mesh in the new wall designed to capture any debris.

ACTUAL EVENTS:

1, Flight 77 was a Boeing 757, an aircraft that is about 60 feet long, with a wingspan of 125 feet. Yet it appears to have left essentially not a trace of material inside the building. Brig. Gen. Arthur F. “Chip” Diehl III, Air Force, gave this first hand account of the crash site:.“No one could believe the catastrophic damage — it was horrible. A whole “wedge” had collapsed; the aircraft had penetrated about three of the five “rings” of the building. There wasn’t a single piece of the jet to be seen anywhere.”

2. Several accounts and filmed shots of the event suggest an explosion OUTSIDE the wedge. (see http://www.bosankoe.btinternet.co.uk). Construction foreman Joe Harrington, standing in parking lot near the impact point said: "It seemed like it made impact just before the wedge. It was like a Hollywood movie or something. Thank God all of our crew got out."

3. Although there was seismic activity associated with the WTC event and Flight 93, both of which involved direct impacts with a solid object, no significant seismic activity was recorded for the Pentagon explosion.

CONCLUSION: The plane exploded and was essentially vaporized the split second before actual impact with the wall. What actually struck and penetrated the Wedge was not the solid body of the plane but a fireball from the explosion - moving forward with the combined momentum of the moving plane and the explosion. Because the actual explosion occurred in the air and the destruction in the building was due to the fireball and to implosive forces and not a solid-solid impact, there was no seismic activity.

PERPETRATOR'S GOAL:
C. You do not want this airplane intercepted or shot down, because your plot would be revealed if too much evidence becomes accessible (even in the form of plane fragments).

ACTUAL EVENTS:

1. The transponder in this plane was turned off - a move seen by investigators as a highly sophisticated action on the part of the hijackers. This renders the plane untrackable by ground control. (I believe there was another reason for this - see below).

2. Even though it was known by about 8:55 that Flight 77 had been hijacked and that the Pentagon could be a target, no defensive moves are made to protect the Pentagon. F-16s are finally scrambled into the air, but too late. These planes, by the way, are scrambled out of Langley Airforce base. While Langley is about 130 miles southwest of the Pentagon, Bolling AFB is just across the Potomac from the Pentagon, at most 5 miles southeast, while Andrews is 10 miles away. (http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/SZA112A.html)

In any case, I find it extremely hard to believe that the most important military command structure in the U.S. is not defended by surface to air missiles! I mean, we are supposed to believe that there are anti-aircraft weapons atop the White House but NOT deployed anywhere near the Pentagon? Give us a break!

PERPETRATOR'S GOAL:
D. You want to make absolutely sure that this is as precision hit - nothing left to chance.

ACTUAL EVENTS:

1. Eyewitness observers say that Flight 77 performed a 180-degree "G" turn before diving for the center of the long wall of Wedge One. The plane was estimated to be rocketing at an estimated speed of 400 mph. Several experienced pilots have claimed that the final manuver of the 757 could not have been performed by a human pilot because of the tremendous G-forces that would have been exerted, rending even the simplest movements exceedingly difficult (picture your arms each suddenly weighing about 100 pounds and each finger about 10).

2. Eyewitnesses and the evidence of a security camera (see http://www.bosankoe.btinternet.co.uk/) show a fiery explosion OUTSIDE the wall.

3. The transponder was OFF

CONCLUSION: The plane was remotely controlled by a command transmitter system at least in the final minutes. There was an explosive device on board that was detonated immediately before impact, probably remotely controlled as well. The timing, trajectory, etc. may have been generated by a software program of some sort that could work this out to the millisecond. The plane's own transponder would have had to have been turned off so that it's operation would not interfere with a second transponder placed aboard by the perpetrators - a transponder designed to pick up the signal of a command system transmitter operated somewhere in the area. Or, of course, the plane's own transponder was not actually off - it was just changed to a new setting.In any case, turning the transponder off would not have helped the hijackers to hide from the battery of sophisticated radars encirling D.C. so this motivation (hiding from radar) does not make any sense.Here's a description of an advanced, "fully mobile" CTS built Systems Planning Corp, the CEO of whih is Bush's undersecretary of defense and long time Texas pal Dov Zakheim (http://216.239.37.100/search?q=cache:eTwIKZZ-wlEC:www.sysplan.com/Radar/Downloads/CTS.pdf+Command+transmitter+systems&hl=en)

MORE DISTURBING 9/11 FACTS:

While the workers in the Pentagon who were to die on 9/11 were putting in their last week, serving their country at the nation's military nerve center, one of the co-perpetrators of WTC was walking the same halls, escorted as the special guest of the Bush administration.

September 4: Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad, former director of the ISI (the Pakistani version of the CIA), arrives in D.C. In the days leading up to 9/11, Ahmad spent time in the State Department, at CIA headquarters, and at the Pentagon. Wonder if during his visit he passed one of the men or women he was to help murder?

Not long before arriving in D.C., Ahmad had overseen the wiring of $100,000 to Mohammad Atta, one of the hijackers aboard one of the planes striking the WTC. This revelation was made in October, after 9/11 by Indian intelligene sources and reported in the Times of India. The news was not reported by t U.S. officials or American journalists. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow.asp?catkey=-2128936835&art_id=1454238160&sType=1)

****** PLEASE READ IMPORTANT POSTSCRIPT: WHAT DOES INDIA KNOW THAT FRIGHTENS BUSH ENOUGH TO THREATEN HER WITH NUCLEAR WAR?

Sept. 9: While Ahmad is in D.C., Commander Ahmad Shah Masood, leader of the Northern Alliance, was assassinated by persons connected to the ISI. The 47-year old Masood was a wildly popular, charismatic leader known to Afghans as the "Lion of Panjsher." His biggest goal: the true freedom and independence of Afghans. Fiercely independent and anti-interventionist, he would most certainly have opposed the Bush administration's war plans and would not have played ball with any oil pipeline scheme. The Cold War Clan (as I call the Bushes, Kissinger, Rumsfeld and the rest of the power-hungry old fossils in charge) have never had a use for charismatic leaders - look what happened to Salvatore Allende...or Kennedy, for that matter. http://www.omaid.com/english_section/in_the_press/ASM_EU.htm

WHAT DOES INDIA KNOW?

From all of the accumulated evidence, there is little doubt in my mind that Indian intelligence has the goods on the Bush administration. It was Indian intelligence that "discovered" the links between ISI's Mahmoud Ahmad and the WTC attacks. We suspect this connection was, of course, already known to the Bush administration, who, for all anyone knows, supplied the $100,000. But, according to several sources, Indian intelligence knows far more than this. One Dehli gov. source told a reporter with Agence France Press last October: "The evidence we have supplied to the US [re: the ISI-WTC connection] is of a much wider range and depth than just one piece of paper linking a rogue general to some misplaced act of terrorism."

So, if India is the potential source of Bush's downfall, then what better way to silence India than to threaten her, via our now totally-dependent "ally" Pakistan (complete with its fraudulently elected president), with nuclear annhiliation?

Or is this yet another Bush ploy to deflect attention away from the REAL evil - him and his administration. Trump up a "horrible nuclear crisis" and ride to the rescue - Oh, look, Bush saved the world! We can't impeach him.

Wanna make a bet?