"Pentagon 9/11," published by the Historical Office of the Secretary of Defense in 2007 as part of the Defense Studies Series

is the most serious attempt yet made to tell the official story of the attack. Published as a quality softcover, it is slick, like advertising. Although footnoted, indexed, and with a bibliography, it reads more as a neuro-linguistically challenged soap opera than an historical synthesis. The writing sounds besieged. A preface acknowledges the trouble with the truth they encounter. Topping its list of problems, "the most difficult was to establish an exact timeline for 11 September." Since crashing a jetliner into a fortress wasn't distinctively singular enough to prevent a 30 minute spread in the reported time of the strike, and since the Arlington County After-Action Report got the time of the building collapse wrong by 18 minutes, I can see their point.

It can not have been easy walking the thin line of official narrative that it does. The events in Arlington on September 11th took place in one of the most highly secured environments in America. All access and oversight to the area was restricted and controlled. Essentially, it was a private matter, which was then regurgitated through a media lens to become part of the collective experience known as 9-11.

Proving such a synthetic, second-hand reality is as difficult as disproving a negative. The story of 9-11 is now more about the story of the story, and how it unfolded. Inconvenient facts just don't go away in the internet age. New facts must be judged in the context of how they emerge and the response they elicit. Coming at a point when authorities still haven't released technical reports related to the destruction of Building 7, the attempt at writing a definitive history of the Pentagon attack is premature. The record is full of anomalous, inconsistent or inconvenient details that don't want pinning down yet

To me the attack on the Pentagon was a billion-dollar arson scam. It was the foundational crime that led to all the other crimes of the new American century--such as outrageous invasions, and endless war on "terror." Pentagon 9/11 functions then as a cover up and can be used as evidence to prove such.

Lets start with an example, the graphics in Pentagon 9/11 that illustrate the extent of the damage to the building from impact, fire, smoke and water. On page 81, is a first-floor plan illustrating the damage from the attack.



And on page 88, is an illustration of the second-floor plan of the Pentagon overlaid with the exact same pattern of damage.



According to these graphics, the entirety of Wedges 1 and 2 suffered damage in the attack. However, that information--along with the color scheme used to express it--was lifted straight out of a handout distributed at a DoD press conference on September 13, 2001, labeled, "Real Estate & Facilities Initial Damage Assessment."



I stress the word initial-- meaning preliminary--which should never be the basis for any considered draft of history, especially when the historians ignore several subsequent official reports that speak directly to the matter. We'll have to judge for ourselves the politics of these various reports. Since none of them touch on the issues I discuss here, they all are employed in some degree as enemies of the truth. Still, there are facts to the matter, unlike the greatly exaggerated stories of martyrdom and suffering, and their corollary's, the equally imagined tales of rescue and heroism, the bricks-and-mortar narrative has some grounding in physics. It is more than just the bad acting found in the record, and it has been a sham from the start.

One fire-science and engineering report was undertaken by Hughes Associates. It can be found online in an undated PDF titled "Review of 9/11 Pentagon Scenario from the Fire Fighter's, Fire Marshal's, and Fire Engineer's Perspectives." It was put together by associates Eric Rosenbaum and Sean P. Hunt, assisted by someone from the Department of Homeland Security named Diane Pitts. It appears to have been undertaken as an effort to tie up a few loose strings left by the extensive Arlington County After-Action Report. I can't imagine who commissioned it, but they didn't pay much.

The graphics published in the Hughes report illustrate damage to the building from the attack that is fundamentally at odds with the assessments found in Pentagon 9/11, where blanket claims of extensive building damage are made without supporting evidence. I would estimate the difference between the two reports as expressing a factor of a full decimal point--200,000 square feet of damage in one, verses 2 million square feet of damage in the other.

You'll have to do the math for yourself.

Hughes Associates includes a second graphic indicating extremely minor damage to the upper three floors in renovated Wedge 1. The extensive smoke and water damage indicated in Wedge 2 is inexplicable, as two firewalls would have impeded its progress--however, it is a wash, as Wedge 2 was scheduled for an upcoming renovation anyway.



But even the findings in the Hughes Associates' review were surpassed in the more comprehensive Arlington County After-Action Report, exacerbating the discrepancy with the DoD's POV contained in Pentagon 9/11. In a little-discussed appendix titled, "Pentagon Penetration Damage Diagrams," we find high-quality damage-assessment illustrations that are credited to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Evidence Recovery Team. All five floors are broken down individually, which allows us to glean a wealth of information not available elsewhere. For instance, a firewall on the second floor kept fire damage from spreading into Wedge 2.

Why were such barriers not in place between the wedges on other floors? Why do both of the other reports indicate fire damage to the second floor of Wedge 2? These are the sorts of questions not even asked, let alone answered, anywhere in the official record.











In the appendix diagrams all of the space on the 4rth and 5th floors between Corridor 4 and the line separating Wedge 1 and 2, (the area immediately targeted in the attack) is noted as being "NA," which I believe stands for "Not Assigned." The same area on the 3rd floor is marked as "AR," which might stand for "Army/Reserved." In any event, these areas lack the specific tenancy notations we see elsewhere on the diagram.

My suspicion is: that when they said Wedge 1 wasn't fully occupied yet, they meant this target area specifically--the three outer rings between Corridors 4 and 4.5. This should make the tenets who were relocated there--the Navy Command Center and the army personnel and accounting offices--feel even more targeted. And how unlucky of Hani Hanjor to execute such a precision move into the only fortified and empty part of the Pentagon?

The seven fatalities that occurred in the offices of the Defense Intelligence Agency represent some sort of special category of wrongful death in my opinion. They should have been safe behind masonry firewalls in Wedge 2. Perhaps they were piggy-backed onto the plot by Jewish elements hostile to DIA monitoring of Israeli spying within the Pentagon. That would explain the "punch out" hole into those offices. I should think it was just that: punched out to open a rescue route for the DIA staffers inside.

The renovations to Corridor 4 provided a fully up-to-code firewall protection for the remainder of the renovated areas. To the north, the fires should have been contained by the intrinsic barrier which separates Wedge 1 from Wedge 2.

The wedges were originally constructed as independent, stand alone masonry buildings-they didn't share any mechanical services, like pipes or ducts. Any passageways between the two would have been sealed up as a consequence of the ongoing renovations, if for no other reason. Understanding how the fire behaved in these building conditions is a proper purpose of these studies. The severe fire conditions seen out the third-story windows of Wedge 2 on the afternoon of September 1th, are inexplicable in the extreme.

In some cases, bullet-proof glass melted into puddles and it is unclear if the fire was coming from inside or outside of the building. How such hot fires could be allowed to develop given the relative ease in accessing this portion of the building, coupled with the enormous resources on hand to suppress it--is another mystery.

Likewise, the roof fires which sprang up in the middle of the night--on top of the poured concrete roof mind you--are even more inexplicable. Supposedly fed by only a thin layer of wood sandwiched between concrete and slate, these gave off bright "rocket's red glare" effects--a shock and awe which looks more likely to have resulted from high-powered incendiaries or pyrotechnics to me. We have the photographs and can let the grand jury decide.


The book Pentagon 9/11 makes a mention of the roof fires, but the Hughes' review appears specifically designed to address the issue, which was only mentioned in passing in the Arlington County report. They come to the wrong conclusion of course, making a big point about the need for fire breaks within this decorative element, but without ever asking how the fire got up there in the first place.

(From Pentagon 9/11)

And Pentagon 9/11 loves its roof damage! They just don't want you to know the damage was cosmetic.

Not only were these impossible-to-believe roof fires staged for a DoD public-relations benefit of maximum catastrophic value (the better to get you to invade foreign nations, my dear,) they also served the corrupt agendas of the incestuous Pentagon renovation contractors--sticking it to the American taxpayer to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. In the aftermath of 9-11, Congress even authorized an extra $300 million just to accelerate the time table of the renovation!

Since 9-11, many of us self-identify as being defined by the shock and dismay we felt that day, and the transformation which followed as we set out to find meaning in the events. The compilers of this history don't even seem real to me themselves. In their publicity photograph they look like unhappy wax dolls. They can't hide the endless strings of absurdities and contradictions that make up the official narrative; their "history" has no internal logic to hold it together. It has no meaning and it is in this way that I can tell us apart.
high-resolution image Sarandis Papadopoulos, Diane Putney, Nancy Berlage, who along with Alfred Goldberg and Rebecca Welch, are the historians whose names are attached to this book.

"Pinch" Paisley--Pentagon Worker Goes on the Offensive

Pinch Paisley, the Pentagon apologist, just sent me a long email wherein he makes several points--but his Masada, the mountain he chooses to die on, are "roll-up" doors in the A&E Drive.

Steve,

Did you ever work for the Soviets in photographic analysis? I’m asking because they used to do the exact same thing you do with regards to looking at a photo – they’d make up shit when they didn’t know what was going on. There is a great story about the Pentagon that is told – the Soviets would take their overhead satellite photos of the Pentagon and they’d see a long queue of people lined up outside the central structure in the middle of the courtyard. “Access to the secret underground control headquarters!” they would say. It was actually the lunch line outside the Ground Zero café located in the courtyard. Picture attached.

This is a wonderful way to start. I am familiar with the anecdote about the Soviets staring at the satellite images of the Pentagon and assuming an underground bunker was in the center court. However, the "Ground Zero" cafe (somebody gag me with a spoon) wasn't there in 2001, but the famous, lamented hot-dog stand.

The Old Hot Dog Stand/Cafe

( Pinch in a comment appended to this blog said:

"A couple of corrections: The Ground Zero Cafe has been there, in the courtyard, for many decades. It got its name because everyone knew the USSR had more than a couple of ICBMs targeted on it. The "hot dog" stand was only a part of the structure and the owl is still there. Another example of you writing about things you have no idea about so you make shit up."

Yet he obviously doesn't see any inconsistency with what he said in a email to me,

"b) there is some sort of – ANYTHING – AT ALL – historical record of this sort of defense c) ANY historical record ANYWHERE of ANY building self-defense system – and that includes missiles or any sort of fired projectile. I’ll save you some time – there aren’t any. The Pentagon’s “defenses” lay in its location, pure and simple."

Everyone knows the USSR had more than a few ICBM's targeted on the Pentagon but the United States military couldn't care less?"

Pinch goes on:

I stopped by the building today and took a couple of surreptitious pictures for you. I say “surreptitious” because photographs are not permitted inside the building, but I figured a few innocuous ones wouldn’t hurt, all in the name of educating America’s citizen’s.

The first two are not just one (roll up door 1 and 2.jpg), but TWO (count ‘em…2) roll-up doors in the A-E drive. The one titled “overhead door.jpg” is taken inside the building, PROVING that it’s not just outside that they have roll-up garage type doors there. The fourth picture, AE drive.jpg, is where the punch out hole was.

Here I must thank Pinch for catapulting me into the first-ranks of Pentagon researchers, like Craig Ranke, and his CIT buddy Aldo Marquis. I bet they don't have an updated picture of the repaired "punch-out hole." Pinch again:

Now that little foolishness of yours regarding roll-up doors is put to bed, let’s move on to other parts of your email.

When I first moved up to the northern VA area, the Navy reserve unit I was assigned to was in Atlanta, GA. A reserve buddy of mine recruited me to come work on a program he had here in Crystal City, so I moved my kids and me up here in late 1999. He also had me transferred to his command that eh was in charge of – you got it, the Navy Command Center in the Pentagon. I served, in a reserve capacity with that unit, for nearly all of the year 2000. As such, I am familiar with and had seen the spaces that were hit by the aircraft on Sept 11th. I had been gone from the unit for nearly a year by the time 9/11 came around, but I was still familiar with everything that transpired.

So when you talk to me about the Navy Command Center (NCC), you aren’t talking to someone who had just read about it or seen pictures or graphics of it like yourself. Of course there is no roll-up door to the Command Center. However, there are roll up doors in a dozen or more other places all along the A-E drive, along with loading docks, recycle and garbage bins, and all the other usual detritus of an office building. The actual size that made up the NCC that bordered on the outside wall was only a small part of the 580 foot length of the inner wall of the C wing.

OK, let's repeat what Pinch says:

"Of course there is no roll-up door to the Command Center."

"The actual size that made up the NCC that bordered on the outside wall was only a small part of the 580 foot length of the inner wall of the C wing."

But all one needs to do is compare the following three images--the aerial view of the full affected length of the A&E Drive, or the view showing all three blast exits, starting from the "single door," through the "roll-up door," to the "punch out hole," correlated with the diagram of the first-floor of the Pentagon, to see that the "roll-up door" that Pinch is referring to is IN FACT dead center in the Navy Command Center!

Actually, it is quite easy to locate the so-called "roll-up door" directly to the right of a single--unaffected--door which is indicated on the diagram of the NCC as a narrow hall with steps. The "single door" which has been blasted outwards is indicated on the plan as entering a large room in the corner of the NCC.


But now things begin to be extremely problematic with Pinch's story. He says, and I repeat, "When I first moved up to the northern VA area, the Navy reserve unit I was assigned to was in Atlanta, GA. A reserve buddy of mine recruited me to come work on a program he had here in Crystal City, so I moved my kids and me up here in late 1999. He also had me transferred to his command that eh was in charge of – you got it, the Navy Command Center in the Pentagon. I served, in a reserve capacity with that unit, for nearly all of the year 2000. As such, I am familiar with and had seen the spaces that were hit by the aircraft on Sept 11th. I had been gone from the unit for nearly a year by the time 9/11 came around, but I was still familiar with everything that transpired."

Unfortunately, the spaces he says he is familiar with weren't occupied until March of 2001, several months after he left his gig with the commander of the Navy Command Center.


On March 14, 2001, a key turn over ceremony was held to commemorate the first Navy tenants to move into Wedge 1.

Pinch is careful not to say he actually worked in the part of the Pentagon struck on 9-11. He says he was under the command of the commander of the NCC, but he doesn't say who he or she is or where he physically was deployed.

At this point, before I continue with Pinch's email, I think it fair to say that either Pinch is deeply confused about the details of his NCC deployment or he is an outright liar. His "roll-up door" is centered directly within the territory of the NCC and, apparently, security was very lax if he was allowed tours in a construction zone being outfitted for some of the most sensitive work in the Navy. Pinch goes on:

Your blog post of the “missile batteries” being built in the cloverleaf was what necessitated the opening question about Soviet photographic intelligence. To make that leap, to see construction going on, in a cloverleaf no less (!) and jumping the shark to call that a missile installation construction is why I simply have to add you into the category of “moonbat”. That construction in the photo was a new access for delivery trucks and construction materiel that included a covered secure search facility. I worked in the building during that time and parked in the South Parking quite often.

I guess Pinch doesn't know what I was talking about in the photograph. Here it is again.

The Remote Delivery Facility (RDF) is to the north of the Pentagon. I am speaking about construction taking place near the underpass where Route 27 (Washington Blvd) goes over Columbia Pike (which terminates in South Parking.) Maybe I should go work for the Soviets. Pinch goes on:

And I don’t know how to tell you that what you think you see in that E-ring collapse photo is absolutely not “artillery shells” I was the one that called them 8-inch shells – know how I got that? I did a Yahoo search for “howitzer”, went to an Army artillery weapons museum page, found a big ass gun, and voila – 8” shell. Your comment of “back-handed confirmation” is also hilarious. You really need to get a better grasp on sarcasm in a post when you see it because that was all that the “painted shells” was. Artillery shell casings are *never* painted. Ever. It would present an incredible fire hazard with the heat generated at ignition and firing. You won’t want a flaming shell casing ejected in the midst of your firing crew and the other ordnance sitting around.

The comment about painted shells was left by somebody named Byron Audler over at Instapinch. He said, "BTW, I’ve seen lots of pictures of fired artillery rounds. The shell casings aren’t normally still painted. And the casings were NEVER anywhere near the explosion: the cannon-cockers are too good at what they do to have that happen." Pinch continues:

And for your information, it is not up to me to disprove anything. You have no proof other than your own fervent imagination that these were “artillery shells”. The onus is on you to prove that a) there were buried howitzers in the ground (do you have any idea of the firing mechanics of a weapon like that? How it would operate from a buried position?) b) there is some sort of – ANYTHING – AT ALL – historical record of this sort of defense c) ANY historical record ANYWHERE of ANY building self-defense system – and that includes missiles or any sort of fired projectile. I’ll save you some time – there aren’t any. The Pentagon’s “defenses” lay in its location, pure and simple.

“Exotic weaponry” – let’s just say that whatever I said about Judy Wood in my blog applies to you, as well, if you want to bring that up. I always ask if we were using such effective “exotic weaponry” on ourselves at the Pentagon or the WTC, why the hell aren’t we using it in Iraq? Nobody can seem to answer that.

Tell me what the following five images depicted Pinch old man!







The rest of Pinch's email is just drivel. The Pentagon exerted complete control over the roadways surrounding it. No one had a view of the impact area except for who the Pentagon wanted to. That means the entirety (well, almost) of the eyewitness record is fabricated with plants and shills lying out of some sort of misguided patriotism or craven self-interest.

I am resistant to all of your “points” because they make no sense and are bullshit – pure and simple. And you do yourself a huge disfavor by lumping ME and other military professionals into some sort of group-think environment. If you had ever been in a tactical jet flying off carriers, you would know that the vast majority of our decision making is done on our own.

It is also quiet apparent that you subscribe to that (again, and I overuse it but it is so apropos – hilarious) notion that all this happened in a vacuum and that NOBODY was around to see anything. When you state that you think it was possible some sort of weapon was fired from the cloverleaf – seriously, Steve, *think about this*. Washington Boulevard was full of traffic that morning. The were probably also cars ON that cloverleaf. There were another couple of thousand or whatever it was on 395. Don’t you think that SOMEONE – ANYONE - AT LEAST 1 person would have been resistant to the forget-it drug secretly fed to all those people by the Bush Evil Cabal (how they were all identified, I don’t know) and would have come forth by now, stating that they SAW all this stuff? I have absolutely (let me say that word again – ABSOLUTELY) no problem with your hatred of George Bush. Fine. Dandy. Bully! I have my own problems with some of what he’s done – I hated his immigration position, I think he’s too polite with the liberal assholes in congress (especially in this, his last year – he should tell them what Sarkosi told that idiot “Get lost, dumbass!”), I think he’s been weak in a number of areas. But when you make up shit from these photos you so eagerly pour over and imagine crap that isn’t there based on a mind made ill by such a severe case of Bush Derangement Syndrome, that is where the bullshit flag flies.

Bill

I have a deep-seated bent to want to like and respect William "Pinch" Paisley and others like him. I've given him every chance to express himself and his point of view only to see him dig himself in deeper and deeper into a miasma of lies and distortions. Who do these military figures take the American people for? Fools? Everybody connected with this enterprise in the government and the military are second-rate no-shows who couldn't pass muster in the new world order if their asses were on fire. The Disneyification of national intelligence came a few years too late. My cracked sixth sense was utilized in support of the Constitution of the United States of America. Men like Pinch are traitors to that cause. Sorry to be the one to tell you guys.

Do the Ingersoll Shots Depict Spent Munitions?

Subtitle: "For the record, I am a 0938 time of impact kind of guy."

A recent email exchange with a military man, William Paisley, (he's the Oh-niner-38 kind of guy,) inspired me to reexamine an important finding of mine: whether or not three shots taken by Marine Corporal Jason Ingersoll depict spent artillery shells lying in the muddy foreground before a damaged and collapsed Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

Mr Paisley posts over at his Instapinch blogsite and it was his sardonic discovery of my Pentagon work that led to our back and forth. As a former Navy flier, Mr. Paisley says he is experienced in high explosives and that what we see depicted in the Ingersoll shots is definitely not what I claim it to be.

To judge for yourselves it is best to go to the official government site to see the images in the highest resolution possible. The best way to get there is to go to
http://www.dodmedia.osd.mil/ and put in the search term Ingersoll.

Two images will come up: http://www.dodmedia.osd.mil/Assets/Still/2002/Marines/DM-SD-02-03910.JPEG

seen here:
and a glancing view here at:
http://www.dodmedia.osd.mil/Assets/Still/2002/Marines/DM-SD-02-03899.JPEG
seen here:
another significant view is DM-SD-02-03911, which is no longer current in the government archives but a copy is here:

In any of these images, click on the expanded view and scroll down to the lower right-hand corner. There you'll see what I take to be spent high-explosive casings but what Mr. Paisley contends are rolls of roofing-tar paper, or some other kind of rolled construction material.

I've taken the liberty of blowing up the bottom right corner to enlarge the area.

Truth be told, I have zero background in munitions or high-explosives. But after ruling out construction materials as an explanation, my gut instinct told me these were recently exploded ordinances of some kind. The only collaborating evidence I found on the web was an antique example from a forestry archive at Yale University. It nonetheless provided me with some verification as to the scale and mass of a high-explosive shell.

I contend that the rounds were fired off from within the buried rectangular metal vaults we see in the foreground of the photographs. These would have been antiquated but still functioning defense systems at the time in 2001, I should think. The actual mechanics of firing off cannon are also not in my area of expertise. Several commenters at the Instapinch blog raise interesting objections to my theory. One states that used shells wouldn't be found within the blast area. It is difficult to estimate how far removed from the building these buried defenses were. The photographic record of 9-11 is distorted in its entirety by special lens meant to affect depth perception. Using the following unmeasured plan as a guide, I recall that the distance between the outer line of columns at the Pentagon was said to be approximately ten feet. If that is true, the buried vaults could be as much as sixty feet away from the facade of the building. Whether this distance is far enough away to fire ordinances into an already opened wound is a question to be answered. Two other commenters at Instapinch provided me with a sort of back-handed verification. One described the shells sarcastically as eight-inch rounds. This was helpful because I didn't know if caliper was measured by the inner diameter or the outer. Another poster said that the paint is "usually" not still found on the shells after firing. This was helpful as apparently they are painted at least before.

"Pinch" as Mr. Paisley is called (The men at Instapinch have already given me nicknames too: boy, and steve-oh are their terms of endearment for me. At least I hope they are affectionate.) found my concept of missile defense at the Pentagon absolutely hilarious. He couldn't get over my naiveté! Especially when I told him about the following image, in which it appears the Pentagon is installing similar buried rectangular defenses in the cloverleaf of Route 27 and Columbia Drive, over by South Parking.

(Not to mention, in Arlington National Cemetery.)

Pinch also insists that there was a roll-up door from the A&E Drive into the Navy Command Center that was blown out by the force of an airplane crash and subsequent fire. Since I tend to doubt this contention, I also doubt Pinch's assertion about the exploded ordinances. I'm sure he's a great guy and I don't mean to expunge his credibility in all matters but I would like the larger military community to weigh in on the matter. If I'm wrong about this, I'm sure I'll start catching on pretty quick once the information starts being vetted in a public forum. And if I am wrong, I'm going to owe an awful lot of people an apology--especially Pinch. He'll have to settle for a steak dinner and my sincerity then.

Oh, by the way, I'm a 0920 kind a guy. Can I buy you a drink?

Modular Propelling Charges

might be the technical name for the debris we see out front of the Pentagon of September 11th, 2001.

The Steve Riskus Master Blog List

Steve Riskus and “Critical Thrash”: Is that an Adverb or an Adjective Dude? 10/5/06

Steve Riskus and Critical Thrash Redux 11/2/06

Steve Riskus Needs a Critical Thrashing 11/14/06

My Solemn Pledge: Absolutely My Final Riff on Steve Riskus 2/8/07

Dude, It’s Only an Adjective! 2/9/07

The BCO Message Board 2/12/07

A List of IP Addresses Referred by BCO Boards 2/12/07

Steve Riskus Exposed as a Fraud 2/27/07

Steve Riskus’s Pentagon Photographs: View Page Source 5/14/07

The Ever Expanding Oeuvre of Steve Riskus 5/29/07

Pentagon Coverup? 6/14/07

The Vulvet Underground: A List of IP Addresses 8/8/07

Tragdor IP Addresses Revealed! 11/11/07

Bored Cruel C.O. 11/14/07

Judy Wood’s “Nasty Pussy" 11/19/07

Sgt. Louis Briscese: Reservists Called Onto Duty with Foreknowledge?

"The National Museum of Health and Medicine has unveiled an exhibit highlighting efforts used by its parent organization, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), to identify the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks at the Pentagon..."

But also unveiled, at least to me, is the name and job title of an Air Force photographer--U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Louis Briscese, of the Forensic Photography Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner.

This photograph is labeled "Montgomery County, MD firefighters extinguish the flames at the Pentagon. Photo by U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Louis Briscese, of the Forensic Photography Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner (AFIP.)"

The title should read "Five anonymous co-conspirators pose for a propaganda shot beside an American flag while they shoot water onto an aviation fuel fire."


This photograph is titled, "Police and EMS equipment in the foreground at the Pentagon. Photo by U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Louis Briscese, of the Forensic Photography Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner (AFIP.)"

Its title should read "Another generic shot of unattended fire burning with the foreground blocked. Taken around noon (check out the sun angle on the van.)"

How an army forensic photographer got onto the scene so early is one question. Why such banal images are being used in a medical museum exhibit is another question. Like Sgt. Thomas "Nate" Orme, one must ask when these men were called into duty and whether or not this represents clear evidence of foreknowledge.

_____________________________________

On Edit: October 22, 2016,

Thanks to the comment left to this blog a month ago by a Californian named Kelly, we have a newspaper update sourced from Air Force forensic photographer Tech. Sgt. Louis Briscese. Fifteen years later and the tangled web they wove after first they practiced to deceive, just got more banal and sad. A part of their endless tapestry from hell.

And since comments left to my blog are usually excoriating, I have to thank ex-military members like Kelly for their integrity and common sense. Maybe it will brush off on the Catholic FBI and CIA.

Kelly has left a new comment on your post "Sgt. Louis Briscese: Reservists Called Onto Duty w...": 

Hello Steve. I'm not sure if you even check this page any longer, but I found it when I googled Tech. Sgt. Louis Briscese. There is a story about him and some pics he took in my local paper today, out here in California. I don't believe his story. I was in the Air Force, and him "leaving a mandatory dental appointment, grabbing his go bag and heading to the Pentagon DOES NOT MAKE SENSE! THEN HE SAYS HE WAS THERE 3 WEEKS? NO MENTION OF EVER TELLING HIS JOB WHERE HE WAS. THAT'S NOT POSSIBLE. AND A COP TOOK HIM TO THE PENTAGON TO TAKE PICTURES??? NO WAY!

A commenter to Ian Thompson's Daily Republic article left a link to a very good article here:

September 10, 2016, BlacklistedNews.com, 9/11 Anniversary: Government Hid and Destroyed 9/11 Evidence, Archived,




September 11, 2016, Daily Republic [Fairfield, CA] page C1, 9/11 – 15 Years Later: Air Force photographer recorded Pentagon attack's aftermath, by Ian Thompson, Archived,

Air Force forensic photographer Tech. Sgt. Louis Briscese took photos at the Pentagon the day of the 9/11 attacks. (Robinson Kuntz/Daily Republic)

TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE — Air Force forensic photographer Tech. Sgt. Louis Briscese took one look at the smoke rising from the Pentagon and knew where he had to be that day.

The photographs he started taking within an hour of the Pentagon being struck by a hijacked aircraft on Sept. 11, 2001, recorded one of America's darkest days since World War II.

"No one knew where I was at," Briscese said of taking the initiative to rush from an early morning dental appointment at Andrews Air Force Base to the Pentagon.

A New York City native whose family later moved to New Jersey, Briscese joined the Air Force in August 1984.

He was serving in September 2011 as a forensic photographer with the Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner photographing crime scenes, aircraft crashes and autopsies.

The office's personnel had already been involved in the investigations of previous terrorist attacks such as the Kenya bombings and the attack on the USS Cole.

On the morning of Sept. 11, Briscese went to a dentist appointment at Andrews Air Force Base. On the way there, he got a phone call from a colleague saying only something big had happened in New York City and that he was put on standby.

That something big was hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 crashing into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center.

"When I walked out of the appointment, I saw people gathered around the TV watching," Briscese said.

He found it difficult to get off Andrews Air Force Base and soon got a call that something was going on at the Pentagon.

"You could see the smoke from Andrews," Briscese said.

The smoke was from where hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the western side of the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m., causing one section of the building to collapse and punching through three of the building's five rings.

Briscese realized that the Pentagon was where he should be and managed to get a Maryland State Police escort to Bolling Air Force Base where he grabbed his "go bag" full of photo gear and then took off for the Pentagon.

"The (police) officer and I were the only ones going into DC while the other side of the highway was packed," Briscese said.

Briscese pulled up at the still-burning Pentagon and immediately started taking pictures of the attack site, which would soon be declared a crime scene.

"It was a big fire and there was a lot of chaos," Briscese said. "Several times, we evacuated because of planes flying overhead."

It was almost midnight before Briscese finally ran into a couple of pathologists from his office amid the crush of firefighters, rescue workers and military members.

"The Pentagon was still burning throughout the night," Briscese said.

It wasn't until the next day that Briscese was able to enter the Pentagon through an entrance near the crash site to take crime scene photos in the interior.

Briscese was so deeply wrapped up in his work at the Pentagon that it wasn't until he got a little downtime at home that he realized that the World Trade Center had also been attacked.

The main job soon became identification of the bodies of those killed in the attack and Briscese was moved to Dover Air Force Base on the third day, where his work continued nearly nonstop for the next month.

After the third week, Briscese finally started getting some real downtime.

Briscese said he realized that the attacks were just a beginning and there were a lot of changes in store for his office and for the nation as America geared up for its war on terror.

Fifteen years later, Briscese said it is good to know that his photography played a role in the investigation of the attack on the Pentagon and helped the families of those who died get relief with the identification of their loved ones.

"As a team, we performed remarkably," Briscese said of the overwhelming challenge of helping process the scene of the crash and later identifying the victims.

Reach Ian Thompson at 427-6976 or ithompson@dailyrepublic.net. Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ithompsondr.
















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Ian Thompson

Ian Thompson has worked for the Daily Republic longer than he cares to remember. A native of Oregon and a graduate of the University of Oregon, he pines for the motherland still. He covers Vacaville and Travis Air Force Base for the Daily Republic. He is an avid military history buff, wargamer and loves the great outdoors.

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Discussion | 9 comments

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Time for Truth September 11, 2016 - 9:00 am

Inside job.

Fussy September 11, 2016 - 9:02 am

Snow job by TFT.

Fires Waiting to Burn September 12, 2016 - 8:32 am

Really? So someone can SPEAK THE TRUTH by calling it an inside job, but I agree and my comment is deleted? Truth hurts that much huh?

Fires Waiting to Burn September 12, 2016 - 8:33 am

I agree. PREACH!

Fires Waiting to Burn September 12, 2016 - 8:34 am

My I agree comment is for @Time for Truth, since my last one was deleted.

Interesting articles, here is one September 11, 2016 - 12:10 pm

September 10, 2016, BlacklistedNews.com, 9/11 Anniversary: Government Hid and Destroyed 9/11 Evidence, Archived,

Need all investigations open to the public. September 11, 2016 - 1:09 pm

To remember......Plenty of stuff out there, why do you have to come up with this bs. The more intelligent truthers feel dick set it up, it got out of hand and his and bush's involvement had more to do with the Saudi connections. What was their point? dick Cheney is a profiteering war monger he used bush. Probably meant to interrupt the thing before the hijackings, it got out of control before the govt could react. Look at THE FBI instigated terror attacks that were interrupted by the FBI just before they happened. The gay bar incident in Florida was one that got away from them.

Need all investigations open to the public. September 11, 2016 - 1:18 pm

To remember, this sounds like a load of bs, most " truthers"" feel that this was actually an FBI OR CIA entrapment that got out of hand. Like the bar shooting in Orlando, FBI handlers just weren't quick enough there. Cops shot a lot of people though. Look at how many FBI instigated terror plots were tried in the last few years. Agent finds a nut case then the disturbed individual gets tricked into doing something and gets arrested. Cheney is a war profiteer, bush was his dupe.

TXPatriot (@noblebutts) September 13, 2016 - 5:23 am

By all accounts, everyone in the building was surprised by a 757 that was flying around for an hour on radar and reported as hijacked?!?!. Something does not add up,

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