Remembering the Day the Pentagon Was Attacked
A new memorial park honors the memory of the 184 people who died there on 9/11
Even now, seven years on, most Americans can recall where they were when they first heard about the 9/11 attacks. But few carry the details of that horrible moment as clearly as the families of those lost in the terrorist maelstrom.
For Joyce Johnson, it was at her daughter's high school in Burke, Va. Johnson was a volunteer in the career center, where a TV came on, repeatedly showing a plane flying into the World Trade Center. Then, the Pentagon flashed on the screen. Black smoke was spewing out. Her husband worked there. Right there. In that part of the building. The part on fire.
Johnson found her 16-year-old daughter, Cassandra. They hugged. She went home. Cassandra stayed, to be with other friends whose parents worked at the Pentagon. At home, there were messages on the voice mail. But none from Joyce's husband, Dennis. After she had spent an agonizing day, her husband's carpool partner arrived at the house and came to the door. "Is Dennis here?" he asked.
"No," she answered. Tears welled in the man's eyes. She knew.
On Sept. 11, 2008, America's first national 9/11 memorial will open on the southwestern lawn of the Pentagon, along the same path that American Airlines Flight 77 flew in its final second before slamming into the Pentagon at 530 miles per hour. Atop a bed of crushed stone, there's a sleek bench, resembling a futuristic airplane wing, that honors Army Lt. Col. Dennis M. Johnson. Water softly bubbles into a reflecting pool beneath. Surrounding Johnson's bench are 183 others, representing 59 passengers and crew members aboard Flight 77, and 124 others who were working in the Pentagon.
The benches are perfectly aligned with each other, yet clustered by age, the military precision disrupted by the randomness that now binds the victims together. Scattered maples, saplings now, will one day shade the park—but not so deeply that they'll block the Pentagon's security cameras. And unlike the imposing Pentagon itself, the memorial is so subtle that from the tangle of highways that pass nearby, it's easy to miss.
But when it fills with people on September 11, the Pentagon memorial will be the first formal gathering place for those who lost friends and family on 9/11. In lower Manhattan, where 2,751 died, ground zero is a huge, overbudget construction zone; the memorial there won't even be finished by the 10th anniversary of the attacks. A memorial planned for Shanksville, Pa., where United Flight 93 crashed, killing 40, has been marred by design disputes. The Pentagon memorial, by contrast, will open on schedule, attended by virtually no controversy.
For the family members, however, there has been plenty of turmoil. And anybody who sits on Dennis Johnson's bench, finding serenity in the gentle burble of water from beneath, would be fooled. Because Johnson and other Pentagon victims left behind mysteries that some of their family members still struggle to understand.
There was an outpouring of sympathy for the victims and their families in the fall of 2001, and Joyce Johnson got her share. The Johnsons and their two daughters, Cassie and Dawn, 20, had been in a new home for just six weeks, yet neighbors lined the street with candles in Dennis's honor. People Joyce barely knew told her they had been able to see the love between her and her husband, even in a short window of time.
Need to know. After her husband had been recovered and buried at Arlington National Cemetery, Joyce joined a support group along with other 9/11 spouses. Most wanted to believe that their loved one had died instantly and painlessly when Flight 77 tore through the Pentagon. There certainly was good reason to believe that: The force of the crash was so powerful that it obliterated 400,000 square feet of office space. But information began to trickle out revealing that some of the victims had survived the initial impact, only to die in the fiery smoke 10 or 20 minutes later. That raised troubling questions. Could those people have been saved? Did some of them try to go into the inferno to rescue others? Were there unacknowledged heroes among the victims?
Dennis Johnson, it turned out, had been in a conference room in the Army's personnel directorate on the second floor of the five-story structure, along with 10 others, when the plane sliced through the building one floor below them. Nine of the people in the meeting crawled to safety, through dense smoke and smashed furniture. But Johnson and another Army officer, Maj. Stephen Long, got trapped and died. "I kept wondering, why didn't my husband make it out?" Joyce says.
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Reader Comments
Where were you on 9/11/01?
Unlike most Americans I had just gotten back to my apartment at King Fahd hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. As usual I turned on CNN to watch the news nothing much going on I napped only to awaken just after the first plane had hit thinking I was dreaming I watched in disbelief has the second plane hit. I called one of my coworkers whose parents lived near the center, but even before we finished talking the buildings started to collapse! Indelibly etched in my mind forever was the faces caught on camera's has they tried to outrace the collapsing buildings. Many of the Americans left Saudi after finding out that so many of the perps were Saudi, after hearing the blame game start in the papers and the ineffectual attempts to supposedly correct what was obviously a deep rooted problem which had been around for decades. Anyone who thinks the Saudi's are our friends should have heard them laughing behind closed doors has many of the dayshift Americans did, or heard them cursing an disparaging Bush when we invaded Afghanistan and again when we invaded Iraq, funny how short memories are since if it hadn't been for us Saudi Arabia would now be part of the Iraqi republic. To this day most of the changes promised by the goverment have never been instituted!
"...The man who killed Osama bin Ladin" -Bhutto, former head of Pakistan
Why do 120+ Senior Military, Intelligence Service, Law Enforcement and Gov’t Officials, 310+ Engineers & Architects, 70+ Pilots & Aviation Professionals and 200+ Professors all question the offical story of 9/11?
On September 10th, 2001 Donald Rumsfeld announced that the Pentagon had 2.3 trillion dollars of undocumented adjusts, meaning the money is missing.
The accountants responsible for tracking down the missing money happened to be in the section of the Pentagon that was destroyed, thus killing them along with their investigation.
***WTC 7
Symmetrical collapse would require all 58 perimeter columns and 25 core columns to be cut at precisely the same time.
Professionals require computer-controlled detonators to achieve this precision.
Fire and Police personnel were warned to get people back because the building was about to collapse or “blow up”, as one police officer can be heard saying to a CNN reporter. What officials made this determination, and how?
Building 7, The Solomon Brothers Building, contained numerous government offices, including the CIA, FBI, FEMA, and some offices of the SEC commission.
Many files relating to the Enron and MCI WorldCom nvestigations were destroyed in the collapse.
***PHYSICS
If Hani Hanjour was incompetent at flying a single engine prop-plane, then how are we to believe he maneuvered a commercial airliner - making a 270° turn at 400 mph all while dropping 7,000 feet in two minutes - and hitting the Pentagon inches above the lawn?
Construction Steel has an extremely high melting point of 2800°F and NIST reported that the fires only got to a max temp of 1800°F for 15 minutes. Why did firefighters describe a “foundry” of molten steel at Ground Zero?
Pakistani ISI Agent, Saeed Sheik, wired $100,000 on September 10th to Mohammed Atta at the instruction of Mahmoud Ahmad, the head of the ISI.
Interestingly enough Mahmoud Ahmad was also in Washington meeting with the future head of the CIA, George Tenet on the morning of 9/11. This was not investigated by the 9/11 Commission.
Over 12 different military exercises were happening on that fateful day. Some involved simulations of airliners crashing into WTC and other targets.
6 weeks before 9/11/01 Larry Silverstein purchased the WTC complex including an insurance policy that specifies coverage against a terrorist attack.
The company in charge of security at the WTC was called Stratesec, which includes Marvin Bush, the president’s brother, as a principal owner. It was also involved in providing security for United Airlines and Dulles Airport (where flight
77 took off from).
See "loose change" "terror storm" "fabled enemies"
A Spreading Stain on America!!!
The events of 9/11 were appalling yet the events since 9/11 have been leveling for the American psyche and spirit. First we attacked Afghanistan soundly defeating all opposition, failing to locate Bin Laden then abandoning the Afghanistan effort to focus upon Iraq. After destoying Iraq, parading the bodies of Saddam Hussien's sons in front of the world, humiliating our military in Abu Ghraib, ensuring the execution of Saddam, murdering the national treasury with war funding demands and completely destroying our financial system with a combination of inflation and profit taking by a greedy administration we have absolutely nothing to show for ourselves except a grandstanding mission accomplished statement, a world record national debt and a grinning idiot continuing to threaten a perplexed world. I fear we haven't enough bleach with which to attack this spreading stain upon America!!!
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