How Lies Can Be Plausibly Established.

An off-hand comment made in the Defense Department book Pentagon 9/11, serves as a good example of the current crop of disinformation being fed us. On page 25:

[o]ther main escape exits from the impact area were through...[t]hree openings in the C Ring wall between Corridors 4 and 5, one of them the blown doors of the C-4 electrical vault..."

This is the first mention anywhere in the official record explaining the second of two blast exit holes through the masonry walls of the C Ring into the A & E Drive, as seen in the photographic record, but never discussed in the written record. It's cousin, an explosive blast hole labeled "punch out," sixty or so feet away in the Drive, has been endlessly photographed and debated, with multiple official explanations offered that are still far from being reconciled with a plausible story line.


Somewhere along the line, an earlier 9-11 web site that covers the same ground I do, Russel Pickering's pentagon911research.com, posted a Michael Pendergrass photograph of the blast damage with a notation describing it as a "roll up" door.

This seemed to satisfy everybody until recently, when I began to question the likelihood of a roll-up door entryway into the Navy Command Center. The deeper question of how could such damage be publicly ignored by the engineers mandated to explain it, was set aside.

Pentagon 9/11 mentions in passing the blast damage as blown-out electrical doors several pages before a discussion about survivor's experiences inside the Navy Command Center. Of the eight people the book mentions who survived from within the command center, seven of them escaped, or were rescued, via this hole (one of them, Jesse Polasek, said a blast of air expelled him through the hole into the drive as he was still seated in his chair!)

I know of at least one other survivor from within the Navy Command Center not mentioned in Pentagon 9/11, so apparently the book doesn't strive to be a comprehensive account. Jerry Henson, a civilian employee, was also rescued via a blast exit hole into the A-E Drive, although his rescuer, Dave Tarentino, is quite clear in his telling that he came in and out via the round "punch out" hole.

On edit: My bad! They gave them almost a whole chapter further in! It gets more interesting!

This attempt to introduce into the record a key fact is especially offensive to me because I can see how such a lie can be plausibly established. The seed was an illustration used to depict damage that was based on a structural floor plan, which must date from 1945. An electrical vault is indicated on the plan alongside the A-E Drive, and directly to the right of a single doorway.

We can make a comparison of that plan with another, which we know dates from the current renovation because the Navy Command Center is indicated on it. None of the mechanical rooms or electrical vaults depicted in the earlier plan are seen on the 2001-era plan.

This point is moot however, because the electrical vault depicted on the earlier plan lies between column lines 13 and 15, while the blast opening shown in the photographic record is between column lines 5 and 7. But it is in just this way that kernels of truth are used to sow doubt in the field of our collective subconscious.

Two good things have resulted from this little study. One, is an awareness that whatever value Russel Pickering ever had as a truth seeker is lost given the incontrovertible proof he disseminated the "roll up" door canard. We all can make mistakes and get off on the wrong track but this isn't that.

Second, the web site 911review.org posted a series of photographs that directs our attention to the matter of this 20-foot wide, square-shaped, pillar-to-pillar blast opening. The images seem spookily prescient to me now and if this site is a gatekeeper than it's for the good guys. Looking again with trusting eyes, I see this early website got it right. The ability to recognize honest mistakes from manipulative errors is a developing gift.




Oh! I thought of a third good thing, if you made it this far! Telling the good guys from the bad guys has been an extremely difficult job so far, and often the designations must remain tentative. At first, I thought Kevin Schaffer must be a hero to have survived the Navy Command Center. Later, I realized he was just another volunteer burn-victim poster child. But even though the mechanics aren't clear to me yet, the fact that six out of 13 occupants of the most super secret and secure part of the Navy Command Center, the beautifully named Intelligence Plot section, survived the attack, is cause for celebration. None of these true heroes were used in the tacky media parade of faux feeling that was itself a part of the conspiracy, and this further vouchsafes them in my eyes. Doing this sort of work can make me feel kind of venomous sometimes, so it's nice to have a hero to look up to again. All I can say is thank you.