Re: still think 9 11 was a conspiracy?
James S. Robbins:
I was looking directly at it when the aircraft struck. The sight of the 757 diving in at an unrecoverable angle is frozen in my memory, but at the time, I did not immediately comprehend what I was witnessing. There was a silvery flash, an explosion, and a dark, mushroom shaped cloud rose over the building.
Arthur Rosati:
Rosati was in a meeting when the plane hit. "I ran down the hallway and there was smoke everywhere. You could smell the jet fuel, it was unbearable," he said. "I was overcome with smoke, but managed to get a lieutenant colonel out. I went back in to the hallway. The smoke was so dense I couldn't stay. I was ordered out."
John Sayer:
Lt. Commander John Sayer, a Navy reservist, was riding on a bus when he heard a thud. "It sounded like a very loud clap," he said. "At first I thought an airplane had hit in front of the Pentagon, but when I got closer I saw that it had struck the Pentagon."
Rob Schickler:"A plane flew over my house," Rob Schickler, a 2001 graduate and Arlington, Va. resident, said. "It was loud, but not unusual because the [Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport] is by my house, on the other side of the Pentagon. Occasionally planes that miss the landing fly over my house." Schickler lives one mile away from the Pentagon. ... "A few seconds later, there was this sonic boom," he said. "The house shook, the windows were vibrating. Obviously something had happened. ... There was a hole in the building, and you could smell it in the air. It's a beautiful day, but you can smell the burning concrete and burning jet fuel."
Philip Sheuerman:
On the morning of the attack, he was exiting the freeway, turning into the parking lot of the Pentagon, when he noticed a passenger plane — American Airlines Flight 77 — descend at increasing speed with its wheels up. Sheuerman, who had just heard about the attacks on the World Trade Center minutes before, realized that “it was perfectly obvious what (the plane) was going to do.” He saw the plane slam into the Pentagon.
Jack Singleton: "Where the plane came in was really at the construction entrance," says Jack Singleton, president of Singleton Electric Co. Inc., Gaithersburg MD, the Wedge One electrical subcontractor. "The plane's left wing actually came in near the ground and the right wing was tilted up in the air. That right wing went directly over our trailer, so if that wing had not tilted up, it would have hit the trailer. My foreman, Mickey Bell, had just walked out of the trailer and was walking toward the construction entrance."
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I was looking directly at it when the aircraft struck. The sight of the 757 diving in at an unrecoverable angle is frozen in my memory, but at the time, I did not immediately comprehend what I was witnessing. There was a silvery flash, an explosion, and a dark, mushroom shaped cloud rose over the building.
Arthur Rosati:
Rosati was in a meeting when the plane hit. "I ran down the hallway and there was smoke everywhere. You could smell the jet fuel, it was unbearable," he said. "I was overcome with smoke, but managed to get a lieutenant colonel out. I went back in to the hallway. The smoke was so dense I couldn't stay. I was ordered out."
John Sayer:
Lt. Commander John Sayer, a Navy reservist, was riding on a bus when he heard a thud. "It sounded like a very loud clap," he said. "At first I thought an airplane had hit in front of the Pentagon, but when I got closer I saw that it had struck the Pentagon."
Rob Schickler:"A plane flew over my house," Rob Schickler, a 2001 graduate and Arlington, Va. resident, said. "It was loud, but not unusual because the [Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport] is by my house, on the other side of the Pentagon. Occasionally planes that miss the landing fly over my house." Schickler lives one mile away from the Pentagon. ... "A few seconds later, there was this sonic boom," he said. "The house shook, the windows were vibrating. Obviously something had happened. ... There was a hole in the building, and you could smell it in the air. It's a beautiful day, but you can smell the burning concrete and burning jet fuel."
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Noel Sepulveda:The plane dipped its nose and crashed into the southwest side of the Pentagon. "The right engine hit high, the left engine hit low," Sepulveda said. "For a brief moment, you could see the body of the plane sticking out from the side of the building. Then a ball of fire came from behind it."
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[TD]Telephone interview:I was a medic in the military, and shortly after I ran into the building and started pulling people out. I spent the next two weeks pulling out bodies, out of the Pentagon ... Some of the bodies that we pulled out were still strapped into their ... airline seats.[/TD]
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[TD]Telephone interview:I was a medic in the military, and shortly after I ran into the building and started pulling people out. I spent the next two weeks pulling out bodies, out of the Pentagon ... Some of the bodies that we pulled out were still strapped into their ... airline seats.[/TD]
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Philip Sheuerman:
On the morning of the attack, he was exiting the freeway, turning into the parking lot of the Pentagon, when he noticed a passenger plane — American Airlines Flight 77 — descend at increasing speed with its wheels up. Sheuerman, who had just heard about the attacks on the World Trade Center minutes before, realized that “it was perfectly obvious what (the plane) was going to do.” He saw the plane slam into the Pentagon.
Jack Singleton: "Where the plane came in was really at the construction entrance," says Jack Singleton, president of Singleton Electric Co. Inc., Gaithersburg MD, the Wedge One electrical subcontractor. "The plane's left wing actually came in near the ground and the right wing was tilted up in the air. That right wing went directly over our trailer, so if that wing had not tilted up, it would have hit the trailer. My foreman, Mickey Bell, had just walked out of the trailer and was walking toward the construction entrance."
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Skarlet:As I came up along the Pentagon I saw helicopters. (...) it was headed straight for the building. It made no sense. (...) A huge jet. Then it was gone. A massive hole in the side of the Pentagon gushed smoke. The noise was beyond description. The smell seemed to singe the inside of my nose. The earth seemed to stop shaking for a second, but then sirens began and the ground seemed to shake again - this time from the incoming barrage of firetrucks, police cars. military vehicles. (...) I called my boss. I had no memory of how to work my cellphone. I hit redial and his number came up. "Something hit the Pentagon. It must have been a helicopter." I knew that wasn't true, but I heard myself say it. I heard myself believe it, if only for a minute. "Buildings don't eat planes. That plane, it just vanished. There should have been parts on the ground. It should have rained parts on my car. The airplane didn't crash. Where are the parts?" Mark Skipper:[W]e were about 300 feet from the impact site from the collapsed building side. Me, myself and Al Wallace (ph) were standing outside when we saw the plane, not too far from where we are sitting right now, and as soon as we saw it, we started running toward the north side of the building, and that's when we heard the explosion and the incredible crash. Dennis Smith:Dennis Smith, a building inspector and former Marine, was smoking a cigarette in the center courtyard when he heard the roar of engines and looked up in time to see the tail of a plane seconds before it exploded into the building. Steve Snaman:Steve Snaman, manager of the datacom division for Walker Seals, watched in horror from Fort McNair (across the river) as the jetliner came in low at full throttle, banked left and smashed into the wall of the Pentagon. "We saw the plane hit the Pentagon," Snaman said. "My first reaction was to get on the Nextel to reach my men, but I couldn’t get a signal. They were in Wedge One." Dewey Snavely:SGT Dewey Snavely was driving along Arlington's Quaker Lane when the radio blasted the morning's first harrowing reports, then warned that a third plane was heading his way. Minutes later, jet engines rumbled overhead. "The guy I was with looked up and said: 'What the hell is that plane doing?' Then we heard an explosion and the truck rocked back and forth." Levi Stephens:"I was driving away from the Pentagon in the South Pentagon lot when I hear this huge rumble, the ground started shaking … I saw this [plane] come flying over the Navy Annex. It flew over the van and I looked back and I saw this huge explosion, black smoke everywhere." "Steve":I saw the jet just before it crashed. Something big and silver, nose down going aimed like a dart straight into it. The fireball was huge, 10 stories high and our building shook hard.
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Steve Storti:Then he caught the glint of silver out of the corner of his eye. He looked up to see a passenger plane with the trademark stainless-steel fuselage and stripes of American Airlines. It was way off the normal flight pattern for Reagan National, said Storti, who had been living in the Crystal City section of Arlington for about two years. The plane was also alarmingly low, passing behind nearby apartment buildings that were only several stories high. ... Time seemed to slip into slow motion as he watched the plane cross over Route 395, tip its left wing as it passed the Navy annex, veer sharply and then slice into the Pentagon. "I remember thinking that whoever is flying this knows what they're doing," Storti said. "The plane traveled straight as an arrow. It didn't waver and it didn't flip from side to side." Storti watched the plane slide silently into the Pentagon "like a car entering a garage." When it had plunged in as far as its tail fin, there was huge explosion -- a "pumpkin circle" of deep orange fire and oily black smoke that obscured the entire building. Moments later, Storti said, "there was huge bang, then a roar and a rumble."
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[TD]Telephone interview:I heard it bank. I heard the engines rev. I saw it hit. I felt, smelt, and tasted the explosion, and lived with the aftermath for months afterwards. I promise you it was a ****ing plane and not a cruise missile or anything else.[/TD]
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[TD]Telephone interview:I heard it bank. I heard the engines rev. I saw it hit. I felt, smelt, and tasted the explosion, and lived with the aftermath for months afterwards. I promise you it was a ****ing plane and not a cruise missile or anything else.[/TD]
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Jim Sutherland:Jim Sutherland, a mortgage broker, was driving near the Pentagon at 9:40 a.m. when he saw a 737 airplane 50 feet over Interstate 395 heading in a straight line into the side of the Pentagon. The fireball explosion that followed rocked his car. Drivers began pulling over to the side - some taking pictures - not quite believing what they were seeing. Joel Sucherman:"My first thought was he's not going to make it across the river to [Reagan] National Airport. But whoever was flying the plane made no attempt to change direction," Sucherman said. "It was coming in at a high rate of speed, but not at a steep angle--almost like a heat-seeking missile was locked onto its target and staying dead on course." Shari Taylor:"I looked over my shoulder and you can hear the plane coming in, it was just so loud. Normally you don't see planes on that side of the Pentagon, and that was my first thought. I thought, 'What is he doing on that side of the Pentagon, it's so strange.' And then you could just see him descend and just keep descending lower and lower, until he was almost on top of Route 27 that runs alongside the Pentagon. And then he just slammed into the Pentagon, you just knew he was going to hit the Pentagon, I mean there was no way he could not have hit it."Tony Terronez:Pulling away from the Pentagon there was tons of stuff on the ground, big pieces of metal, concrete, everything. We got up to a certain point and there was this huge piece of something - I mean it was big, it looked like a piece of an engine or something - in the road. Carla Thompson:"'I glanced up just at the point where the plane was going into the building,' said Carla Thompson, who works in an Arlington, Va., office building about 1,000 yards from the crash. 'I saw an indentation in the building and then it was just blown-up up—red, everything red,' she said. 'Everybody was just starting to go crazy. I was petrified.'" Phillip Thompson:I could see the roof of the Pentagon and, in the distance, the Washington Monument. I heard the scream of a jet engine and, turning to look, saw my driver’s side window filled with the fuselage of the doomed airliner. It was flying only a couple of hundred feet off the ground — I could see the passenger windows glide by. The plane looked as if it were coming in for a landing — cruising at a shallow angle, wings level, very steady. But, strangely, the landing gear was up and the flaps weren’t down. I knew what was about to happen, but my brain couldn’t quite process the information. Like the other commuters on the road, I was stunned into disbelief. The fireball that erupted upon impact blossomed skyward, and the blast hit us in a wave.
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Henry TicknorHenry Ticknor, intern minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, Virginia, was driving to church that Tuesday morning when American Airlines Flight 77 came in fast and low over his car and struck the Pentagon. "There was a puff of white smoke and then a huge billowing black cloud," he said.
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[TD]Telephone interview:That plane was twice as low, going twice as fast, and as soon as it went below the tree line smoke went up.[/TD]
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[TD]Telephone interview:That plane was twice as low, going twice as fast, and as soon as it went below the tree line smoke went up.[/TD]
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Tim Timmerman:A pilot who saw the impact, Tim Timmerman, said it had been an American Airways 757. "It added power on its way in," he said. "The nose hit, and the wings came forward and it went up in a fireball." Smoke and flames poured out of a large hole punched into the side of the Pentagon.
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