Cit Publishes Response To David Chandler & Jonathan Cole's Joint Statement About The 9/11 Pentagon Attack Options

[Craig Ranke CIT]

We've been put in the difficult position of having to defend ourselves against people whose work regarding the destruction of the World Trade Center we respect and appreciate. Although we had never spoken to David Chandler or Jonathan Cole prior to the publication of their "joint statement" on the Pentagon attack, we had always considered them natural allies, had never badmouthed them or had any inclination to do so, and had even praised their work.

Unfortunately they did not have the courtesy or sense to get in touch with us to see if we had any responses to their apparent serious issues with our work before publicly denouncing it. The result, as we have now documented in great detail, was a simplistic, horribly sloppy, and defamatory essay which reveals that, at best, they had barely spent any time at all on our website, let alone bothered to view our extensive catalog of video presentations to familiarize themselves with the full scope -- or even many of the basics -- of the evidence we present, or us personally, before rushing to judgment and aggressively attacking us.

Due to the frequent and extreme falsity of their claims, a very lengthy response was necessitated. Sometimes a single sentence would have multiple false and/or misleading claims requiring several paragraphs to untangle. We'd have preferred a shorter rebuttal, but there was no other way to do it if we were to remain accurate and thorough, as we strive to do in everything we publish.

While it was frankly quite obnoxious to have to spend so much time refuting a such a simplistic and shoddy essay that these two men clearly did not put much time into at all, the silver lining is that it gave us an opportunity to address their essay in the context of the dishonest and dishonorable campaign being waged against CIT by a relatively small clique which has gained control over 911Blogger.com, where we are not only "censored", but more importantly, attacked on a virtually daily basis with misinformation and disinformation and denied a "right of reply". For some reason David Chandler apparently has no problem with this situation considering that he published the "joint statement" by him and Jonathan Cole there and then further badmouthed us and our work in the comments section.

Given these circumstances, and the wide-ranging nature of our response to David Chandler and Jonathan Cole, we ask you to please set aside AT LEAST an hour or two to read our response in full so that you can hear our perspective. Unlike Chandler and Cole's essay, our response is heavily sourced, so if you can set aside extra time to REALLY dig into its contents and follow the links and sources, even if you do so over the course of several days, this will give you a MUCH more detailed look at the intricacies of what is going on here, and we feel that the reality of the situation will become that much more clear to you. This is an especially important thing for you to do if you are a regular reader of 911Blogger, since this means that you have likely spent hours over the past months or even years reading the frequent bogus attacks against us which we are forbidden from responding to.

I'd like to thank our webmaster for his critical help with writing this response and putting it together. Please pass it along to anyone you can and encourage them to read it. Thank you for paying attention to both sides of this manufactured controversy by reading our entire response:

http://www.citizeninvestigationteam.com/CI...agon-Statement/

Sincerely,
Craig Ranke
Citizen Investigation Team


P.S. There will also be a podcast forthcoming to address some of the additional points discussed by David Chandler in his recent interview with John Bursill on this topic.

Index and "jump to" links for our response:

• Pentagon Questions (What Hit?)
  
• The Honey Pot Theory
  
• Citizen Investigation Team
  
• Recommended Reading/Victoria Ashley
  
• Arabesque
  
• Jim Hoffman
  
• Library of Congress
  
• Jeff Hill
  
• Legge/Stutt FDR Paper
  
• Sandia F-4 Crash Test Analogy
  
• Conclusion/Debate Challenge

Originally published here.

[mainer]

I really appreciate your taking the time to respond to the paper in detail, Craig. I've purchased almost all the CIT DVDs and, although the witness statements were compelling, all the "official"-supporting witnesses troubled me. I was only vaguely aware of the battle lines that had been drawn, until the Cole/Chandler paper came out. Since then I've become much more aware of the infighting and the Leggett paper(s), and it was helpful to get your side of the story, especially since I, like you, have a real respect for David Chandler's otherwise clear thinking and ability to communicate. I admit I'm completely puzzled by Chandler's participation in this attack, and can only assume, as you have, that he's the victim of disinformation. And one of the helpful observations to come out of my following through on your references was the point that none of the "official" witnesses (except possibly one) claims to have actually seen a plane hit the lightpoles.

But the reason I'm writing now is that one of the useful threads you refer to, on the Dihle interviews (http://z3.invisionfree.com/CIT/index.php?showtopic=499&st=0) contains a link to an interview you did with Dihle (http://www.thepentacon.com/ErikDihle.WMA). It is troubling or confusing, because he explicitly refers to the "2nd plane" as a regular commuter flight -- "a standard plane that flew over every day around that time, 9-whatever-it-is in the morning," not as a C-130. Yet you seem to ignore him, since you immediately talk about it as Lt.Col. Steve Obrien and the C-130. In the original interview (http://www.thepentacon.com/neit426.mp3, 0:55-) Dihle refers to it as a four-engine-overhead-turboprop, which obviously also matches a C-130, but a few seconds later he clearly refers to it as the regular "commuter jet."

It seems that you are assuming he was mistaken, and that the C-130 happened to be there about the same time the commuter jet would have come (which perhaps was grounded elsewhere as part of the national order), and that Dihle couldn't tell the difference. But you don't say so. Is that the case? Thanks for any help on this.

[Craig Ranke CIT]

I really appreciate your taking the time to respond to the paper in detail, Craig. I've purchased almost all the CIT DVDs and, although the witness statements were compelling, all the "official"-supporting witnesses troubled me. I was only vaguely aware of the battle lines that had been drawn, until the Cole/Chandler paper came out. Since then I've become much more aware of the infighting and the Leggett paper(s), and it was helpful to get your side of the story, especially since I, like you, have a real respect for David Chandler's otherwise clear thinking and ability to communicate. I admit I'm completely puzzled by Chandler's participation in this attack, and can only assume, as you have, that he's the victim of disinformation. And one of the helpful observations to come out of my following through on your references was the point that none of the "official" witnesses (except possibly one) claims to have actually seen a plane hit the lightpoles.

But the reason I'm writing now is that one of the useful threads you refer to, on the Dihle interviews (http://z3.invisionfree.com/CIT/index.php?showtopic=499&st=0) contains a link to an interview you did with Dihle (http://www.thepentacon.com/ErikDihle.WMA). It is troubling or confusing, because he explicitly refers to the "2nd plane" as a regular commuter flight -- "a standard plane that flew over every day around that time, 9-whatever-it-is in the morning," not as a C-130. Yet you seem to ignore him, since you immediately talk about it as Lt.Col. Steve Obrien and the C-130. In the original interview (http://www.thepentacon.com/neit426.mp3, 0:55-) Dihle refers to it as a four-engine-overhead-turboprop, which obviously also matches a C-130, but a few seconds later he clearly refers to it as the regular "commuter jet."

It seems that you are assuming he was mistaken, and that the C-130 happened to be there about the same time the commuter jet would have come (which perhaps was grounded elsewhere as part of the national order), and that Dihle couldn't tell the difference. But you don't say so. Is that the case? Thanks for any help on this.

Hi mainer,

Thanks for the kind words of support and for looking at the information closely by clicking on the sources. I really appreciate that.

Yes as you said Dihle referred to it as a "four-engine overhead wing turboprop plane", which obviously matches a C-130, but he also refers to it as a "regular commuter plane". He told me it had four engines, two on each wing as well.

It can't be both (he was not describing two separate planes) and since we know that we have several eyewitness accounts documented (as well as video evidence) that it was a C-130 while there are no other accounts of a "commuter plane" arriving a few minutes after the explosion we know for a fact which of the conflicting descriptions that he used is accurate. We have never denied that eyewitness accounts are subjective and prone to error and that they often describe things improperly and/or use wrong terminology. This is why we rely so heavily on corroboration and Dihle's original detailed description from weeks after the event of this second plane being a "four-engine overhead wing turboprop plane" is heavily corroborated. The fact is that Dihle may have assumed the C-130 was on its regular route but this is simply not true as we know that ATC asked them to turn around and try to report back on the attack jet, which they had lost sight of before the explosion. Of course we can't talk about the C-130 without also noting how the pilot admitted in an email to Rob with P4T that they were so far away at the time of the explosion that they could not tell where it was coming from:

"I was not able to see exactly where or what it had impacted, but remember trying to approximate a position to give to ATC."
-C-130 Pilot Lt. Col. Steve O'Brien

The Pentagon is massive compared to a 757 so if they couldn't see the Pentagon there is no way they could see an "impact" or flyover.

Obviously none of this is relevant to the main point made in the essay which is that Dihle said that one of the first things people were saying immediately after the explosion was that "a bomb had hit the Pentagon and a jet kept on going".

As you also heard unfortunately he had no recollection of this when I called him years later. No doubt he wrote it off as inconsequential and obviously accepted the witnesses who were deceived into believing the impact since this obviously matched the official story. It stands to reason that he also had written off the "four-engine overhead wing turboprop plane" as inconsequential as well. Nevertheless his initial account is on audio recording so we know that he DID report it as this and that he DID also report that immediately after the explosion people said ""a bomb went off and a jet kept on going" even though he no longer remembers this. Of course he even admitted as much to me.

Regardless his account of the approach DIRECTION of the C-130 as being from the NW is also a heavily corroborated detail that is fatal to the official story on an entirely different level.

For the details regarding why this is so important I recommend you view this full-length presentation:
http://www.citizeninvestigationteam.com/videos-htpio.html

This post has been edited by Craig Ranke CIT: Feb 6 2011, 10:45 PM