Call It What It Is

by Eric Francis Coppolino, August 26, 2011

So here we are, at the 10-year mark of the September 11 incident. Wars are still being fought, there is chaos in the Middle East, and everyone who boards an airplane or makes a phone call is still a potential terrorist. Politicians will lay wreaths and many will take the opportunity to put a little more yeast in the brew of hatred, but I wonder what we’ve learned. And I wonder who is asking questions about what happened on September 11, 2001, why it happened, and how.

I’m one of the people who doubted the official story of September 11 before I even heard it. Once I started reading the explanations, I knew there were problems with everything that was being said. I anticipated that I would be involved in a long investigation, and I have. My first breakthrough came seeing the astrology for the incident. Reading that chart, I warned that the “secret enemy” who had done this horrid thing would be morphing to suit political convenience, and had an oddly intimate relationship to the government.

I had my second breakthrough looking at the picture above, which is a Department of Defense photo of the Pentagon crime scene from September 14, 2001. This came into my hands six months after the incident, in early March 2002. Maybe you saw the e-mail titled “Find the Boeing” published by the French website Asile.org that passed around the link. It’s easy to search online. The premise of “Find the Boeing” was, okay, if this event at the Pentagon is an airplane crash, then where’s the airplane? Where did it strike? Where did the 100 tons of composite aluminum and titanium go? Where is the impression of the wings, and those enormous jets? What about all the fuel on a plane that was bound for the West Coast? How come that big pile of rubble isn’t a burned-out bonfire?

During March 2002, I studied this photo night and day for a week (I had fewer deadlines back then). At the end of the week, one really weird thing stood out. How is it possible that an airplane hit that building at a minimum of 250 miles per hour, but all the rubble collapsed outward? When you see a photo of a car that’s been driven through the wall of a house, you don’t expect to see the debris all over the lawn. Most of it plunges inward and follows the direction of travel of the car. Here, the wall looks like it tumbled outward, which is what it did. This debris goes in the wrong direction— that is, if something large from the outside plunged in.

To see an airplane crash here, you really have to use your imagination. You can pretend that the airplane is under the rubble. You can pretend that it plunged into the building and disappeared. You can pretend that it’s invisible, like Wonder Woman’s airplane. You can tell yourself that something had to happen to it—but it must be there someplace. But to do any of these things, you have to pretend.

After I did this work, studying dozens of other photos, I knew there was a problem with the official story. Through the first week after the September 11 incident, I consoled myself by listening to Steve Inskeep on NPR. He had been standing next to the Pentagon for the first three days after whatever happened there. I knew and trusted Steve from my days covering the state capital, and I clung to his sane, moderated voice; I thought I would ask him. Steve was in Afghanistan when I called, but my phone rang six months later and—faithfully—he was returning my call. I told him what I was thinking and asked for his honest opinion. Was I crazy?