Journal of 9/11 Studies 26 June
2006/Volume 1
The
Flying Elephant: Evidence for Involvement of a Third Jet in the WTC
Attacks
Reynolds
Dixon
Writer and professor of
English, former lecturer and Fellow at Stanford
University.
Currently an editor for RR
Donnelley.
Send correspondence to:
reynoldsdixon@bellsouth.net
No mention of a large,
commercial-class aircraft loitering in the restricted airspace of
lower
Manhattan during the
strikes on the WTC towers will be found in the 9/11 Commission
Report.
It does not appear in any
version of the Official Story. It is largely unknown even in
critical
studies of 9/11. Yet
substantial evidence exists to support its presence coincident with
the
attacks, actually orbiting
in close proximity to the towers for several minutes while the
North
Tower burned and the South
Tower was struck. Photography, video footage and
eyewitness
accounts, including FDNY
transcripts and mainstream media audio, confirm this
fact.
Why is this significant?
Let us consider the commercial air traffic on a typical Tuesday
morning
over New York City. There
are three major airports servicing the city: La Guardia and
JFK
International to the east,
and Newark International across the Hudson to the west.
Normal
holding patterns for these
airports do not intersect the borough of Manhattan at any point.
Lower
Manhattan is, and was on
the morning of 9/11/01, a low-altitude flight-restricted (no fly)
zone
for commercial jets, as
designated by the FAA, for the obvious reason that heavy,
fast-moving
aircraft and tall buildings
pose mutual hazards. Air traffic near the WTC towers was
doubly
restricted, with a minimum
ceiling extending two thousand feet above the towers (3,300
feet)
within a radius of one
nautical mile, excepting only police aviation without special
permit. These
were the VFR (visual flight
rules) parameters in effect on the morning of 9/11. Once WTC1
was
hit, the black smoke plume
expanding southeast from the tower would pose an additional
threat
to
navigation.
No avoidance warning from
Air Traffic Control would be necessary, as no rational
commercial
pilot (no matter how
curious) would risk his aircraft, crew or passengers in a "fly-by"
of the
burning North Tower. But in
this anonymous Camera Planet segment we see a large,
twin-jet
aircraft (757/767-class)
doing just that at approximately 8:58am (assuming the time
signature is
uncorrected by one hour),
five minutes before WTC2 will be struck. Even disregarding
the
indicated time, as WTC1 is
burning and WTC2 is not, the segment is clearly recorded
between
8:46am and 9:03am. Note
this white aircraft with dark engines and vertical stabilizer is
not the
aircraft that will impact
WTC2.
http://terrorize.dk/911/wtc2hit13/911.wtc.yet.another.plane.wmv
This still from the video
isolates the aircraft:
(right
click and "save as" to download flash video)
According to the 9/11
Commission, two F-15s were scrambled from Otis Air Force Base
at
8:52am (39 minutes after
flight controllers lost contact with AA11), and were inbound to NYC
at
supersonic speed,
presumably to intercept suspicious airliners. Presumably commercial
flights in
NY airspace would be
alerted to this danger. Yet this aircraft cruises slowly near the
stricken
North Tower, seemingly
unconcerned its behavior makes it a logical target for these
fighters. Of
course, the absurdly late
scramble and non-arrival of the F-15s is a serious problem for
the
official narrative, which
remains obscured by contradictory accounts from the FAA,
NORAD,
NEADS, the news media and
the pilots themselves. (The Commission has these fighters
finally
arriving for Combat Air
Patrol over NYC at 9:25am, after being vectored into a holding
pattern
off Long
Island.)
At least one photograph
captures this aircraft (or one with a similar profile) in the
interval
between the tower strikes,
flying another pass almost directly above WTC2 at an altitude
of
approximately 2,000 feet,
judging by its size and position relative to the smoke plume, to
which
it is recklessly
close:
At 9:03am, "UA175"
approaches from the south at an improbably high speed and impacts
the
South Tower. CNN aired this
"amateur video" of the event, which captures (without notice
by
Aaron Brown or Paula Zahn)
what is evidently the same jet seen in the Camera Planet
segment,
making a similar northwest
pass (but farther west, approximately over Battery Park) as the
South
Tower hit
occurs.
www.areadownload.com/video/wtc/WTC%20-%20Amateur%20Video%2004.mpg
This still from the video
isolates the aircraft as "UA175" rips through the South
Tower:
At 9:04am, Diane Sawyer of
ABC News made remarks on-air about the "circling" jet she and
her
colleagues "all saw" prior
to the second strike. She admits she "just assumed" it was the
same
one that struck the South
Tower.
www.terrorize.dk/911/comments/911.wtc.plane.circling.around.wmv
Of interest with respect to
this "mystery jet" is the phenomenon, acknowledged but
unexplained
by the Commission, of the
"phantom Flight 11". At 9:21am, after both towers had been hit,
and
long after "AA11" had
struck the North Tower, Boston flight control, relaying information
from
FAA headquarters, informed
NEADS that "AA11" was still in the air and heading south,
perhaps
to Washington, DC. Were
they tracking this "third aircraft"?
www.terrorize.dk/911/flight11/911.wtc.the.real.flight.11.ng.wmv
Notable in this context are
reports by FDNY personnel that they received a warning about a
third
aircraft. Deputy Chief
Peter Hayden, in an interview with Firehouse Magazine in April
2002,
explained "We had a report
from OEM that there was possibility of a third plane coming
in."
Even more intriguing, in
the Naudets' documentary 9/11,a firefighter is filmed explaining
what
caused the collapse of the
South Tower: "The FBI thinks it was a third
plane."
Much research has focused
on the details and effects of various military exercises
apparently
underway on 9/11,
especially "live-fly" NORAD drills designed to mimic multiple
terrorist
aircraft attacks on
high-profile US targets. One NORAD drill, "Vigilant Guardian", is
admitted
by the Commission to have
been in progress but is dismissed in a footnote as being unrelated
to
the hijacking scenario and
as posing no impediment to defensive response, despite the
welldocumented
confusion among NORAD
personnel as to whether the attacks were "real world
or
exercise", the presence of
artificial radar "injects" on their screens, and the recognition of
as
many as eleven simultaneous
potential hijackings.
Was
the "third jet" an actor in such an exercise? Was it meant to
confuse defensive
response? Was it
monitoring (or controlling) the attacks? Was it a back-up in the
event of a
miss
on the towers? Was it one of these?
www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=90
If
it is a civil aircraft, records of its take-off and landing must
exist. A FOIA request to the
FAA
should be filed. If it is military, it is automatically suspect.
Any proper investigation of
9/11
must account for this aircraft.
Grateful acknowledgment is
made to Brian P. Duncan and Robert E. Moore, Esq. for
their
research in support of this
study.
original
PDF
bill.giltner.googlepages.com/JetDixon4.pdf
Links...
New Plane video WTC -
9-11Review
helicopters around the WTC on sept
11
911truth.wetpaint.com Discussion of 2nd hit explosion
Here's
an interview with an NYPD helicopter pilot who saw the second plane
make its attack run:
www.911closeup.com/nico/
portland
imc - 9/11: Only live feed of "2nd hit" done with military
cam
Videos of the WTC
Crashes
wtc attack plane
about to hit the tower
Journal of 911
studies
MEDIA DOWNLOADS:
Flash
video of plane in the area (mentioned above)
This audio talks about another plane in the area after the second
hit
(audio)
There was a plane flying around, it dissappeared, then there was an
explosion
