Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve: Observations on Life, Tech and Web Design from a Slightly Misanthropic Mind

This Doesn’t Prove Shit

The BBC repor­ted this even­ing with some gusto that the US Justice Department had released “the first video” of the impact that took place at the Pentagon on the morn­ing of September 11^th 2001, thanks to a Freedom of Information request by Judicial Watch. In 2002 stills from another Pentagon secur­ity cam­era claimed to show the same, but were of low qual­ity and failed to really clear up any­thing. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton was quoted as say­ing, “finally, we hope that this video will put to rest the con­spir­acy the­or­ies involving American Airlines Flight 77.” Regrettably, it fails to do so.

The still below linked here is taken from the BBC stream of the video — the source cam­era, like the pre­vi­ously released stills, is of low fram­er­ate; this is the only frame con­tain­ing whatever it was that impacted with the Pentagon.

What annoyed me as much as the treat­ment of this release as some­thing con­clus­ive was the tone of the art­icle, which reminded me of every offi­cial response to crit­ical art­icles writ­ten about the incid­ent. Theories have long cir­cu­lated about what happened at the Pentagon, and regard­less of what the offi­cial line is and what is branded as “con­spir­acy the­ory” are the facts — that the dam­age at the Pentagon was not con­sist­ent with an impact by a 757, illus­trated (among other things) by the com­plete lack of vis­ible debris. Okay, so per­haps this can be explained away; why then, if this is so, has the US gov­ern­ment not released the other video and pho­to­graphic mater­ial record­ing the incid­ent, namely the private sur­veil­lance cam­eras at the hotel near the Pentagon (con­fis­cated by the FBI after the attack) and at the pet­rol sta­tion across from the Pentagon. National Geographic News repor­ted in December 2001 that “Velasquez [the owner] 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.”” The author­it­ies have never released these images which, logic argues, should surely show the true events of that morning.

This is no won­der, how­ever, when blinkered atti­tudes like those pre­val­ent in the United States still exist. In 2002 French author Theirry Meyssan released two books attempt­ing to give an object­ive explan­a­tion of what he believed were the real events at the Pentagon, namely that what impacted there could not have been a 757 but was instead a smal­ler plane or mis­sile, or the dam­age was caused by a truck bomb at the site. Leaping aboard the American insti­tu­tion of anti-French sen­ti­ment, Pentagon spokes­man Glen Flood described the book as “a slap in the face and real offence to the American people”. To me it seems that this men­tal­ity has become the norm when deal­ing with issues like this — com­plete rejec­tion of the pos­sible altern­at­ive story sug­ges­ted by the “con­spir­acy the­or­ists” because the rami­fic­a­tions of it being true are so mind-meltingly huge that civil­isa­tion as we know it would implode. The aver­age American, des­pite being faced with over­whelm­ing evid­ence to the con­trary, simply refuses to even enter­tain the pos­sib­il­ity that what happened could be any dif­fer­ent from the offi­cial ver­sion of events.

The release of this video does not help to shore up the defence of the offi­cial story. It should not be treated as such. The other evid­ence of the events at the Pentagon that is still being sup­pressed needs to be released. I don’t like the offi­cial story; I don’t like the implic­a­tions if one of the other the­or­ies turns out to be true. I don’t claim to know either way, but I and mil­lions of oth­ers want to see that other footage.

Yes, what happened at the Pentagon and the World Trade Center on September 11^th was an atro­city in every way. Yes, the loss of human life was hor­rific and ter­rible, and should never be for­got­ten. But that is not a reason to refuse to ques­tion what went on. Those who sug­gest altern­at­ive the­or­ies are not try­ing to insult the dead. They are only try­ing to find the truth.

US releases 9/11 Pentagon video, BBC News, 16÷5÷2006
Why Pentagon released 9/11 tape, BBC News, 16÷5÷2006
The Suppression of Video Footage of the Pentagon Attack, 911research.com
Three Months On, Tension Lingers Near the Pentagon, National Geographic News, 11/12/2001