FBI releases 25 previously unseen photos from 9/11 attack at Pentagon | Hacker News Reader

FBI releases 25 previously unseen photos from 9/11 attack at Pentagon

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25 pointskyleblarson83 comments

Its been 16 years, why can't they release everything. I am sure they have video of the plane hitting from multiple angles.

Same reason a casino won't tell you if they caught the person picking your pocket on camera. You don't want to release where you have your secret security cameras when it will do nothing to help solve the crime.

All releasing the video would do would be attempt to quell the doubts of conspiracy theorists who would immediately claim it was a jet dressed up like a plane or CGI anyhow since they don't want the truth since the truth is generally mundane.

>Same reason a casino won't tell you if they caught the person picking your pocket on camera. You don't want to release where you have your secret security cameras when it will do nothing to help solve the crime.

I get it, but is it really a national security secret that the pentagon is surrounded by cameras.

Not that it is but where they are and yes.

Too many then-important people still in power?

No video would convince the conspiracy theorists. There would just be a fresh round of claims it was Photoshopped or filmed on a set or something.

Now that doesn't adequately explain why they don't go ahead and release it anyways, but it's still worth noting, imo.

Remember that everybody wasn't carrying around video cameras 24/7 the way they are today.

Security cameras don't tend to be aimed at the sky, and often use a low framerate, especially a decade and a half ago. The one "video" we do have was recorded at about one frame per second, and so is kind of lacking in detail.

What other cameras do you expect to have recorded video?

>Security cameras don't tend to be aimed at the sky

True, but this is the HQ of the most expensive, most technologically advanced military ever to exist.

>What other cameras do you expect to have recorded video?

Cameras every couple feet along the exterior of the pentagon. Cameras on every light pole in the lawn. Cameras on the fences. On buildings facing the pentagon. ...

There may even be a live satellite video of the event. Or surveillance planes monitoring the area.

What would be the purpose of putting up so many cameras? Why would Congress vote to spend so much money on it? The place has guards with eyes, why would you need a ton of cameras too?

In any case, you can get pretty close to the place without any special permission. Various public roads go right past it, and there's a busy Metro station and bus terminal right outside the front door. I've been past there a lot and don't recall ever seeing this hypothetical mass of cameras on it.

The idea that the Pentagon is super-important and therefore must have had a ton of high-quality cameras surrounding it is common, but appears to be based on no real-world evidence. If they were real, surely somebody would have posted a diagram and said, "this security camera, circled in red, should have captured video of AA77."

> There may even be a live satellite video of the event. Or surveillance planes monitoring the area.

This is absurd speculation. The US doesn't have live satellite coverage of the entire planet today, and certainly didn't in 2001. They wouldn't waste scarce resources surveilling the middle of a large American city. As for surveillance planes, people notice those when they're around, and as far as I know nobody has ever said they saw one on the morning of 9/11.

Nobody anticipated this kind of attack. You will find massive surveillance systems geared toward detecting attacks they did expect. There are gigantic radar installations and fleets of satellites whose sole purpose is to detect incoming nuclear missiles, for example. But nobody thought of watching for a rogue airliner.

Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5UyynjxAyw

I didn't know this was a thing, people are denying an airplane hit the pentagon?? Wasn't there a video?

~No video has been released to the public.~

edit: Apologies, I was incorrect.

That's demonstrably false. There's video, although a 600mph plane doesn't show up for long in a security camera angle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaPoD_7TmNc

There's no video. It's strange how different things were for photos and videos a mere 15.5 years ago. If it happened today, you'd have sixteen bazillion videos from everybody's phones.

There are, however, a ton of witnesses. I think a lot of deniers don't really grasp the geography and think the Pentagon is some distant, isolated military installation or something. In reality, it's smack in the middle of the sixth largest metro area in the country, and AA77 flew right over a busy highway on its way to the Pentagon, so low that it knocked over light poles and nearly impaled a hapless taxi driver who was almost in the wrong place at the wrong time.

WTC FOIA videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/WTCFOIAVideos/videos

p.s.

this set seems to be quite comprehensive: https://www.youtube.com/user/relapsed1/videos

Sorry, what's the relevance of that link to my comment?

Edit: I see your edit, still don't get it. Did you maybe miss the fact that we're only talking about AA77 and the Pentagon here?

That subset of interest should be in there, somewhere.

It's not, because no such video exists. All that was captured were a couple of frames from crappy security camera.

If I'm wrong, I'd love to see the video in question.

The last set has all sorts of FOIA obtained photographs, documents, audio, etc., presented in video format, not just videos. As per the crappy video frames, that is my understanding as well.

black box?

where's the plane?

You're honestly expecting an aluminum can the be intact after it smashes into a reenforced building at a few hundred miles per hour?

The plane is there, this group of pictures includes pictures of it. There just isn't much left.

It was strewn about in tiny pieces after it hit the ground at 600MPH.

Thoroughly mixed with the debris.

It still doesn't look like a plane crashed there

Sure it does.

Here's what the Concorde crash site looked like: http://www.concordesst.com/accident/englishreport/images/vue...

Germanwings 9525: http://i2.cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150324150543-25b-pl...

MH370: https://static.pexels.com/photos/6644/sea-water-ocean-waves....

> MH370

Well played.

I will probably go to hell for this, but regarding the MH370 photo: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

In all seriousness now, I believe it is a terrible, horrible thing to have lost a loved one on that flight and be in agony of what happened to them and spend months/years without an answer.. no one should have to endure this :(

Imagine if every investigation simply ended with what it "looked" like.

"Well the victim was known to be connected to organized crime, and was going to testify tomorrow, but it looks like he simply fell down the stairs. Oh well."

I don't know what happened and I can only make conclusions based on the data I have access to.

Except you're ignoring a whole big chunk of data in the form of expert opinion and knowledge.

So far I haven't seen a single "expert opinion" that explains why the wings of the plane disappeared leaving no trace.

https://truthandshadows.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/pentagon...

You mean the thin bags of jet fuel attached to the side of the plane? The things that would almost certainly have folded back slighly before disintegrating?

You admit elsewhere to not being an expert so your expectations are built not on knowledge of planes but on your imagination.

Also have you actually looked at expert opinion on the crash for your answers or have you limited yourself to silly graphics like you added?

> The things that would almost certainly have folded back slighly before disintegrating?

Nothing disintegrates my friend, that's science fiction.

> have you limited yourself to silly graphics like you added?

It seems you missed the actual photography.

If you think nothing breaks into small pieces then I can understand why you're so confused.

What actual photography? Someone overlaid an image of a jet on the building and drew lines where a 5 year old would expect the wings to impact. Luckily(?) we don't live in the looney tunes universe do when a soft objecy hits a brick wall it doesn't leave an exact shape in the wall.

The wings are there, they just don't look much like wings anymore.

> Nothing disintegrates my friend, that's science fiction.

Here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZjhxuhTmGk

Have you considered you don't have all the data there is not the relevant expertise to interpret it? Your ignorance does not reality make.

Most high speed airplane crashes don't leave any intact wings behind, much less anything else.

I'd never looked into it before now, but i just went searching for footage of this...frustrating there is none. I don't understand why this cannot be cleared up and instead we're left with people doubting the facts. It makes me doubt the 'facts', i want to believe we're not being lied to.

It's been pretty well cleared up save for the folks who won't accept a version of events that differs from their own personal beliefs.

Ultimately what's more likely? A handful of terrorists hijacked planes and crashed them into buildings or a vast government conspiracy, likely years in the making and involving tens of thousands of people made it look like the former while still managing to avoid a single leak after 16 years.

Apparently our government can't do anything except pull off massive conspiracies.

And please, do not confuse me with one of those people. I just feel more people could be brought around to the logical side of the argument here with a simple 30 second video release, instead we're left without the most obvious and simple version of the evidence that would clear this up - why?! It's so frustrating...

Why? Because there is no video. Easy answer. We got a couple of frames of footage from crappy security cameras, and that's it. In an age before ubiquitous camera phones, what more would you expect? The fact that there's video of the first plane hitting the WTC is pure luck.

Considering the current Administration can't even keep simply talking to a foreign gov't quiet, imagine how much info would be busting at the seams if the gov't had masterminded an attack against their country.

Seriously, a down-vote for this?!

I feel like there must be hours of video of this event, this is the Pentagon! Yet none is released, why? It annoys me because it could so easily be cleared up, yet instead people are left to become skeptics and doubt the powers that be.

We had hours of footage of two planes hitting the twin towers, and we still have fucking idiots doubting that.

We have hours and hours of footage of the moon missions and people still doubt that.

Pick any conspiracy theory: more information does nothing to stop the conspiracy theory.

Yeah fair point, and i thought this while writing it. I just feel like by doing nothing we're not even allowing for the opportunity of people taking it seriously.

>i just went searching for footage of this...frustrating there is none

Considering it was pre-iPhone and the FBI confiscated all of the security footage around that area, not terribly shocking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Pentagon_Security_Camera_...

I saw this previously, which again adds to my frustration! It really just fuels the skeptics argument. Why can we not provide a better shot, why can we not clear this up!?

How many building security cameras do you typically see pointed at the sky?

In 2001 there weren't high-resolution cameras pointed everywhere 24/7 like there are today. Nobody had a camera in their phone, the police didn't have red-light cameras at every intersection, we weren't all terrified of terrorists and school-shooters, and the only place you did expect to be filmed was at a 7-11 convenience store.

EDIT: One thing to ponder is that there are only a couple of videos of the first plane hitting the WTC that morning even though there were millions of witnesses. This is because back then things only got filmed when people were expecting things to happen.

Based on your extensive experience studying plane-building collisions?

Obviously I'm not an expert...

But if there was a fire strong enough to vanish 90% of the fuselage, the passengers, and other stuff, then why is it we can still see pentagon furniture, and plastic stuff such as computer monitors?

http://pop.h-cdn.co/assets/15/37/980x490/landscape-144199756...

Because vanishing 90% of the furniture and computer monitors in a large office building leaves 10% of it to show up in photos, especially on the periphery of the fire?

And what about the wings of the plane?

Obviously those didn't go through the building.

https://truthandshadows.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/pentagon...

Christ, ten seconds on Google for "pentagon wings 9/11" would've done the trick. The wings of a plane are basically soda cans filled with fuel.

> When American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon's exterior wall, Ring E, it created a hole approximately 75 ft. wide, according to the ASCE Pentagon Building Performance Report. The exterior facade collapsed about 20 minutes after impact, but ASCE based its measurements of the original hole on the number of first-floor support columns that were destroyed or damaged. Computer simulations confirmed the findings.

> Why wasn't the hole as wide as a 757's 124-ft.-10-in. wingspan? A crashing jet doesn't punch a cartoon-like outline of itself into a reinforced concrete building, says ASCE team member Mete Sozen, a professor of structural engineering at Purdue University. In this case, one wing hit the ground; the other was sheared off by the force of the impact with the Pentagon's load-bearing columns, explains Sozen, who specializes in the behavior of concrete buildings. What was left of the plane flowed into the structure in a state closer to a liquid than a solid mass. "If you expected the entire wing to cut into the building," Sozen tells PM, "it didn't happen."

Anything else trivially answerable you're interested in?

Nice try. Here is what a crashed plane looks like.

http://clickhowto.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/plane-crash...

http://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/Images/2016/11/30/6860e5e92...

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/8f/5a/cc/8f5acc115...

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01210/denver-pla...

See? There's a lot of fuselage still there.

The first one you link to was a plane that skidded in on landing. Video of the crash is readily available, and makes it clear that comparing it to a deliberate, full-speed crash into a reinforced building is maliciously stupid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTXDalv7kNQ

The fourth you link to appears to be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Airlines_Flight_14..., which didn't even get into the air in that crash - it just skidded off the runway.

The other two photos I can't immediately identify, but strongly suspect are similar cases.

I've linked elsewhere in the comments better examples.

Here's what happens when a Concorde hits a hotel: http://www.concordesst.com/accident/englishreport/images/vue...

And here's what happens when someone suicidal points a plane into the ground: http://i2.cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/150324150543-25b-pl...

As it has become clear your statement "I don't know what happened and I can only make conclusions based on the data I have access to" is a lie, I'm done here.

All that jet fuel must have just melted the entire plane except a couple pieces, and luckily the serial number survived. Strange.

I suspect the serial number is attached to multiple locations of the airplane.

Part numbers of every piece of a plane are required to be able to be traced back.

I'm sure it was, I just found it strange there are no pictures of larger parts of the plane like the engines or wings or rest of the fuselage but we can identify which plane it was. Obviously others didn't like that comment.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions

lmao. This was a good read, "JAQing off" is now permanently added to my arsenal.

There are pictures of the engines.

Oh no, I replied to a conspiracy theorist. I should go to bed.

Case closed, pictures of the engines exists. You should go to bed, please.

Exactly, they might as well just put the whole damn plane stuck right there clearly visible--it wouldn't change a thing. It all could have been a real terrorist attack--all that matters is our disproportionate response ("shock and awe") on an unrelated country to know America and the powers that be have done some horrible egregious things and don't represent the thinking of the people had they not been brainwashed by propaganda. Had the mainstream media been toting a forgive and forget peace party line rather than war mongering propaganda, nobody would want war.

There have always been too many questions about the whole thing. There have always been too many questions about every single one of these things:

- No weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? - We can't see Bin Laden's Body? - No evidence that Russia hacked the DNC and a report released by the DNI solely talking about motives displayed on social media? -A year after Bush Junior is in the presidency we are back in Iraq where his father left off?

To me it's obvious something is up. You can get stuck on various discrepancies in evidence or not. It very well could have been a terrorist attack--that the powers that be were waiting on to counter-punch exactly as they had planned. It doesn't matter. Who actually wants us in the middle east and if we all as citizens wanted to get out, how easy would that actually be, or would the military industrial complex make that something that takes forever to happen. Wasn't Obama meant to have gotten us outa there. It hardly seems so. It seems like we're just using new more focused technology like drones to do the same with less actual boots on the ground.

If you're telling me, you think we belong over there, then you watch too much news by the mainstream media instilling fear in you. How many journalists on CNN are actually wandering around over there compared to how many report it? Exactly, it's a game of telephone with someone triggering the overall direction of their message, based on their own "biases." Perhaps that at their yearly Bilderberg group meetup they agreed to manipulate the public in order to more easily execute their plans of making the Middle East willing client states.

Not strange at all if you know anything about how systems like this are designed, built, tested, QA'd, shipped, monitored, & supported in the field.

I suppose it could look strange to a naive viewer, but their rational response would be "Gee, I really don't know much about this, where can I learn?", not "Gee, I bet something shady is going on!".

One of the reason airliners are so safe is that every single part is tracked for its entire lifetime. There are a metric shitload (technical term) of serial numbers on an airliner identifying all the various parts. Once you have the serial number of a part, it's trivial to link that back to the airplane it was in, since it's all tracked.

For comparison, consider that debris from MH370 was positively linked to the airliner despite the fact that the plane disappeared almost without a trace and only a couple of pieces have washed up on shore: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/04/world/asia/malaysia-airli...

There will be many, many parts with individual serial numbers in an average airliner.

The ONE piece of metal with the serial number on it, and the ONE piece of metal that clearly has part of an American Airlines logo on it (and the partially ruined american flag stuck in the debris) all remind me of that Dave Chapelle sketch where the cops "sprinkle crack" on the suspect they framed.

The one outlier is the Hitachi tractor rather than a John Deere one. Merica, land of false flags and wrongful world domination!

That isn't the one piece of metal left, there are literally other photos of parts in the collection. That is just one piece of metal that they happened to post a photograph of.

Previous aircraft mechanic here.

Everything on a plane has a serial number except for the most basic commodity parts. For all I know, that could be the toilet paper holder.

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