Ian Goddard, Stratus, Jt-3D,

did any of you guys look at my post here?

Does this help anyone's case regarding smoke vs jet plane? Or am I on permanent ignore in this thread?

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The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

I have seen that post Paulie jay.

I think that the white smoke in the explosion video, together with the apparent grey-with-red-stripe-somewhat-aircraft-shaped thing in front of the first frame's white tube, do make the "plane with smoke" interpretation quite plausible. As I said, maybe you (or who was it ) should mail the authors of the pentagon report and ask them whether they are sure they point correctly to the aircraft, with a short argumentation (including the 2 frame animation and the explosion pic with smoke) why you think the white thing is not the aircraft but smoke (or dust) directly behind it.

As for those who say we're no better than Jack White:

*the only question here is WHERE exactly the plane is seen in the frame, a big differences with deducting WHAT is seen.
*I think the alternative proposed here is physically possible and certainly "holds water". Nothing is made up out of thin air to fit some pet theory.
*nobody put it on a website as fact. We mererly discuss the possiblity that the report put the arrow to the wrong feature (and the newspapers took that over).

So if we'd contact the authors, we just might get further argumentation why they or us are correct. OR we might get nothing at all, or a non-answer. But at least we tried.

My personal opinion? I think the white is smoke or dust, and the aircraft is directly in front of it, as the argumentation for it seems very plausible to me. As said, it is of little importance to the paper in which the picture with arrow was put, so possibly they did not look too much into it and made a mistake there.

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Planting the DNA of all those passengers on the crash site was, however, a nice touch

Yes!.. I mean no, you are not being ignored. Why would you ask me that? We agree. Tis the Ian that you wish address. I jumped up and down too. I felt better about it but then I was more careful about who I took to task.

Just to reinterate, I am not trying to argue what hit the pentagon. I am only arguing what in the image is a 757 like object, and that only because our dear friend Ian measured the wrong thing IMO. However it's fairly clear that a 757 did indeed hit the pentagon.

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Whatever it was, it certainly did not miss the pentagon, that's for sure...

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Just to clarify, the post mortem evidence clearly shows that it was the AA 757 that hit the Pentagon. I'm just having a hard time seeing anything of real value in the video frame, except that something is there that isn't in the other frames. That frame taken alone with no other evidence would tell me little.
And ALL AAL 757s are bare aluminum, top and bottom, with the airline livery painted on. The vertical and horizontal stabilizers, the wings and the wing/fuselage fairings are painted a light "Boeing gray".
I think some of their smaller regional jets and prop planes have white fuselages, but not the bigger jets. Airliners.net has innumerable pics of AAL 757s.

Dave

I've not commented on it since I think it speaks for itself. The only things clearly before the white object are the same field and trees that are there in the first frame. I can even see the line demarking the end of the field in both frames. There are slight changes in some tones, but you can see that happening all over, it amounts to noise. Here's the anatomy of the alleged invisible Boeing 757 presented by jt-3d. But the arrows point to field and trees. F77 was in a sunlit field with a silver side exposed to Solar opposition, it's not going to be invisible!

But I don't claim that there is a bright white vertical stabilizer in any frame, I think it's just off frame in both videos. But you claim that there is a black (or about as dark as black) vertical stabilizer, and yet the example you show above is not anywhere near black, it's just darker than bright sky. But put that stabilizer up against the dark trees and it will not be black. It's all about local contrasts. Also, the side of that aircraft appears to face about 90 degrees to the Sun, which with sky polarization faces the deepest blue.

On the other hand, F77's security-camera-facing side was exposed to much of opposition, ie, the opposite side of the sky wrt the Sun, which due to sky polarization is brighter than at 90 degrees. We can see such brightening and that there were some white clouds there too. If you look at the angle of shadows in the security video and the angle of the approach of F77, you'll see that it's security-camera-facing side was exposed to solar opposition, some of which is seen here. I also expect that the sun was reflecting along the top of F77. ~Ian

See: Which is Flight 77?

Pentagon and Flight 77: an animated size analysis

Edit: fixed the "invisible Boeing 757" link.

Hello all, long time lurker here, thought I would make a post in support of Ian.

I do not believe that the white object in the pictures is smoke from Flight 77. The reasons for this are as follows..

First of all, smoke tends to linger around until it dissipates into the air. The white 'smoke' in the images certainly appears to be quite thick, since it is picked up as a solid object by this rather unremarkable camera. Now, how long does it take for the object to appear on the right and then hit the Pentagon? I'd say a second or less? So, if it were smoke, wouldn't it all still be visible in the shot? I find it hard to believe that the thick white smoke on the far right of the picture would completely dissipate in less than a second.

Next up is eye witness accounts. From what I can remember, the majority of eye witnesses do not mention any sort of smoke coming from the plane. If there was thick white smoke coming out as much as it appears to be in the pictures, certainly more people would recollect such a thing.

Now for the source of the smoke. If I'm correct, you guys are saying that the smoke was caused by the plane hitting the light poles on the way in, perhaps harming the engine of the plane? From what I understand, light poles have a safety feature where they break away at the base upon impact. In other words, they will offer very little resistance and I'd imagine would cause minimal damage. True, at such high speeds, even the smallest thing can be catastrophic, I'll admit that. But I doubt the light poles could harm an engine that way. The only way I could imagine this happening is if a chunk of the light pole was sucked into the engine. But, this doesn't match up to the fact that the poles break away at the base. I would think the 'lip' of the engine would simple knock the pole down, not sever the top of the light and suck it in.

In addition, the light poles that got knocked down were immediately outside the view area that we see from the camera. So all that thick, billowing white smoke would have to have come out in a fraction of a second (and then disappeared into the air a fraction of a second later).

Now, lets assume the light poles did cause this smoke. Would the plane be billowing white smoke?

Just some of my thoughts. By the way, I completely believe Flight 77 hit the Pentagon as reported.

I assume that those questioning the smoke/plane here also believe Flight 77 hit the Pentagon as reported.

btw already 2 years ago, an individual on the Internet opted that the shape in front of the white thing is the 757. At that time, I don't think the Pentagon report with the arrow was released yet.

LINK

I have found one person talking about white smoke.
I know that this is not proof. 1 Eyewitness doesn't say a lot, and the images are of bad quality. Still I believe in the possibility that the plane is ahead of the white. Could it be that the white was fuel leaking from a damaged wing instead of smoke? Just letting my mind speak here. However, in that case we should have seen fire on the ground I think.

Note that we made the same identification on the other camera's footage, independent from this persons ideas. That's 2 people identifying the same feature on shots from different camera's. Again, of course this is no conclusive proof. But as before, I still believe there is a good possibility for this to be true.

About the smoke: the plane's wake can do strange effects on smoke, making it react differently than just "out in the open".

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It's still quite visible, as can be seen here.

In that same animation, last frame, you can see what can only be smoke or dust (it's certainly not Flight 77!) to right of the explosion. This smoke/dust is at least as "bright" as the object you and Ian believe to be Flight 77. Under what conditions could the silver fuselage of an American Airlines 757 possibly look strikingly similar in color to a trail of smoke/dust?

Maybe, maybe not...

(Source: 'Hell on Earth': Ministers Bring a Blessing to Ground Zero)
[ Edit: Dang. Nicolas beat me to this... ]

It's the only one that I'm aware of. A few other eyewitness accounts state that Flight 77's engines "revved up" immediately after hitting a lightpost.

One possibility is that the damage taken by Flight 77, resulting in the potential smoke trail, happened just before it entered the security camera's field of view. This leaves at most 2 seconds before the plane impacts the Pentagon.

As you said, it's all about the speed... and, of course, inertia. Those posts are designed to break away at relatively low car speeds. Even so, Flight 77 hit them at about 345 miles per hour. Also, they're designed to break away with an impact very close to the base. An impact higher up is going to have a somewhat different effect I would imagine.

What are your thoughts about this animation from jt-3d?

Okay. This is the argument you posted:

The problem with your argument is that it runs in a circle, ie, it merely proves what it presumes. You assume that "it" (the bright thing I call Flight 77 and you call smoke) appears in both the first and second frame, and so you've already presumed that "it" is smoke. So when you then conclude that it must therefore be smoke, you're just restating your presumption. It short, the argument proves nothing.

A problem with your empirical analysis is that there are clear differences between the dust left in the wake of F77 seen in the second frame and the bright object in the first frame. Primarily, like dust, the dust has no sharp edge. But the bright object has a sharp edge. In the video in question, the bright object does appear wavy (which I suspect is due to water droplets on glass in front of the camera; such apparent droplets can be seen elsewhere in the frame of the video in question, and their effect could be to 'bend' objects whose reflected photons pass through the droplets), but unlike a dust cloud it has a sharp edge, seen more clearly in the official report (page 13) and here. ~Ian

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I see what you mean. However, that doesn't explain how the 'smoke' seen in the initial frame on the far right manages to disappear in half a second. I would imagine that all the smoke would be visible in the frames, not just a short trail leading to the explosion. Also, take note of the moisture on the top left side of the camera and how much it changes appearance in the explosion frame. Perhaps the streak is an effect of the flash?

Also, remember that the plane was not coming in perpendicular to the camera, it was coming at an angle, halfway towards the camera. If that was smoke, it would appear as of the smoke were in front of the plane, rather than trailing behind it. It would also appear that the smoke was at least the size of the plane, if not bigger. So we'd have 1 to 2 seconds between the plane hitting a light pole and creating a giant white, plane sized trail of smoke that appears to obscure the angled aircraft.

I assumed from the quote that he was describing what happened after the impact into the pentagon, not that the plane was emitting smoke in the air. I could be wrong, however.

I believe it would be much less than 2 seconds. I live right outside of DC and have driven by the Pentagon a few times myself and the road is right by the lawn of the Pentagon, just off camera. The plane would have to impact the light poles and produce a large plume of smoke extraordinarily quickly.

This is true, it would be interesting to check out some photos of the downed light poles and see if we could spot where they broke away and if any of them were missing pieces.

As I stated above, since the plane was coming in at an angle, this shot would mean the smoke was obscuring part of the plane, almost preceding it. I assumed that the white part in that picture was the nose of the plane, whitened by the glare of the sun and at a downward angle due to the fish-eye distortion of the lens. The object that you have pointed out to be the plane itself may be the right wing of the plane, which would make sense due to it's angle.

Or it could be nothing, as the compression of the picture makes lots of changes in shades and coloring between the two frames. If you watch the ground between the two, light areas become dark and dark areas become light and I think we can all agree that there is no object in those areas.

This site
http://www.pentagonresearch.com/
has good pics of all the downed lamp posts here
http://www.pentagonresearch.com/lamps.html
with a specific page on each one.
Also, I read on another site (I think) that one of the posts was missing the light at the end and it was speculated that an engine had ingested it.

As for the smoke, if emitted from an engine travelling at 500 mph, wouldn't it tend to keep moving some in the direction of travel? Also wouldn't the shockwave from the impact explosion help it to disperse quicker?

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I agree with others that an "object" is in front of the "white".

I do not agree that the waviness of the white may have been caused by water droplets on the video camera lens as Ian posits. IMO, I think the edges of the white are too sharp for that to be the case.

I've looked at this two ways. First I blew up two images of the location where the "smoke" first appears, one without and one with the white. Then I used a blink comparator (download free trial) to compare both images. There is definitely an object consistent with a tail of a jet, less certain is a difference in coloration in front of the "tail". Using the blink comparator helps see the differences between the two images better than using animated gifs, IMO.

The I took three images from the video. The first is when the "white" first appears, the second is the first image of the explosion, the third is the second image of the explosion. Then I took an image before the white appears and used it as a "base" image.

Using the Difference function of Photoshop, I successively compared photos 1, 2, and 3 to the base image. This process blacks out that which has not changed between two images leaving that which has changed. This helps visualize the changes in each frame a little better. The goal was to see if an "object" would show up, i.e., AA77, but I am still working on that. But it does show the progression of the "smoke" I believe.

Frame 1 is all black except for the tiny strip of white on the right that is the "white smoke". Frame 2 shows the fireball on the left but "white" leading from the building back along the path. Frame 3 shows the fireball faintly and no more white on the ground.

While this doesn't add much and is crude, working with copies of the original, with consumer software leads me to think professionals working with more sophisticated software and the original image might have already had far better results.

I think that the argument that 2 independent sources identify the same features in videos taken by different cameras (as I demonstrated) is a quite strong indication that we're not halucinating when we appear to see something in front of the white.

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btw as said, wing tip vortices can do strange things with smoke, including giving it sharp forms:

LINK

LINK (this is not a smoke generator but a vortex!)

again

prop votices, amazing!

Also, when being close to the source, engines can suck up a lot. Water, dust, ground, debris...
HERE you see an F-16 "drinking" the runway.

I'm just tossing up some possibilities for "strange" shapes in the smoke (or dust), and sources for it. If the grass field was wet, it could even have been water tossed up in the engine outlet stream. BUt I thought it was a very dry day, so dust would be more plausible in that case. And of course, the engine could just have been damaged and hence giving smoke (or debris). If a blade is damaged, it damages the nacelle (which should be built such that the blade does not protrude the nacelle though) and any material getting loose in this event goes through the engine.

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Not much sense. Why would the wing have such a significantly different color than your alleged fuselage? The wing would be at a [marginally] better angle to reflect the sun than the fuselage, yet it's significantly darker? The shape is also way off, at any angle.

Additionally, assuming that, there's two things to consider:

1) The fuselage of the plane is practically buried in the ground already, or...
2) The plane is a lot closer to the camera in your interpretation than in mine.

Yes, but it shifts from one shade of yellowish-green to another, whereas the area in which the object I and others identify as Flight 77 appears, changes from dark green to bluish-gray rather significantly in a number of spots.

Thankyou for responding. And to the other guys, Jt-3D and Stratus, as well. I didn't mean to get antsy about it, it's just that sometimes I feel like I'm not here.

I can see and accept what your saying about the droplets and their effect on the images, but feel I should clarify a little further. I really just want to concentrate of the areas that I've added circles to in this updated link.

What do you think of the white in the second frame? I'm actually happy to go either way on this matter, I'm not really starting from a premise that the white must be smoke. It was probably my wording. I'm really trying to decide whether the white can be a plane, or whether it is something else. If the white is the plane, I ask myself "why does it appear in the frame after the explosion has started?"

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The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

Right. If what the first frame shows is "smoke," then it's so thick it's 100% opaque, then in about one second (the ASCE report says the time between frames is "approximately one second apart") it's almost gone. That's a lot of matter to suddenly disappear. If, as someone here seems to suggest, the force of the engines blew the smoke away, well we're also being asked to assume that the engines are blowing tons of dense smoke, so they should merely be replacing what was blown away with more dense smoke. It doesn't wash.

Looking at the aerial photo here and assuming that it represents how the ground was at the time of the crash, notice that the ground looks like there's more exposed dirt closer to the Pentagon and more grass further away. I think this would account for the appearance in the wake of F77 of a thin dust trail on the right side of the frame further away from the Pentagon and a thicker dust trail closer to the explosion. Jet engines are huge and powerful, and if you run them a few feet over the ground (as opposed to a runway) they should suck in and emit every piece of dust that isn't nailed down. So, since there seems to be more dusty ground closer to the Pentagon, the trail there is thicker.

Another good point! The distance from the lamps to the Pentagon was covered in not much more than one second. According to the ASCE report (page 13), F77 covered the last 320 ft in approx 0.42 second. It's too much to imagine that an engine that hypothetically sucked in some metal that hypothetically caused the engine to smoke would then in about one second be pouring out a massive column of smoke with a diameter around 20 feet. It's also impossible to believe that there's a Boeing 757 in the location indicated here.

The "smoking engine" theory is a good example of where Occam's razor is indicated. Even if the "it's smoke" theory was just as good as the "it's F77" theory in explaining the data, we should reject the smoke theory just because it requires an extra entity, being the assumption that something damaged the engines that caused them to emit smoke. But of course the two theories are not even equally plausible, so, a fortiori the "it's smoke" theory should be rejected.


Keep in mind that the security camera is out and away from the Pentagon, so I think from it's POV it should be getting almost but not exactly a profile view of F77. On another note, I think some people may have made the mistake of assuming that Wilson's 3D model of the scene is a good measure of how things would look wrt lighting, which overlooks that 3D programs (and I have 3D Studio myself) can effectively model neither the real Sun (which is a monster 'spotlight' millions of miles away) nor variable sky luminosity wrt sky polarization, as I've mentioned above. You're just not going to be able to reliably replicate the complex lighting and reflective conditions at the crash scene in a 3D program. ~Ian

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Another issue occurs to me. If a jet engine was damaged by a drawn-in piece of metal, and that caused the engine to emit smoke, would the smoke be white or black? I've always heard that burnt jet fuel emits black, not white, smoke. And is it jet fuel that would be burning? What also occurs to me is that answering those questions is a burden of proof for those challenging presumption defined by the official study (which identifies the bright object as F77, not as "smoke") with the claim that the engines were emitting a massive column of dense white smoke.

The alternative "it's smoke" theory should not even be tested further until its advocates provide clear proof that a Boeing 757 engine that sucks in a metal piece could emit dense white smoke. Otherwise, we're spending our time testing a theory about a possible occurrence that nobody has even evidenced could ever happen. ~Ian

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Darn - and I had that spare Boeing 757 engine sitting in the shed gathering dust for months before I tossed it out with the garbage just last week.

Isn't that always the way??

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I know what you mean. I've got one that I'm using for a coffee table but i just took out the Kanooter valves to fix my toaster!

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Again, you are attempting to twist the document's wording in order to read into it the meaning you wish. The parenthetical words "real" and "simulated" are adjectives, which can only modify nouns. The three nouns in the sentence are "we," "boatload," and "refugees." "We" makes no sense, and the meaning is the same whether the modified noun is "boatload" or "refugees." Whether the refugees are "real" or "simulated," the sinking was intended to be real.

You first contend that I need to try and twist the words in a way the authors did not intend them to mean in order to make my point. But you follow that by showing that no twisting of words is necessary for my point to be valid. To wit, that "..the sinking was to be real", leaving only "...the refugees.." who "..are "real" or "simulated..".

In yet another blatant attempt to twist the document's wording, you have misparaphrased "even to the extent of wounding" as "'only' wounding." The former clearly implies that the default condition is no deaths or injuries; the latter implies that deaths are expected. This goes to my point about a lack of friendly casualties' being an implicit subtext of the entire memo. Further, you merely assume, because doing so suits your objectives, that each of the suggested incidents was fleshed out in exactly the same amount of detail, when it is clear that even the incidents that explicitly disavow any intention of causing friendly casualties exhibit greatly differing levels of development.

I said "only wounding" Cuban refugees as part of my argument countering your contention - that because the JCS said that the "wounding" of refugees was the specific intent of one scenario, that meant any other scenario which would, or could, harm or kill people, would have also been pointed out as a specific intent, or likely result.

I'm not attempting to prove anything; I don't need to. As I stated, the burden of proof is on you, as the proponent of an extraordinary claim. Previously, I have requested that you discuss your understanding of the nature of proof, both of extraordinary claims in general, and of conspiracy claims in particular. I now specifically renew my request that you do so.

See the specific example (Point 2. (10) and (11)) below which further supports my argument....

As I explained above, you are just assuming that each suggested incident was equally well developed. Further, you are taking both of the above quotations out of context in an attempt to bolster your case. The first quote refers to blowing up a ship "in Guantanimo Bay." A ship riding at anchor could easily have her crew evacuated by small boats just before dawn, and explode two hours later with no casual observers being the wiser. No special explanation of how this might have been done would have necessarily been required. The second quote refers to blowing up a ship at sea close to a large Cuban city, which would have required some extraordinary means of preventing any US casualties (e.g., using a drone ship). Finally, if you're so certain that the discussion of each suggested incident should be considered to be symmetric, why doesn't the first state, "real casualties and military funerals would cause a helpful wave of national indignation," or something to that effect?

Again, you are expanding the first scenario to include simulated elements.

Below is a specific example from the document which points out how one lethal scenario may be substituted with a non-lethal scenario.....

2. (10) Sabotage ship in harbor; large fires - napthalene.
(11) Sink ship near harbor entrance. Conduct funerals for
mock-victims (may be in lieu of (10)).

Sources describe napthalene (naphthalene) as....

The estimated lethal dose of naphthalene is 5-15 g for adults....In the absence of adequate supportive treatment, death may result from acute renal failure in adults.

They specifically state in point 2. (10) the use of napthalene. Now, they don't "flesh out" the reason it would be used, nor do they specify its resultant effects. As I pointed out above, its toxic effects are a fact. The JCS would certainly have known this, and why they would choose to use it do not need to be elaborated upon. Or, would you still contend that their reason(s) for using napthalene, and the effect(s) of using it on people, need to be "fleshed out"?

Or isn't it obvious enough - that they name a specific, toxic chemical agent to use in scenario 2. (10), and that the subsequent scenario 2. (11), with "..mock-victims..", could be used "..in lieu.." of it?

In conclusion, I note that, as usual, you've failed to respond to several of my points, though it appears that you've implicitly conceded that the "plan" was in fact only a list of suggestions.

I didn't have the time to respond to your other points, so relax. I'll address them in my next post. And they were indeed a list of suggestions - to be picked from, along with any other agencies' suggestions, to form an integrated plan.

To follow up on the other points from Spitfire's post on the Northwoods issue...

No mention is made of an option for real casualties; if bogus casualties are deemed sufficient to "cause a helpful wave of national indignation" in the case of an attack on a ship at sea, why should real casualties be required for an attack on a ship at anchor? You are merely attempting to read into the Northwoods memo what you wish to see--proof that the US Government might actually stage a terrorist attack with a huge number of real American casualties.

Operation Northwoods was essentially a compilation of various false-flag operations. And varying levels of deception were required to pull each one of them off successfully. That is, the goal of each scenario, and of the operation as a whole, was to create the appearance of unprovoked hostilities against America by Cuba. The greater the deception required within a scenario, the greater the requirement to "flesh out" the details within he document.

So when you say, "..why should real casualties be required for an attack on a ship at anchor...if bogus casualties are deemed sufficient.." to create the desired effect, you have to take into account that the level of deception required for the latter is far less than for the former. That is, if they implement the scenario using "bogus casualties", they need to "create" people that never existed on order to "kill" them in the incident. Hence the need to arrange "funerals for mock-victims", to create phony "casualty lists in US newspapers", and use "selected passengers" with "carefully prepared aliases".

People "created" from thin air, such as the "mock-victims", would not have the very real emotional response of family and friends - since they never existed in the first place. Only if they were able to get some people to lie, and say "Joe Blow was my second cousin", etc., would it create a "personal" effect on the American public.

The people with "carefully prepared aliases", who safely land in secret, effectively would join a program, en masse, that is even worse than the Witness Protection Program. Not only must they live out their lives with completely new identities, relocate to areas where they will not be recognized, and never again contact outside family and friends. Unlike criminals living incognito under the WPP, whose families and friends at least know that they are still living their lives in relative comfort somewhere, parents and children of the "victims" would have to deal with the devastating, tragic news that their loved ones were brutally murdered. The reports would quickly confirm that the perpetrators were barbaric Communists from Cuba.

And again, it is clear that no American (or even friendly Cuban) deaths are necessarily intended. Having said that, I will concede that the risk of a few such deaths (or deaths of citizens of third countries) might have been considered acceptable. This is very, very far from carrying out an attack deliberately intended to cause the deaths of thousands of US citizens, however.

As we've established, I see the intent to kill Americans and foreigners as a concrete option within the document, whereas you do not. But I appreciate your concession that at least some deaths could have been considered an acceptable consequence of the operation. Although I do agree that it would be far less significant, on many levels, than a deliberate plan for the mass murder of US citizens, it would still be extremely unsettling. I believe that any plan which would accept the deaths of innocent people as a reasonable price to pay for the "reward", is still profoundly despicable and murderous.

The "ultimate" objective of Operation Northwoods was to "provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba". Not because Cuba posed an imminent threat to the lives or safety of Americans. And not because Cuba posed any sort of threat to the national security of America. The plan was drawn up because the military leaders of the US - the JCS - wanted to create the illusion that another nation provoked America into a justifiable act of retribution.

The cost of several lives may have been deemed to be "acceptable", within the greater context of the "ultimate" goal. In no way do I see this as acceptable, or reasonable, or understandable. I can only see it as murder. That isn't even taking into account the untold number of deaths of both Americans and Cubans that would have been the result of the subsequent military intervention.


No, your claim that murder of innocent civilians was intended is ridiculous. Where is your evidence? Again, you merely assume that because only some of the points expressly disavow any intention of causing real casualties, that the other points must necessarily allow for such. My interpretation is that a lack of intentional friendly casualties is an implicit subtext throughout the memo, and is only explicitly mentioned when required for clarification (e.g., a ship destroyed at sea would have to have been a drone). As the claim that the Joint Chiefs of Staff would endorse a plan that called for the murder of innocent American civilians or service members is clearly an extraordinary claim, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that that was the intention.

But the JCS called for the means to "justify" an unjustified attack on Cuba through deception. Knowing that our service members would not willingly risk their lives without justifiable cause. Through acts of deception, many of them would have been killed, many others wounded. Cuban military and civilian deaths would likely be many times more than our own. Is the intentional deception of Americans to manipulate them into a war not, at the most basic level, an act of mass murder? Or at least, an act that could have no other result but the eventual death of hundreds or thousands of innocent people?

The "operation" was nowhere near implementation; you are merely characterizing it as such in an attempt to legitimize your contention that the Northwoods documents somehow demonstrate that the American military might actually have planned the September 11 attacks. You and other conspiracists have seized on these documents as proof of your claim, while conveniently ignoring the fact that no explicit attempt to cause US casualties is indicated, and the fact that the plan was far from being fully developed, let alone implemented.

The document states that the plan had a very limited window of opportunity - in fact, only a few months. That is, it needed to be implemented before the USSR had an agreement binding them to the defense of Cuba, etc. So it was only within months of actual implementation.

Again, the JCS didn't give "the green light" to the plan; they merely responded to a request for some suggestions.

The JCS gave the green light to all the various scenarios within the document. They left it up to the Sec. of Defense and JFK to pick the ones they wanted to implement.

The JCS (and the CIA leadership) in September 2001 were all appointed by Bill Clinton--was he also in on the conspiracy?

I was simply pointing out that there was an entirely new group in 2001, from the JCS to the Sec. of Defense and President. And from that, if a 9/11 operation was proposed, was it implemented.

One point that appears to be lost on you and many other conspiracists is that the primary purpose of Northwoods was not to stoke anti-Castro sentiment among the American people (though this was viewed as a "helpful" potential side effect); rather, the primary purpose was to provide a pretext intended to mute international criticism of a US attack on Cuba and possibly forestall intervention by the Soviet Union.

The objective was clearly to create the appearance of a justified attack against Cuba. The cost would have been the lives of untold numbers of people, no matter how one interprets it.

Therefore, the plan only needed to be kept secret for a few months, until after a US invasion had toppled Castro, and the removal of the Communist government from Cuba was a fait accompli, and "old news." Again, any US government September 11 conspiracy would have needed to have remained secret for decades.

With the need to keep secret the true fate of many US citizens living under aliases? That alone would take many decades of continued secrecy.

Now if you replace the "smoke theory" by a "dust theory", do your points still count? Note that the appearance of more grass does not need to mean there's less loose material on the ground there. There might have been less grass close to the pentagon because more trucks rode there, compacting the ground (I'm just giving an example, obviously I have no source whatsoever that this is the case). if the particles forming the dust are large enough (eg pebblestone or a small variant on that), they will settle down fast.

First, a statement saying "it's impossible to believe that..." is by definition false. This board has good examples of some people believing anything . Second, do you have an argument why it would be impossible?

I'm not 100% sure the actual plane is ahead of the white or the white thing itself. For the events, it does not matter. But I would like to know, as I think there are very good arguments pointing to the plane being in front of the white.

btw I think that the person who identified the plane in front of the white in the first video (2004, with the brown block blocking the view) in any case misidentified the wing tip of the aircraft, as that blob was already there in the previous frame. It would also mean a too large roll angle.

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Ian, I and others have pointed out that civil engineers are not necessarily experts in photo analysis or aircraft identification; the examination of the photograph may have only been cursory. As has also been mentioned, correctly identifying the aircraft in the video frame is irrelevant to the report. In the circumstances, I feel that the "official" identification in this case can hardly be considered authoritative, and I don't believe that it establishes any particularly strong burden of proof that needs to be overcome.

The following excerpt is from the article "Comparison of the Constituents of Two Jet Engine Lubricating Oils and Their Volatile Pyrolytic Degradation Products", which appeared in Applied Occupational and Environmental Hygiene in 2000.

Engine lubricating oil that was introduced into the combustion chamber would unquestionably have been heated to well above 300 deg. C. If the leak were serious, a large, dense trail of white smoke could easily have been created immediately after the light pole components were ingested.

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"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

I'd note that earlier in the thread there was an image posted that clearly showed that the 757 had done a little tree trimming on the way past as well. I'm more that sure that ingesting the top of a tree is rather bad for a jet enegine even without the top of lamp posts joining in the mess.

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Apollo: The History and the Hoax
Enter the World of Athran

Just a couple of quick comments...

Mothballs would be a strange fuel. However, naphtha would be a good and common one, easy to obtain and to explain. My guess is they simply misstated.

(I know, I know. How could the US Military, especially the JSC, make such a simplistic error? Probably has something to do with them being military and not engineering experts. Explains the spelling they used, too.)

No, the JSC did not "green light" anything. That is not their function nor their authority. They suggest; SecDef and POTUS green light.

And many JSC suggestions are extremely far off the wall. Again, it's not their job to offer only the most plausible; the offer every idea that has a chance of success and let those in charge make the decision.

It's part of the military brainstorming process, and they are very good at it.

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Good discussion, everyone.

I checked the pictures of the downed light poles and they certainly do show a substantial amount of damage done to them. So, I see it as entirely possible that the plane may have ingested pieces of them into it's engine.

I also understand that, due to the angle of the security camera, the plane would've shown more of a profile view to the camera than I previously thought.

The parts that I'm still hung up on are:
1) How such a substantial, thick amount of white smoke would appear and disappear in such an incredibly short time frame.

2) The size of the smoke cloud relative to the object that people are claiming to be the plane.

3) Lack of eye witnesses describing white smoke coming from the airborne plane. If the smoke were as large and thick as it appears to be from the camera frames, this seems like it would be mentioned by at least a couple people.

There are two things that I was thinking of, though, that may or may not help our detective work. The helipad that is located near the point of impact may be a piece of the puzzle. With helicopters flying in and out of that area, presumably on a daily basis or at least quite frequently, perhaps there is a large amount of dust and debris blown into the surrounding lawn area? Now, I'm sure that they mow the lawn at the Pentagon, but I doubt a lawn mower would rid the ground of all this stuff that a helicopter may blow around. The wind from an approaching helicopter may blow things from the road, from the helipad, even from construction that was occurring on that section of the building. Maybe the 'thickness' of the smoke and the fact that it appeared so quickly was due to the engines sucking up all this debris and such from lawn?

The next part is something that I cannot do at the moment, due to the fact that I'm at work. Earlier in the videos, a police car is seen driving through the gates. It would be interesting to check and see how much the glare from the sun affects the coloration of the police car in the video. This may or may not help us better determine the effect of the sun hitting the airplane itself.

I think there is a good chance that it is dust and dirt but I tend to see it being blown around by the thrust of the engines rather than being ingested by them.