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  Cover Story: Panoply of the Absurd

Cover Story Panoply of the Absurd

Part 6

The Boeing disintegrated completely after the impact. As if the tail of the plane had opened on impact and forced its innermost parts outward, body parts of the terrorists, who were presumably in the cockpit, were found near the façade of the outer ring of the Pentagon. In contrast, remains of the passengers were still found deep in the interior of the building.

Scientists estimate that about 2.2 tons of fuel exploded in a fireball outside the building at the time of impact. The remaining 14 tons of fuel, together with the combined wreckage, shot into the building. For fractions of a second before the fuel exploded, the mixture of aircraft parts and fuel produced a high-speed "avalanche of sludge." Temperatures in excess of 1600 degrees Fahrenheit removed any remaining strength from the steel beams, which had been already been stripped of concrete. Twenty minutes after the crash, the damaged section of the building collapsed over the impact crater.

The only witness who supports the WDR journalists' Pentagon scenario is a man who, in the film, is simply introduced as John Judge.

What viewers are not told is that Judge is a sort of fixture on the American conspiracy theory scene. In the relevant circles, he is considered an expert in "collective and individual thought control." He links the mass suicide of the Peoples Temple cult in Guyana to the assassination of Martin Luther King, and he believes that both events were the work of shadowy CIA and military intelligence agents. Naturally, he's also interested in the Kennedy assassination, and claims to have discovered connections that point to those who were responsible for the murder of Black Muslim leader Malcolm X.

Coincidentally, this witness to an alleged bombing also happens to know the Pentagon from his days "as a young child." He remembers quite clearly the day when, at ten years of age, he and his parents, who were civilian employees at the Pentagon, were eating a meal in the building's courtyard. He says: "I sat down on a silver box, and my father told me to get down because I was sitting on a missile launcher."

Wisnewski and Brunner are pleased to summarize that, in Judge's opinion, the claim that "it was impossible to detect and ward off this danger quickly enough is completely implausible."

The same claim is made by the man on whose work Wisnewski bases his "Pentagate" theory in the book: Thierry Meyssan. One of the circumstances Meyssan uses to justify his theory that some people could have known something about the attacks in advance is the fact that the internet address "www.wtc2001.com" had already been registered before September 11th.

That's true. However, it had absolutely nothing to do with the World Trade Center. The acronym "wtc" stood for "World Track Championships," which are the world championships in bicycle track racing. A click of a mouse would have quickly burst this bubble.

Another example is the use of statements made by TV journalist Mike Walter, who witnessed the attack on the US Department of Defense as he was driving to work. Meyssan used Walter's statement to support his theory that the Pentagon was destroyed with missiles or remotely guided aircraft.

Walter is still furious about this manipulation. He saw the aircraft fly toward the building and accelerate in a "soft curve." Then, says Walter, "it went into a dive and hit a light pole. Shortly after that, it slammed into the Pentagon. The wings collapsed, I heard the explosion, and then I saw the fireball. The guy who was flying it knew what he was doing. It behaved like a cruise missile."

That's what Walter said. But Meyssan only quoted the last sentence.

The fact that there were many witnesses who saw the American Airlines jet crash into the Defense Department presented a problem for Wisnewski, and this is how he solved it: "One cannot truly believe these witnesses. Perhaps some of them were lying for some reason, but others could actually have seen something that reminded them of a passenger jet."

He fails to mention Penny Elgas, a witness to the crash. She said that as she watched from her car, "the tail of the plane slid into the Pentagon, as if a big door had been opened there."

It was only hours later, once she had returned home and the shock of the event had subsided, that she discovered that a piece of the plane's wreckage had flown through the sunroof and into her car - a place where there is little room for smoky theories.

DOMINIK CZIESCHE, JÜRGEN DAHLKAMP, ULRICH FICHTNER, ULRICH JAEGER, GUNTHER LATSCH, GISELA LESKE, MAX F. RUPPERT

Translated by Christopher Sultan

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