Remembering the Day the Pentagon Was Attacked
A new memorial park honors the memory of the 184 people who died there on 9/11
Pentagon officials were interested in similar questions—but for different reasons. A task force of engineers began a detailed analysis of how the crash had affected the building, to help determine ways to make the Pentagon safer and fortify it against other possible attacks. They had much more to work with than forensic experts in New York, where the buildings were gone. Once the bodies had been removed from the Pentagon, and mountains of debris carted out, teams of engineers analyzed every support column, floor slab, beam, and girder in the crash zone. The FBI, responsible for documenting remains, marked the location of every body or body part on a floor plan of the Pentagon. Autopsy results indicated whether each victim died immediately of causes such as "fragmentation" or "blunt force injuries," or succumbed to smoke inhalation some time after the crash.
Though it wasn't the original purpose of the analysis, the forensic evidence began to tell a dramatic tale of death and survival in the frantic minutes following the crash of Flight 77. "Some areas were survivable, but people died," says Georgine Glatz, chief engineer for the Pentagon Renovation Program. "Yet other areas were not survivable, and people lived." Eleven Defense Intelligence Agency employees, for instance, managed to escape from an office shattered by a blast wave, after struggling for nearly 30 minutes in toxic smoke and temperatures approaching 1,000 degrees. The office should have been a death trap, yet they got out. In another area, a Navy officer who was in the direct path of the airplane somehow survived, even though everyone around him died. "He believes, and so does my Task Force, that near miracles actually happened under the very roof of the Pentagon," Glatz wrote in a report analyzing the damage.
But Dennis Johnson and Stephen Long didn't get the benefit of a miracle. As the weeks wore on, Joyce Johnson received conflicting reports about what had happened to her husband. Some told her he died instantly, from the initial fireball. But that didn't make sense, since most of the others in the conference room got out, and she figured they were just trying to tell her what they thought she wanted to hear. When she pressed, others said it might have been falling debris that killed her husband, or smoke inhalation.
Some of the people in the support group urged her to stop asking what happened and just accept that her husband was gone. But she needed to know: The cause of death might help explain why he hadn't escaped. Early in 2002, Joyce decided to ask for her husband's autopsy report. It arrived, marked with warnings that said "do not open" and "graphic material." She put it away for awhile, unopened, then awoke one morning at 5 and decided it was the right day to look at the report. The cause of death was smoke inhalation. And the smoke was deep in Dennis Johnson's stomach. That meant he had lived for maybe 10 or 20 minutes after the impact, crawling in the wreckage, trying to escape. "It was awful to know," she says.
The answer to one question raised others. If her husband had at least 10 minutes to get out, why didn't he? Joyce's persistence led her to Glatz. The engineer explained everything she could figure out based on the evidence she had. The bodies of Dennis Johnson and Stephen Long had been found side by side in the Pentagon's E ring—the outermost of five concentric hallways that circle the building—close to the spot where Flight 77 hit the building. In an office nearby, 13 others, including Army Lt. Gen. Tim Maude, had been killed by the impact of the crash. It appeared that Johnson and Long had left the conference room with the others, only to get separated in the dark and confusion. Instead of turning left toward the interior of the building—and safety—they had turned right and then opened a door that led to the E ring.
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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