PART 1 OF 2
Screenplay:[Transcribed from the movie by Tara Carreon]
[Woman] I'm on the 83rd floor! ... are you going to be able to get somebody up here?
[9/11 Operator] We'll come up for you.
[Woman] Well, there's no one here yet, and the floor is completely engulfed. We're on the floor and we can't breathe. And it's very, very, very hot.
[9/11 Operator] Okay.
[Woman] All I see is smoke ... I'm gonna die, aren't I?
[9/11 Operator] No, no, no, no, no.
[Woman] Yes, I'm gonna die.
[9/11 Operator] Ma'am, say your prayers, I will ask somebody ...
[Woman] I'm gonna die.
[9/11 Operator] You got to think positive, because you gotta help people get off the floor.
[Woman] It's so hot. I'm burning up. Hello! Help!
[9/11 Operator] Hello, Miss?
[Woman] [Screaming] Help! Help!
[Explosion]
[Reporter] Osama bin Laden is the world's most wanted terrorist.
[George Bush] I want justice.
And there's an old poster out West, as I recall, that said,
"Wanted, Dead or Alive."
[Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed, Professor of Contemporary History, University of Sussex] If you go to the FBI website, they've got Usama bin Laden ...
and if you go to Usama bin Laden's webpage on the FBI's "Most Wanted Terrorist List," you'll find that he's been indicted for the 1998 attacks, but not for 9/11.
And in fact, a number of journalists called up the FBI and said, "Well, look. Why have you not connected bin Laden to 9/11?" And they said, "Well, we're afraid we just don't have the evidence."
[Explosion!]
[Robert Fisk, The Independent] I wondered, after those images from New York last week, whether bin Laden was not as astonished as myself to see them. Always supposing he watched television, or listened to the radio, or read a newspaper.
[Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed, Professor of Contemporary History, University of Sussex] And that's just the beginning.
[Music]
TELEMACO presents
ZERO: AN INVESTIGATION INTO 9-11
a documentary by
GIULIETTO CHIESA
FRANCO FRACASSI
FRANCESCO TRENTO
THOMAS TORELLI
PAOLO JORMI BIANCHI
Based on an idea by
MEGACHIP
GRUPPO ZERO
with
DARIO FO
LELLA COSTA
MONI OVADIA
Produced by
THOMAS TORELLI
for
TPF TELEMACO
Producers
VANESSA BARREIRO
FULVIA D'OTTAVI
GABRIELLA GUIDO
Production designer
GIUSEPPE REGGIO
Post-production coordinators
ROBERTO BORRELLO
ALESSANDRO MARINELLI
Cinematographers
CHRISTIAN DI PRINZIO
|MARCO RICCHELLO
Original soundtrack
ALESSANDRO MOLINARI
Narrator
TIM SPARKE
9-11 New York footage by
ENZO ARONICA
additional 9-11 footage
ALEXANDR CICCONI
ADRIENNE ALTENHAUS (NEW DEAL)
Editor
ANNALISA SCHILLACI
directed by
FRANCO FRACASSI
FRANCESCO TRENTO
[Brian Clark, South Tower survivor -- Manager at "Eurobrokers"] On September 11, 2001, I was employed by a company called Euro Brothers.
And our offices were on the 84th floor of the South Tower, which was the second building to be hit that day with an airplane.
And I was working away at my computer, and at 8:46 in the morning, there was this loud "BOOM!"
[Narrator] At 8:26:40 ...
American Airlines Flight 11 hits the north tower of the World Trade Center ...
causing extensive damage between the 93rd and the 99th floors.
[Fire Engine Sirens]
[Ambulance Siren]
[Brian Clark, South Tower survivor -- Manager at "Eurobrokers"] And the announcement from the Port Authority came "Your attention please! Building 2" -- our building -- "Building 2 is secure. There is no need to evacuate Building 2."
And two or three minutes later, I started talking with one fellow named Bobby Call, and Bobby told me that he had been down about 8 floors, 10 floors ...
heard the announcement, and had come back up. And as he was telling me this ...
"BOOM! BOOM!" This double explosion, and our building shook.
[Narrator] At 9:03 a.m., United Airlines Flight 175 hits the south tower.
[Brian Clark, South Tower survivor -- Manager at "Eurobrokers"] Everything just exploded in our room. Now we're on the 84th floor. What I didn't know at the time was that the second plane had hit six floors below us on the 78th floor. So we're six floors above impact.
[Policeman] Get out of the street!
[Brian Clark, South Tower survivor -- Manager at "Eurobrokers"] I heard this banging on the wall, and this faint scream for help inside the 81st floor. I hooked underneath him, and I pulled him up.
He said later that I was like Superman! And he came up and over and fell on me. I fell back down on my back, and this stranger landed on top of me, and he gave me this big kiss.
We got up and dusted ourselves off and I said, "Come on, let's go home!"
[Dario Fo, Nobel prize winner] The two towers shake considerably with the first impact, but they immediately return to their original structural position. Why? Because they were specifically designed to do this in the event of a plane crash.
[Frank De Martini, WTC construction manager] We designed the buildings to resist the impact of one or more jetliners.
[Professor Steven Jones, Physicist] The towers were very solidly built. It's like a tree.
You see, when you bend a tree ...
you have all of these fibers in the tree ...
but they are interconnected. And so when the tree bends, it can handle that motion.
[Narrator] Nevertheless, 56 minutes after Flight 175 strikes the south tower ...
it suddenly collapses in on itself.
[Brian Clark, South Tower survivor -- Manager at "Eurobrokers"] We looked onto the trade center, the tower that we had just come out of, and we started to see it go, "BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM." And we stared in disbelief as this -- it took about 8 or 10 seconds -- for the whole tower ...
just to go straight down ...
and to dissolve into its own ash.
[Louie Cacchioli, North Tower survivor -- New York Fire Department] We started to go in, and all of a sudden ...
there were people jumping from the towers. One jumped down and hit a fireman.
[Narrator] At 10:28, the north tower also collapses.
[Louie Cacchioli, North Tower survivor -- New York Fire Department] I threw away my oxygen mask to make me lighter.
I started running.
Because when I turned around, I saw the tower coming down.
Then there was all this dust that got me.
When I got home, all my family was waiting for me. And I was lucky to come back to my family.
All my friends -- they never came back.
[Explosion]
[Morgan Reynolds, U.S. Department of Labor under George W. Bush] It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the causes of the collapse of the Twin Towers.
[Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers]
[Narrator] The official justification for the inexplicable collapse of the twin towers was written by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Between 2002 and 2006, they studied the demolition of the world trade center ...
reaching the conclusion that the collapse of the towers was caused by the combined effects of the impact of the airplanes ...
and the resulting fires started by these impacts.
[Dario Fo, Nobel prize winner] We have been told by the very people who designed and built these towers ...
that they should have resisted the impact of more than one airplane.
[Frank De Martini, WTC construction manager] The building probably could sustain multiple impacts of jetliners.
[Dario Fo, Nobel prize winner] We have to ask ourselves ...
"Did the engineers and architects imagine that airplanes could crash into the towers ...
without any fuel?"
Perhaps they thought that the airplanes could get there ...
by just blowing in the breeze.
[Les Jamieson, New York 9-11 truth movement] Never before or after 9/11 have steel frame towers collapsed due to fire.
[Dario Fo, Nobel prize winner] In 2005 there was a fierce conflagration in Madrid. A skyscraper went up in flames.
It was a huge torch that kept burning for 20 hours: 20 consecutive hours.
But in the end, the load bearing structure remained intact.
The skyscraper did not fall down.
[WINDSOR TOWER, MADRID, FEBRUARY 2005]
[Dario Fo, Nobel prize winner] As you can see, the building is enveloped in flames.
This skyscraper was not yet complete.
It was still under construction.
Nevertheless, it remained standing.
Something you should note is the white color of the flames.
This means that there is a lot of oxygen burning.
If you look at the flames coming from the two towers in New York ...
we can see instead that the flames are dark red, and the smoke is black.
[Professor Steven Jones, Physicist] The fires that were burning in these towers was a dark grey, heavy, almost black-grey smoke coming off. This implies an oxygen-starved fire.
[Dario Fo, Nobel prize winner] Nevertheless, after 55 minutes ...
the whole tower collapses.
According to the official NIST version of events ...
at a certain point the steel structure of the towers gave way.
It no longer had the structural strength ...
that it had at the beginning.
And all of this was supposed to be because of the immense heat.
And here is something difficult to explain.
We know that at some point certain people managed to walk down from the top of this tower ...
across the point where the fire was strongest.
Somehow they reached the bottom of the tower.
How did they manage to do that?
[Brian Clark, South Tower survivor -- Manager at "Eurobrokers"] I don't know! When I looked down there I didn't see flames.
I just sensed that it was the right thing to go and try and test it. We would go as far as we could until we were stopped by flames.
And when we came to the 78th floor the last layer was standing, but it was cracked.
And there were flames licking up the other side of the wall, like this.
It wasn't a roaring inferno. I sensed that the flames were maybe starved for oxygen right there in the interior.
We kept going and we got onto the 74th floor.
And when we got down that far, normal conditions! The lights were on. Fresh air coming up from below!
[Narrator] So the temperature inside the building was not particularly high ...
as we can see from the presence of this woman, who is standing at the precise point where the plane impacted.
[Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury under Ronald Reagan] It is a non controversial fact that the official explanation of the collapse of the WTC buildings is false.
[Narrator] In order to verify the way the buildings collapsed, and how the heat had affected the steel, NIST commissioned numerous tests, some of which were conducted by a company called Underwriter's Labs.
[Les Jamieson, New York 9-11 truth movement] And Kevin Ryan -- he's the former employee from Underwriter's Laboratories who challenged the NIST report, and went public with it. And within a week, he was fired from his job.
[Kevin Ryan, Former manager at Underwriters Labs] We did test the floor models in August of 2004 ...
and those tests disproved the primary theory behind the collapse of the buildings ...
it was called "The Pancake Theory."
The floors would collapse onto each other in a stack of pancakes ...
and then columns were no longer supported, and the columns would fall apart.
Well, the floor models didn't collapse during the tests. And these were in furnaces.
Testing in furnaces is a much hotter temperature for longer periods of time. They still didn't collapse.
So a few months later, the government put out an update on their report. And they stated not only that the floors did not collapse, but they had done tests on the few samples they had saved from the fire zones and those tests proved that the temperatures were very low.
Temperatures were not hot enough to even soften steel.
And yet they are coming out with a summary statement that says that's what actually did happen ...
that the floors did collapse, and the steel did soften!
[FLOOR MODELS DID NOT COLLAPSE, STEEL DID NOT SOFTEN ... UNDERWRITERS LABORATORIES]
[WTC FLOORS DID COLLAPSE, STEEL DID SOFTEN ... NIST REPORT]
[UNDERWRITERS LABORATORIES: FLOOR MODELS DID NOT COLLAPSE, STEEL DID NOT SOFTEN
NIST REPORT: WTC FLOORS DID COLLAPSE, STEEL DID SOFTEN]
This peculiar linking-together of opposites -- knowledge with ignorance, cynicism with fanaticism -- is one of the chief distinguishing marks of Oceanic society. The official ideology abounds with contradictions even when there is no practical reason for them. Thus, the Party rejects and vilifies every principle for which the Socialist movement originally stood, and it chooses to do this in the name of Socialism. It preaches a contempt for the working class unexampled for centuries past, and it dresses its members in a uniform which was at one time peculiar to manual workers and was adopted for that reason. It systematically undermines the solidarity of the family, and it calls its leader by a name which is a direct appeal to the sentiment of family loyalty. Even the names of the four Ministries by which we are governed exhibit a sort of impudence in their deliberate reversal of the facts. The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy; they are deliberate exercises in doublethink. For it is only by reconciling contradictions that power can be retained indefinitely. In no other way could the ancient cycle be broken. If human equality is to be for ever averted -- if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently -- then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity.
--
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), by George Orwell
[Kevin Ryan, Former manager at Underwriters Labs] So they either downplayed those results or ignored those results. And they ended up putting it all in the computer.
[Narrator] Thanks to computers, NIST managed to straighten this problem out ...
and the old "Pancake Theory" was replaced by the "Inward Bowing" theory.
According to the Institute heat weakened the floors, which started to curve downwards.
The external walls of the towers also curved inwards until they could no longer bear the weight of the structures above, causing the towers to collapse.
[Kevin Ryan, Former manager at Underwriters Labs] Their final theory is almost entirely computer based. And the computer itself is not really accessible. They haven't given it to us to examine. After having investigated it more over the last year and a half, I found that yes, they did contradict their test results. But additionally, they also did manipulate the test parameters. They doubled one thing, they cut something else in half.
[THEY MANIPULATED THE TEST PARAMETERS]
For example, their story says that the aircraft combustibles were 13 tons in the aircraft cabin. Yet the FAA says it's more like an average of 6-1/2 tons. It's double. They doubled it. They doubled the time that their computer model exposes columns to fire: 90 minutes instead of what we know is 45 or 50 minutes in both of the buildings, actually.
[THEY DOUBLE IT, AND CUT SOMETHING ELSE IN HALF]
[Paolo Marini, Metallurgy Expert -- Italian Center for Materials Development] One of the things that particularly struck me was the incredible speed with which the towers came down.
There was something truly inexplicable about the speed of the collapse.
If we dropped a weight from a height of around 400 meters, which was the height of the towers, the time it would take to reach the ground ...
supposing that there was not even any air resistance to slow down the speed of the fall, would take approximately 9 seconds.
[FREE FALL TIME FROM 400 METERS: 9 SECONDS]
[Brian Clark, South Tower survivor -- Manager at "Eurobrokers"] It took about 8 or 10 seconds for the whole tower just to go straight down.
[Paolo Marini, Metallurgy Expert -- Italian Center for Materials Development] The impact was about 2/3rds of the way up the tower.
Even if the section above collapsed suddenly ...
due to the structure giving way ...
and even considering that the impact of the section above was enormous, and therefore in some way weakened the resistance of the structures below, it is clear that due to the resistance of the undamaged part below, this tower should not have fallen at such a speed. But it fell as if there was nothing below it, whereas there was an enormous structure below, a resistant structure that should have slowed down the speed of the collapse considerably.
[THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF BUILDING 7]
[Dario Fo, Nobel prize winner] Here, close to the two towers
there was another large tower ...
which was hit by the debris from the tower that collapsed.
[Professor Steven Jones, Physicist] This building, this huge 47-story building, was never hit by a jet, and yet it came down that same day ...
but 7 hours after the last tower fell.
[HEAVY METAL MUSIC]
[Professor Steven Jones, Physicist] The measure of the time of fall is almost free fall speed
[Narrator] The collapse of the north tower inflicts some damage to Building 7, causing fires to ignite on a few floors.
Even the official version admitted that fire has a low probability of causing the collapse. But why does total collapse take place?
And why does it occur at free fall speed?
[Professor Steven Jones, Physicist] As I saw the collapse of World Trade Center 7, I realized that this was something that needed to be studied and could not be ignored.
[Narrator] Building 7, and the Twin Towers, share one utterly bewildering similarity ...
the presence of molten metal found ...
under the debris of all three buildings weeks after the collapse.
[Professor Steven Jones, Physicist] There's this molten metal that we have now studied at length ...
that came from these buildings ...
and existed then in pools underneath the rubble of all three skyscrapers: both towers, and Building 7.
[Paolo Marini, Metallurgy Expert -- Italian Center for Materials Development] A metallographic analysis was conducted by a specialized institute ...
that examined the structure of a girder taken from ground zero.
When these girders were extracted from under the rubble ...
it seems as if parts of them had melted.
This is totally inexplicable ...
because the temperatures reached by the fires could only have been 800 degrees at the most. To melt a steel girder, you have to reach temperatures of around 1600 degrees. How could this be?
At a microscopic level, if you examine the granular structure of steel, one can detect the presence of an element that should not normally be present, and it is there in substantial quantities. It is sulfur.
[Professor Steven Jones, Physicist] We're quite sure now where this molten metal came from.
It comes from a material called "thermate" ...
which is aluminum powder ...
iron oxide ...
and sulfur.
[Paolo Marini, Metallurgy Expert -- Italian Center for Materials Development] The temperature is so high that steel melts. It could only melt if the temperature reached over 1,000 degrees in a few seconds.
[Narrator] The user of thermite could certainly have caused the fusion apparent in the steel beams.
[Professor Steven Jones, Physicist] You see, the presence of thermite now, in these buildings, to bring them down ...
implies that someone had to place the thermite...
near these steel columns ...
in order to cut through the columns.
I have interviewed a demolition expert, and he said this is what they do:
They set explosives.
They can use radio control to initiate the firing of the explosives.
They have to be done in a sequence ...
in order to get the building to come down rapidly ...
and straight down.
Controlled demolition.
[William Christison, 29 years in the CIA] All the characteristics of these collapses show that they must have been controlled demolitions.
[Professor Steven Jones, Physicist] As scientists, we look at different hypotheses, different explanations. But then we have to look at all the data to see which explanation fits the best.
You have to incorporate all the picture.
Yes, you may take an isolated fact ...
like the plume, and say ...
"Well, perhaps that was a high air pressure that somehow blew a window out" ...
but that will not account for the molten metal, or the sulfidation, or the molten pools.
[Jeanette McKinley, Survivor] When the south tower collapsed, and blew into my apartment directly across from the world trade center ...
I saved the dust, and I gave it to Steven Jones.
[Professor Steven Jones, Physicist] The dust that was provided by Mrs. McKinley is very interesting ...
because it's like a snapshot of the residue ...
being produced by the tower during its collapse.
It's perfect!
Now we look in the dust, and we see metal droplets.
And when I saw that, I thought, "Whoa!" This is what I expect from thermite, because I've done a number of thermite experiments ...
and you get small metal drops being thrown out in all directions. And this is what we see in the dust now: these little metal drops. We also see barium.
This is very interesting because barium nitrate and sulfur are part of the military patent ...
on what is known as "thermate."
This is thermite with sulfur and barium nitrate added to make this material cut more rapidly through steel.
Now, Barium is a very toxic metal, so one would not ordinarily expect this to be present in the large concentrations that we see.
The fact that we see it in the dust is a very strong indication to me that the military form of thermite that has been used.
[Professor David Ray Griffin, Author of "9-11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions"] It turned out that literally dozens of firefighters and emergency medical workers ...
had given testimony that they had heard one, two, three, seven and eight -- some said ten explosions going off in the building. Some of the people in the building reported that they were banged around, and knocked down the stairs by explosions.
Other people testified to seeing flashes. And many of them said, "It looked just like on TV when we see them bring down buildings with explosions. We saw the flashes. We saw the demolition rings. We heard the sounds.
[William Rodriguez, Former janitor at the World Trade Center -- National Hero] I worked there for 20 years. And I was a janitor, the person who cleaned all the floors.
The building had six sublevels of basement.
The support companies for the cleaning of the world trade center were located on B-1. When I was there, at 8:46 ...
all of a sudden we hear a "BOOM!"
An explosion so hard it pushed us upwards.
[PUSH US UPWARDS]
When I went to verbalize it like six seconds after, we hear that "BOOM!", that impact all the way on the top.
[ON THE TOP]
So, two different events. And at that very moment, when I said, "Oh my God!", a guy comes running into the office and ...
[coughs several times] ...
this guy had his hands extended -- both arms, like this ...
and his skin was pulled totally from both arms
and it was hanging from the top of the fingertips, like it was clothing. And I thought at that time that it was clothing. And when I went to say something, I realized, I looked at his face and I realized that he had missing parts of his face.
[Philip Berg, Lawyer of William Rodriguez and 9-11 victims family members] He had, on that particular day, the only master key.
He went up with a master key unlocking door after door so firemen could get in ...
and he himself, I think he said brought out 15 or 20 people.
[William Rodriguez, Former janitor at the World Trade Center -- National Hero] So I started opening the doors of the stairwells so people could escape.
[Philip Berg, Lawyer of William Rodriguez and 9-11 victims family members] Willy was made a hero ...
and he was at the White House ...
and we have a picture of that ...
of George Bush honoring Willy Rodriguez for being a hero.
[William Rodriguez, Former janitor at the World Trade Center -- National Hero] We hear a 'BOOM" 'BOOM" "BOOM" -- different explosions, and I asked the fire department, I said, "What are these explosions?" And what they said was, "Maybe it's the gas tanks from the kitchen."
"No!"
The kitchens were all electrical. Gas from the kitchen didn't make any sense. "BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM, BOOM."
[Louie Cacchioli, North Tower survivor -- New York Fire Department] I heard a loud explosion, an explosion that I'd never heard in my whole life.
An enormous explosion.
[Brian Clark, South Tower survivor -- Manager at "Eurobrokers"] My ears were hearing loud explosions at ground level.
Very mysterious.
Explosions that seemed to be at ground level as opposed to high in the air.
[Philip Berg, Lawyer of William Rodriguez and 9-11 victims family members] There is no question in my mind that those buildings -- based on the laws of physics -- could not have collapsed without the assistance of a bomb.
[EXPLOSION]
[EXPLOSION]
[William Rodriguez, Former janitor at the World Trade Center -- National Hero] "No!"
[EXPLOSION]
[William Rodriguez, Former janitor at the World Trade Center -- National Hero] Then I hear another explosion!
No!
I think it's a bomb!
Okay. [Sighs] So you have peace that's breaking out in the middle east. You have the 9/11 warnings. And then in August of 2000, we went into high mode, high activity mode. I can tell you the exact day: August 2nd. And after I tell you this I'll open it up to questions. On August 2nd was the Senate nomination hearings for Robert Mueller to head the FBI. He was going to be the FBI director. And I was on the phone with my CIA handler Richard Fuisz. And I said, "There's not one single terrorism investigation this man hasn't thrown. He threw the Oklahoma City bombing investigation, he threw Lockerbie." And I said, "this man should not be the FBI director when this next attack occurs." And Richard Fuisz said to me, "My God, what if there is no FBI director when this happens?" I said, "Do you think it's that soon? Do you think the attack is imminent?" He said, "Oh, yeah. It's absolutely just in the next couple of weeks." And I said, "Well, God, Richard, I'll go back to New York right now, and I'll pump the Iraqis to see if they've got anything from Baghdad. I'll see if they have any news for us." And he said, "Oh my God, Susan, don't go back. DO NOT GO BACK TO NEW YORK CITY. IT'S TOO DANGEROUS! WE ARE EXPECTING THE USE OF A MINIATURE THERMONUCLEAR DEVICE."
And they were not afraid that I was going to be hurt by like falling debris in the World Trade Center. I wasn't going to be at the World Trade Center. They were afraid of radiation contamination. Like the winds blowing the radioactive stuff. And he was like, "Don't go up there. We're expecting mass casualties."
--
CIA Whistleblower Susan Lindauer Exposes Everything! "Extreme Prejudice," by Susan Lindauer
[Philip Berg, Lawyer of William Rodriguez and 9-11 victims family members] Willy has taken a 180% turn of events saying here that President Bush, who had honored him as a hero, he's named on this lawsuit as accusing Bush, and Cheney, and Sr. Bush and others, of murder.
And he's not doing it for any monetary gain, because this has just cost us everything!
Willy has lost his home, lost his job ...
and right now his goal is to find out the truth.
[EXPLOSION!]
[Captain Russ Wittemberg, U.S. Air Force, Pan Am and United Airlines pilot for 30 years] The government story they handed us about 9-11 is total bullshit plain and simple. To expect this alleged airplane to run these maneuvers with a total amateur at the controls is simply ridiculous.
[Narrator] According to the official story of the 11th of September ...
at 9:37 a.m.
American Airlines Flight 77, crashed into the Pentagon.
This rare footage shows the scene ...
immediately after ...
an hour before the entire structure collapsed.
As you can see, it is a rather unusual scene.
One would reasonably expect to see something of this sort:
that is to say, pieces of the airplane ...
suitcases ...
debris everywhere ...
just like every other aircrash on land.
Instead, there is no substantial visual evidence of debris.
[Capt. Russ Wittemberg, Pilot -- 30 years in the military and civil aviation] I have been at some accident investigation sites for the Air Force ...
and I have never come across any accident scene where there is no tell tale evidence of the airplane that crashed.
Here we have airplane sites, crash sites, that give zero evidence.
[Narrator] Where did the airplane go?
Did it break up against the wall of the Pentagon?
If it had done so, thousands of parts of the plane ...
should have been scattered all over the disaster zone.
[Capt. Russ Wittemberg, Pilot -- 30 years in the military and civil aviation] You know, things like engines and landing gears and brakes and tires are very difficult to destroy. Very difficult, because they are made out of very high-tempered steel, and I don't believe the airplane can be made to go fast enough to pulverize those things.
I've never seen that happen before.
You look around, and there's a 16' hole for an airplane, that's a 100 and something wide.
[Dario Fo, Nobel prize winner] According to the official story ...
the American Airlines Boeing 757
disappeared inside this hole.
Can you see it?
5 meters. I repeat, 5 meters in diameter.
Let's make some calculations. a Boeing 757 is ...
including its wingspan, of course ...
is 38 meters wide.
And including the rudder, or the tailfin, it is 13.5 meters high.
To get all of this huge aircraft ...
into a hole 5 meters wide, seems rather implausible to me.
In this picture, we can see a row of windows on this side, and another row on that side.
They should have been smashed and destroyed by the wings ...
and instead, they are intact. These windows aren't even broken.
[Narrator] For years, the military refused to answer the questions of an increasing number of people who rejected the official version.
When the French journalist, Thierry Meyssan, published the book "The Incredible Lie" ...
utterly surreal explanations were put forward to shut the detractors up.
One of these maintained that the airplane had been vaporized ...
by the speed and the force of the crash.
Vaporizing Theory, by Tara Carreon
[PENTAGON HIT BY TERRORIST ATTACK, BY SGT. JAMELLE A. COLBERT, THE OLD GUARD PUBLIC AFFAIRS]
["great big engine from this beautiful airplane just vaporize."]
[Dario Fo, Nobel prize winner] One very strange thing that doesn't make sense ...
is the disappearance of various components of this Boeing.
For example, the two engines.
And what about the plane's wings. Where did they go? Had they been gassified?
Instead, we are told the fuselage remained intact ...
and it smashed through the whole outer wall of the Pentagon ...
and emerged through the other side ...
destroying a number of columns.
The most solid part of the airplane is, without any doubt, the engines. In fact, these engines are made of a titanium steel alloy.
It is so tough that it doesn't even melt at 2,386.85 degrees centigrade.
Well now, in this wall we should be able to see ...
if nothing else, the holes made by the two engines ...
that smashed into it.
No! There is no sign of them. Two holes that we'd expect to see, are not there.
[Capt. Russ Wittemberg, Pilot -- 30 years in the military and civil aviation] There's no indication of the wings hitting anything at the Pentagon, like you had at the north tower, you could see the outline of the aircraft at a 25 degree bank angle.
You can clearly see the outline of their number 1 engine, the fuselage of no. 2 engine. It's a 25 degree bank.
The wing dihedrals on the flight. And you can clearly see the outline of that airplane. But you can't find anything like that on the Pentagon.
[Narrator] These inconsistencies have created more and more difficulties for proponents of the official version. So, while the military kept silent during this debacle ...
various photos of airplane debris found ...
on the external lawns and along the supposed route of the airplane within the building ...
started appearing in newspapers and on the web.
[Dario Fo, Nobel prize winner] Very well, they admitted there was no gassification.
But another theory was immediately put forward. It suggested that in order to enter a hole five meters wide ...
at a certain moment the airplane somehow closed up its wings ...
just as dragonflies do!
The plane entered the hole! Oh look! There they are!
The engines and the other pieces of the plane were found there.
[Maj. General Albert Stubblebine, U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command] One of my experiences in the Army, was being in charge of the Army's imagery interpretation for scientific and technical intelligence during the cold war.
[from the documentary: "ONE NATION UNDER SIEGE"]
I measured pieces of Soviet equipment from photographs. It was my job.
I looked at the hole in the Pentagon ...
and I look at the size of an airplane ...
that was supposed to have hit the Pentagon,
THE PLANE DOES NOT FIT IN THAT HOLE!
So what did hit the Pentagon?! What hit it? Where is it?
What hit it? What's going on?
[Col. George Nelson, Aircraft accident investigator U.S. Air Force] With all the evidence readily available at the Pentagon crash site, any unbiased rational investigator could only conclude that a Boeing 757 did not fly into the Pentagon.
[Barbara Honegger, Senior Journalist -- U.S. Department of Defence] General Arnold, that very morning, immediately after the alleged impact ...
ordered one of his fighter pilots to fly over and down to the Pentagon to look and see what he saw ...
and to report back to General Larry Arnold himself.
[Narrator] At that time, Major General Larry Arnold was commander of aviation at NORAD ...
North American Aerospace Defense Command ...
in charge of protecting the United States and Canada.
[Barbara Honegger, Senior Journalist -- U.S. Department of Defence] His fighter pilot reported back to him that there was no evidence. Zero evidence of an impact of a plane at the Pentagon.
[Lt. Col. Karen U. Kwatkowski, Survivor] No airplane metal or cargo debris was blowing on the lawn ... what we expected to see was not evident.
[Steve De Chiaro, survivor awarded the Medal of Valor] It only seemed like a small hole in the building. No tails. No wings. No nothing.
[Dario Fo, Nobel prize winner] Since the Pentagon possessed 86 separate and complete video recordings of the incident, why didn't they show some whole portions of them to those people who had doubts about it?
[Barbara Honegger, Senior Journalist -- U.S. Department of Defence] The FBI was immediately at the scene, and took the surveillance tapes ...
and confiscated 86 videotapes ...
both in the Pentagon, the Pentagon parking lot, in the gas station across the freeway from the Pentagon, in a nearby hotel, in all kinds of buildings that had their cameras trained in that general area.
[Narrator] For a long time, the military authorities refused to release the footage of Flight 77's impact.
But in 2006, the United States Department of Defense was forced to yield to Freedom of Information requests
and it released four video sequences.
The video evidence from the Pentagon's CITGO gas station, and the nearby Sheraton Hotel, are of no use.
But two samples of video footage captured from the Pentagon's parking lot ...
have been offered to the world as definitive proof of Flight 77's impact with the Pentagon.
They are almost identical.
[Capt. Russ Wittemberg, Pilot -- 30 years in the military and civil aviation] Jet engines don't emit white smoke.
You have some white smoke coming out of the halved end of whatever kind of vehicle.
Quite frankly, there's not enough in those photographs to tell exactly what it was, but you can tell what it wasn't.
And it didn't have the size as compared -- if it was a real 757-200, it would be much bigger than the vehicle we did see in the picture.
[Dario Fo, Nobel prize winner] With the best will in the world, can you see an airplane here?
The Pentagon tells us you cannot see the airplane because unfortunately it passed ...
between one frame ...
and the next.
One frame and the next.
[Narrator] So where is the airplane?
According to FBI agent Jacqueline Maguire ...
as you can see in this affidavit, only one camera took pictures of the scene ...
and those are the frames that we've already seen.
[86 cameras, No airplane]
[Dario Fo, Nobel prize winner] The story about how this airplane is supposed to have got there, is absolutely absurd.
One cannot imagine how, in order to get down to the height of the Pentagon wall ...
it was able to make a 270 degree turn at a speed of approximately 800 kilometers per hour.
[Robin Hordon, Flight controller at Boston Center for 11 years -- Flight instructor] That is a really difficult maneuver. And what I will say to you is that an experienced pilot with thousands of hours would probably have to take between 10 and 20 attempts, a skilled thousand-of-hours pilot, probably 10 or 20 times, before they would be able to pull off that maneuver.
[WITH THOUSANDS OF HOURS]
A 757 is not designed to do that. A 757 is designed to be basically a cruise ship in the sky. It's not acrobatic. So you just can't do that with one of those big airplanes.
Air traffic controllers at the Dulles approachment control, when they saw this target come in and make this turn, they said, "Oh, that's a fighter." Because military fighters can do that. Okay? And military fighters with auto pilots and being flown remotely, they have the structural capability, they are designed to be able to be that acrobatic.
[Danielle O'Brien, air traffic controller from Dulles airport] The speed, the maneuverability, the way that it turned, we all thought in the radar room, all of us experienced air traffic controllers, that that was a military plane.
[Dario Fo, Nobel prize winner] Absurdity of absurdities.
There is also the height at which this airplane was flying to be explained.
It is supposed to have followed the lie of the land at 6 meters from the ground for 1 kilometer.
Managing also to jump over a hill. Then it went over a roadway. And it finally got there, without making any other turns because by now, there was no more space.
[Capt. Russ Wittemberg, Pilot -- 30 years in the military and civil aviation] We have the airplane story as the Flight 77 was going 530 mph, 460 knots. And it can't go that fast on a level flight down that low. If you're up high, the true air speed can go up, and it can go that fast. But not that low. The air is too dense.
[Nila Sagadevan, pilot and aeronautical engineer] I challenge any pilot, any pilot anywhere: give him a Boeing 757 and tell him to do 400 knots 20 feet above the ground for half a mile. Can't do. It's aerodynamically impossible.
[Capt. Russ Wittemberg, Pilot -- 30 years in the military and civil aviation] So the story about how the plane hit the Pentagon just doesn't make any sense at all.
[10.3 "PHASE TWO" AND THE QUESTION OF IRAQ]
[9/11 commission report: the President was struck by the apparent sophistication of the operation and some of the piloting, especially Hanjour's high-speed dive into the Pentagon.]
[Dario Fo, Nobel prize winner] After Hani Hanjour, the plane's pilot had been identified ...
his flight instructor declared that his student was not even able to fly a small, single engine airplane.
[Capt. Russ Wittemberg, Pilot -- 30 years in the military and civil aviation] These guys don't have the experience to make that kind of maneuver even if the airplane could fly that.
The man could not fly at all. There is no way you could possibly come out of a 172 ...
and fly a jet that you've never flown.
That's like showing me how to carve a Christmas turkey ...
and then say, "Go make a heart transplant."
[Dario Fo, Nobel prize winner] Even if we suppose that such an incompetent pilot had the opportunity to fly a Boeing 757 ...
we still have to ask ourselves how he managed to violate the most heavily protected airspace in the world?
[Robin Hordon, Flight controller at Boston Center for 11 years -- Flight instructor] No untracked aircraft could get near the Pentagon or the White House.
It just doesn't happen.
[John Judge, 9-11 researcher for former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney] In Washington, D.C., we have one of the most restricted airspaces in the world.
It's called P56. It has a separate radar tracking system, and a separate military response system.
[Robin Hordon, Flight controller at Boston Center for 11 years -- Flight instructor] P56 is that restricted airspace that is around the Pentagon and the White House, and it is a highly, highly, highly, sensitive area. There are supposed to be no unknown aircraft that can go through there.
[John Judge, 9-11 researcher for former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney] That has an air defense identification zone in a 50 mile radius around D.C. And then it has a protected zone 17 miles around the Washington Monument. And an inner protected zone three miles around the Capitol.
That space is essentially unbreachable. It has to be because of the importance of the buildings there.
[Robin Hordon, Flight controller at Boston Center for 11 years -- Flight instructor] It's like an aviation no-man's land. Nobody goes in there. Nobody.
[John Judge, 9-11 researcher for former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney] They have F-16 and F-18 jets at Andrews Air Force Base about 10 miles south of D.C. They also have the 113th national guard air wing at Anacostia Naval Air Station that can send scrambler jets up in a very short period of time. Both were in place that day.
Neither one responds at all until after the Pentagon is hit.
In addition to that, the Pentagon has its own defenses.
[Barbara Honegger, Senior Journalist -- U.S. Department of Defence] If a plane, any kind of plane, was coming in towards the Pentagon ...
why didn't the anti-aircraft missile batteries that are there, why didn't they fire to protect the building? This is, after all, the most heavily protected building on the planet.
That craft had to have been a military craft, because only the military craft put out a signal: it's called an "identify friend or foe IFF device." And only the military craft would be allowed to approach the building.
[Robin Hordon, Flight controller at Boston Center for 11 years -- Flight instructor] The two radar systems that the military radar's defensive radar systems read are civilian transponder ...
and a military transponder.
Military transponder is called "IFF."
Civilian aircraft do not have an IFF transponder.
They are not given that capability. Okay?
So if there was a 757, American 757 that went in to the Pentagon, for example, and it shut off its transponder, it didn't have a military IFF transponder on it.
So it was the primary target. It's the primary target going in to that airspace ...
"PUH PUH PUH PUH PUH." It should have been shot down.
[John Judge, 9-11 researcher for former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney] What I am describing to you is a breakdown in standard operating procedure by FAA, NORAD, P56 and the Pentagon, all on the same day ...
in the middle of, after 9:05, what was known nationally to be a terrorist attack. And it makes no sense.
[NO SENSE]
[Gore Vidal, Novelist, essayist, playwriter] The Pentagon symbolizes our military power in the world. And they hit it. And until this day, nobody knows what they hit it with, whether it was an airplane or whether it was a missile. And our government will never tell us.
So we just waited for the French to explain it to us.
[Laughs]
[Robin Hordon, Flight controller at Boston Center for 11 years -- Flight instructor] There is nobody anywhere at any point in this entire investigation that has said ...
that is positively American 77.
They "suppose" it; they "presume" it; they "assume" it; they say "this is what we think it is."
[Capt. Russ Wittemberg, Pilot -- 30 years in the military and civil aviation] The controller, Danielle O'Brien, who saw the unidentified blip coming in from the west at a high rate of speed had no way of knowing what it was ...
because it was a primary, it was a primary return only.
The secondary radar, a transponder, was turned off.
[Robin Hordon, Flight controller at Boston Center for 11 years -- Flight instructor] In order to identify a primary radar target ...
you have to have two-way communications between the pilot and the air traffic controller, and the pilot has to report over a certain geographical location ...
or you have to be able to tell the pilot in the airplane to make a series of turns ...
and then the radar controller can look at all of the primary targets on his or her radar scope, and say ...
"there is an aircraft, or there is a target, that just executed the turns I told him.
Now I can positively identify the aircraft." That never occurred. That's huge!
[Capt. Russ Wittemberg, Pilot -- 30 years in the military and civil aviation] Now, if Flight 77 really did go off the radar screen for 36 minutes according to her testimony, then the airplane was no longer flying, or it was low enough it was out of radar coverage. One of the two. So was the airplane landed at some place, some remote field? Then it does make sense that they lost the airplane for 36 minutes.
But other than that, there's very little explanation for that.
[Dario Fo, Nobel prize winner] In the light of what we've seen and heard ...
it seems that the official version of 9/11 is not sufficient. We want the facts to be explained to us. And above all, we want them to be properly investigated.
Basically, we want someone to finally tell us the truth.
[Lella Costa, Italian actress] The United States Government spend 892 billion dollars per year to defend its citizens and its territory. It is the best protected country in the world, as President Bush has said.
Nevertheless, on the 11th of September, the heart of America was attacked from the sky.
And 3,000 helpless American citizens were killed in their own cities.
[Gore Vidal, Novelist, essayist, playwriter] If I had been sitting on that committee, that congressional committee examining 9/11, one question that they could not get the Air Force to answer correctly, and NORAD ...
was why the fighter planes did not go up automatically when the first planes were found to be hijacked?
[Robert Bowman, Pilot -- Decorated Vietnam veteran] Any time an airliner goes off course, or loses radio communication, or loses its transponder signal, any time any one of those three things happen, the aircraft is supposed to be intercepted.
On 9/11, all three of those things happened, and still there was no intercept. Those planes flew around for 20 minutes to an hour and a half, without ever being intercepted.
[Major Giuseppe Guardabasso, Italian Military Air Field, Trapani, Italy] We have direct contact with our air defense colleagues by means of direct connections that are controlled by this touchscreen apparatus.
By pressing just one key here, the call is sent, which the operator of the defense in this case answers directly. In the time it takes to answer the telephone call ...
around two to three seconds ...
the information can be already exchanged.
[Narrator] So why weren't the hijackers' planes intercepted and shot down?
Military jets travel much faster than passenger aircraft.
It would have been easy for them to catch up to the jet planes before they crashed.
[Capt. Morris Ghadoni, F-16 fighter ex-pilot -- 3rd Stormo "Virgin," Italian Military Air Field, Trapani, Italy] This airplane can reach a maximum speed of Mach 2.05.
This means it exceeds twice the sound barrier. This is approximately 2,400 kilometers per hour.
[Narrator] In the northeast of the United States ...
[Syracuse]
[Hartford]
[Langley]
there are as may as 16 air force bases.
[16 AIR BASES]
[Willow Grove]
[Newark]
[Norfolk]
[Westfield]
Why weren't the Boeing jets intercepted?
The official story argues that Air Defence was informed too late.
[Robin Hordon, Flight controller at Boston Center for 11 years -- Flight instructor] One of the biggest lies is that the FAA guys were incompetent.
When we lose an airplane ...
we take action!
We do not sit. We do not delay. We do not. We go to protocol. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
When the air traffic controllers first saw American 11 start to lose its radar, lose its transponder, go off course, and all of these bad things that are going on, they did not take a coffee break.
[John Judge, 9-11 researcher for former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney] 67 times in that year 2001 up until September, there had been air emergencies.
They can get a plane up in from 6 to 10 minutes,
and scrambled it 67 times that year in air emergencies.
But there was not an instance where an air emergency went ignored for long periods of time ...
until 9/11.
[Robin Hordon, Flight controller at Boston Center for 11 years -- Flight instructor] A lot of people down the road say, "Well, the President had to give authority to shoot aircraft down," and stuff like that.
That is not true! An interceptor pilot has the responsibility and the authority on his or her own, to shoot down an airplane if they think the situation calls for it. And this is how it would be.
[Gore Vidal, Novelist, essayist, playwriter] You don't have to wait for a military command.
You don't have to wait for orders of any kind.
That's not an option: that's the law! It's inherent in being a fighter pilot. You know, that's what you have to do!
Unless someone has told you to stand down!
[Robin Hordon, Flight controller at Boston Center for 11 years -- Flight instructor] Ah, before 1970 ...
we had one form of scrambling aircraft, and it was immediate: Bang, bang, bang, bang.
Then in the 1970s we had some hijackings come into our civil airspace ...
and that wasn't a quick response.
What we did in that, we didn't want the hijackers to know that we were there. So we didn't rush the fighters off the ground.
And we kind of snuck them up behind the aircraft.
So, we put a second protocol in.
And the reason that the hijacking protocol is so slow is because you had to get Pentagon approval ...
before you could release your fighters.
Those two types of protocols lasted until June 1, 2001 ...
three months before 9/11.
In June of 2001 ...
Rumsfeld and the Pentagon and the military ...
changed the procedures ...
and instead of having two protocols: one fast, one slow ...
they went to one protocol: slow.
If we had reacted to the in-flight emergency immediately, the fighters would be up and on the way ...
and those aircraft would never ever have reached their targets.
But when the center controllers came to notifying the military, okay, because they only had one protocol to work with, that protocol went to the Pentagon.
And guess what? Guess who didn't answer the phone? Sorry, it was the Pentagon.
Here's an analogy that I can give that would help out the common person here.
What Rumsfeld did is: the fire call comes into the fire station, but before the fire truck gets a chance to leave, it has to call the mayor of the city to get approval for that departure. And what if the mayor is out for breakfast? Or is sleeping late? And he doesn't answer the phone?
[Narrator] Look carefully at this footage shot just a few minutes after the attack on the Pentagon.
Notice the man that is helping to carry a casualty. It is the secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld.
What is he doing here when, as head of defense of the whole nation, and while the United States is still under attack, he is helping tend to the wounded.
Why is he not at his command post?
[At 9:39, the NMCC's deputy director for operations, a military officer, opened the call from the Pentagon, which had just been hit. He began: "An air attack against North America may be in progress. NORAD, what's the situation?" NORAD said it had conflicting reports. Its latest information was "of a possible hijacked aircraft taking off out of JFK en route to Washington D.C." The NMCC reported a crash into the mall side of the Pentagon and requested that the Secretary of Defense be added to the conference. [198]
At 9:44, NORAD briefed the conference on the possible hijacking of Delta 1989. Two minutes later, staff reported that they were still trying to locate Secretary Rumsfeld and Vice Chairman Myers. The Vice Chairman joined the conference shortly before 10:00; the Secretary, shortly before 10:30. The Chairman was out of the country. [199]
At 9:48, a representative from the White House shelter asked if there were any indications of another hijacked aircraft. The deputy director for operations mentioned the Delta flight and concluded that "that would be the fourth possible hijack." At 9:49, the commander of NORAD directed all air sovereignty aircraft to battle stations, fully armed. [200]]
[Robin Hordon, Flight controller at Boston Center for 11 years -- Flight instructor] The phone calls went to the Pentagon. It went through the military. And the military was sitting there saying, "Uh, don't answer that phone, whatever it might be."
[whistling]
[Phone ringing to the Pentagon]
[Pentagon not answering the phone]
[Robin Hordon, Flight controller at Boston Center for 11 years -- Flight instructor] Now, how would you like your fire department to sit there and say, "Well, I'm sorry. We can't come and put your house [fire] out and save your life because the mayor didn't say so."
And on 9/12, they changed the protocols again back to the first protocol ...
which was the fast scrambles. And that's where it is today.
So the way that Rumsfeld's Pentagon managed this whole thing is ...
they switched gears. Okay? They switched out of having two -- fast and slow --
into slow! Okay? And then said, "Oh, we're bad." And on 9/12, "Let's go fast again."
[Lella Costa, Italian actress] When the United States was attacked without warning at Pearl Harbor ...
after 8 inquiries, General Walter Short, commander of the army for the defense of Hawaii, and Admiral Husband Kimmel, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, were both charged with negligence and summarily dismissed.
But after the 9/11 catastrophe, nobody, neither the Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, nor the head of civil aviation, nor that of Air Defense, was either punished or removed from office.
SHUT UP AND ACT![George Clooney decapitated]
[Janeane Garofolo's head blown off]
[Susan Sarandon splat on the pavement]
[Sean Penn killed by a giant cat]
[Danny Glover killed by a giant cat]
[Helen Hunt cut in half]
[Samuel Jackson decapitated]
[Tim Robbins burned to death]
[Alec Baldwin decapitated]
-- Team America, directed by Trey Parker, Creator of South Park
[Narrator] On September 10th, Brigadier General W. Montague Winfield, asked junior officer Captain Charles Leidig to temporarily replace him as Director of Operations at the Pentagon Command Center from 8:30 a.m. on September 11th.
Later that day, after Flight 93 was reported crashed, Winfield resumed control.
[PROMOTED TO MAJOR GENERAL]
Captain Leidig had only just completed a course qualifying him to run the Command Center.
[PROMOTED TO REAR ADMIRAL, DIRECTOR OF THE OPERATIONS, SIXTH FLEET NAVAL FORCES IN EUROPE]
On September 11th, Brigadier General David F. Wherley, Jr. was commander of the Andrews Air Force Base, the nearest one to the Pentagon.
[PROMOTED TO MAJOR GENERAL, COMMANDING GENERAL NATIONAL GUARD, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA]
On September 11th, Richard B. Myers, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the absence of Chairman Shelton, was the temporary head of all U.S. armed forces.
[PROMOTED TO CHAIRMAN, OCTOBER 1, 2001]
[Moni Ovadia, Italian actor] On the 14th of September, after only 3 days of investigations, the FBI announces it knows everything about the hijackers of the flights.