The Pentagon Motherload Shot

That's what I call this officially released Department of Defense high-resolution aerial image taken by Tech Sgt. Cedric H Rudsell, of the United States Air Force, on September 14, 2001. It can be found here, with the high-resolution here.

The military caption writers describe it thusly:

An aerial view, from the southeast, showing the level of the destruction at the Pentagon caused by a terrorist attack. The morning of September 11th, in an attempt to frighten the American people, five members of Al-Qaeda, a terrorist group of fundamentalist Muslims, hijacked American Airlines Flight 77, then deliberately impacted the Pentagon killing all 64 passengers onboard and 125 people on the ground. The impact destroyed or damaged four of the five rings in that section of the building. Firefighters fought the fire through the night. The Pentagon was the third target by four hijacked aircraft, the twin towers of the World Trade Center (WTC) were the other targets, and one unknown when the passengers brought the aircraft down in a Pennsylvania field. (Released to Public)

Which is pretty standard issue, although they left off the word "suicidal," and not meaning to quibble, but it was three rings out of five, not four, and it was shot from the southwest, not the southeast.

But in such an enormous file size, and with such sharp focus, it provides the sort of information found lacking in almost every other government-sourced image taken after the attack. It's less about building damage and more about the human response to it, which coming approximately 72 hours after touchdown, could be described as at its full-flower. It is a "Where's Waldo" of military and law enforcement activity, and I expect it is filled with much more we leave as yet to be decoded.

But I spotted a very important signal it intends to send--maybe even the most important message sent out to those in-the-know, if that isn't both too dramatic and obscure a statement to make. Gathered in a clump are more than a score of white-Tyvec-suited responders. We are told at various points these men are from The Old Guard, a prestige regiment that normally works across the street in Arlington cemetery, doing the honors at funerals--like 21-gun salutes and riderless-horse drawn caissons. Even though these men had lots of extra work cut out for them, given the losses of 9-11, they were instead given the singular and highly privileged duty of guarding the destruction zone from all but who the FBI invited in, and they reportedly helped to do the ugly job of body and evidence recovery.

But of course, almost anybody could be dressed inside these Hazmat getups, with faces obscured by respirators. They appear to be worn almost interchangeably by anybody.

In a blow-up of a center section, just to the left of a prominently featured "Springfield" boom crane, meant to honor, no doubt, one of the key construction-company co-conspirators to the plot, and also just to the left of the metal debris piled high left by bulldozer, which threatens to block, or hide perhaps, the main access door to the damaged area, the men in white can be seen as intensely focused on some task, and it isn't hard to recognize such focus, swimming as it does in a sea made up of only a lack of it.



The men appear to be addressing an oddly shaped storage vessel of some kind. It appears to have a hatch door along its extended, triangularly shaped form, although that hatch looks photoshopped in--this would only add to the message if true. On top are two appendages, like cleats or pilings on a pier. This detail can be seen more clearly on a group of ten more of these devices seen waiting at the southern access gate area, next to where the port-a-potties where placed. All together, they look like cast-iron submarine vessels, like underwater jersey-barriers, or parts of an artificial reef.

I submit these devices are meant to serve as permanent underwater burial storage places. And what the Old Guard are doing is placing in them materials taken out from the Navy Command Center. In other words, they are burying the navy command's store of secrets forever into the briny deep, which is my definition of style at least: an idea carried through from beginning to end..
Several references describe Navy Intelligence as the senior division amongst all the federal intelligence agencies. One necessary function such agencies would need to serve is as a repository for evidence, archives documenting the history of covert activities. One might image the source of navy power to be its stash documenting the shameful national secrets going back beyond even the War of 1812--something J. Edgar and Clyde could only dream about. It seems likely that a balance of power would ensue, serving to keep the level of regrettable and unfortunate activities distributed between the various branches to some kind of manageable minimum. Some say this Navy group was never on board with the Bush administration's agenda. Now all the eggs are in one justice department basket and we can see where that's taking us.

Perhaps targeting this cache for destruction removed the last governors controlling the wanton and merciless clandestine rampages like those we saw following 9-11, by secret forces in the war on Afghanistan and Iraq, opening a veritable Pandora's Box of torture and secret, illegal imprisonment. Certainly all holds were off on the wholesale looting of the public coffers by administration degenerates over the past six years.

These men look like they know a secret or two.



One of the earliest and best 9-11 researchers was Carol Valentine, and she was within the month writing about the highly unusual lapses in normally secure military chains-of-command following 9-11, with FBI and Arlington fireman calling the shots. In this photograph, I submit, much pleasure is being had, by flaunting the neutralizing of the deepest and darkest of America's secrets right under the noses of a stupefied and unsuspecting media and public, as in increase in power begins to corrupt them absolutely. It is time for that dynamic to come to an end, and for a new balance of power to assert itself in its place. Are we ready?

Mark Hodgdon of Clarke Air Force Base, who is the weird source for a dozen images taken on 9/11 at the Pentagon, depicts in two of them these strange "underwater storage"-like objects kept by the back gate. They appear clearly to be some sort of electrical, or lighting devices, but that still would make no sense given the one appearing center stage. I will increase my normal five-percent "I may be wrong" humility allowance to ten percent in this case.


On Edit: May 12, 2009 I just spotted the discrete, thereby empowered, sign saying "AMEC," which I Googled. AMEC.com is a big time British player in the oil and gas industry. In 2004, AMEC was awarded a contract to assist in the rebuilding of Iraq. Clicking on their link made my browser crash lickety-split. AMEC.org is the Association of Missouri Electric Cooperatives, and we have a history together. Hi show me state! You go first!