Pentagon 9/11: witness accounts

September 11, 2001

9:32 a.m. — Reports of “massive damage to the west side of the building . . . Multiple standard-issue, battery-operated wall clocks . . . stopped between 9:31 and 9:32-1/2”. (Barbara Honegger, "The Pentagon Attack Papers," physics911.net, September 6, 2006)

9:xx — Captain Defina arrives at Pentagon "two to three minutes" after seeing a plume of smoke, and his FMFD Engine 331 "knocked down the bulk of the fire in the first seven minutes after their arrival". (Stephen Murphy, National Fire Protection Association Journal, November 1, 2001)

9:37:46 — Flight 77 traveling at 530 mph strikes the Pentagon (The 9/11 Commission Report, p10)

Morning — “From my close up inspection there's no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon. . . . . The only pieces left that you can see are small enough that you could pick up in your hand. There are no large tail sections, wing sections, fuselage - nothing like that anywhere around which would indicate that the entire plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon. . . . It wasn't till about 45 minutes later . . . that all of the floors collapsed.” (CNN Senior Correspondent Jamie McIntyre)

Morning — Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who witnessed "an unforgettable fireball, 20 to 30 feet in diameter", notes “a strange absence of airliner debris, . . . This visible evidence or lack thereof may also have been apparent to the secretary of defense, who in an unfortunate slip of the tongue referred to the aircraft that slammed into the Pentagon as a 'missile'." (9/11 and American Empire)

"Gen. Larry Arnold, revealed that he ordered one of his jets to fly down low over the Pentagon shortly after the attack that morning, and that his pilot reported back that there was no evidence that a plane had hit the building." (Barbara Honegger, "The Pentagon Attack Papers," physics911.net, September 6, 2006)

September 12, 2001

10:16 a.m. — Arlington County Fire Chief Ed Plaugher, at briefing with Assistant Secretary Victoria Clarke, when asked: "Is there anything left of the aircraft at all?" said: "there are some small pieces of aircraft ... there's no fuselage sections and that sort of thing." . . . Reporters on the scene were "handcuffed and dragged away". (DOD Transcript)

September 15, 2001

11:00 a.m. — Question during presentation by Lee Evey, Pentagon Renovation Manager: “One thing that's confusing – if it came in the way you described, at an angle, why then are not the wings outside? I mean, the wings would have shorn off. The tail would have shorn off. And yet there's apparently no evidence of the aircraft outside the E ring.” (DOD Transcript)

Later

“At the Pentagon, the plaintiff was at her desk, with her baby, in her office on the first floor, when large explosions occurred, walls crumbled and the ceiling fell in. Although her desk is just some forty feet from the supposed impact point, and she went out through the blown-open front of the building afterwards, she never saw any sign that an airliner crashed through.” (UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK by APRIL GALLOP, for Herself and as Mother and Next Friend of ELISHA GALLOP, a Minor)

-- Compiled by Enver Masud