Pentagon hit by cruise missile on 9/11

Pentagon was hit by a cruise missile

Leuren Moret read eyewitness accounts and examined pictures of the Pentagon after it was attacked on September 11, 2001 at 9:37 am. Her conclusion disputes the official version that a Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon. What actually hit it was a cruise missile armed with a depleted uranium warhead. She presented her views on the Pentagon attack in a lecture given on January 12, 2009. You can see the video here.

Moret graduated from UC Davis with a geology degree in 1968. From 1989 to 1991 she worked as a geoscientist at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Laboratory. Although she was the kind of person who had lots of friends, she failed to make any at Livermore. "It was all secrecy and compartmentalized,” she said. “It was just so weird that I left."

Surprisingly, for someone who worked full time on nuclear weapons projects, she “learned absolutely nothing about radiation." Livermore deliberately kept people in the dark about its true nature, fearing that, if people knew, they could never get anyone to work for them.

It was not until the year 2000, when she went to Japan that she learned the horrific effects of nuclear radiation from atom bomb survivors. "It completely changed my life. I said in the peace museums of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that I must work on this issue for the rest of my life. I'm not working in a bomb factory or for a corporation or for a government. I'm working for the citizens of the world and for all living things.”

She began working with Major Doug Rokke, an outspoken critic of the use of depleted uranium ammunition. Projectiles filled with ten pounds of DU were extremely effective in destroying enemy tanks. Once an anti-tank round leaves the barrel of a gun it sheds its sabot and immediately catches fire. (Uranium spontaneously ignites at room temperature when exposed to oxygen.) The hefty projectile, burning at 10,800 degrees Fahrenheit, easily penetrates tank armor and creates an aerosol of very fine particles. The results are catastrophic – a firestorm inside the tank causing tremendous burns and tremendous injuries. Yet the effects of DU do not end there. Long after a round is expended, it has two additional effects. First, it acts as a particulate poison. Heavy metal particles, about 0.1 microns or less, enter the body in a variety of ways and wreck chemical havoc at the cellular level. Secondly, DU is radioactive, producing gamma ray ionization tracks that damage tissues and DNA

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Rokke was attached to an army unit, consisting of about a hundred men, that specialized in nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. After the Persian Gulf War of 1991 was over, his unit was assigned the task of cleaning military vehicles contaminated with DU. They had no specialized training nor protective gear. Within 72 hours, Rokke and his men were coming down with respiratory problems, rashes, and bleeding open sores. As the years went by, these same men came down with more serious illnesses: cancers, neurological problems, fibromyalgia, cataracts, and other maladies associated with heavy metal toxicity and radiation exposure. Many of them, at least thirty, died premature deaths. Rokke afterwards collaborated with Moret in efforts to elevate public pressure on the government and the military to stop using DU in their weapon systems.

When the September 11 attacks occurred, Moret suspected that depleted uranium had been dispersed over the Pentagon crash site. She knew that commercial jetliners and military aircraft use DU counterweights to stabilize the wings and tail. When a plane breaks apart, as in the case of the one that supposedly smashed into the Pentagon, there is a possibility that DU had been released into the air.

The Pentagon is a massive five-story fortress with five sides and five concentric rings, divided into five wedges. The point of impact was the first floor of Wedge 1 near the spot where it joins Wedge 2, located on the western side. The penetrating object came into the building at a 42 degree angle and tore through E-ring, D-ring, and even breached C-ring of Wedge 2 before it spent its momentum. Thirty-eight minutes later, around 10:15 a.m., the area above the entry hole collapsed, pulling down the upper floors and roof above it.

The collapse zone was about 95 feet wide and approximately 50 feet at its deepest point, reaching to the inner wall of the first ring, which remained standing. It was in an area that had just been renovated to withstand a massive bomb blast. On September 11, construction workers were five days short from completing their work on Wedge 1. All that remained was some touch-up work. The overall plan was to harden the exterior walls of all five Wedges, one at a time, beginning with Wedge 1, which started on February 12, 1998. Work on Wedge 2 was to begin after the completion of Wedge 1. The Pentagon Renovation Project was prompted by a truck bombing at the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993 and by another truck bombing at the Alfred Murrah building on April 19, 1995 in Oklahoma City. Just before the attack on September 11, two thirds of the occupants of Wedge 2 had moved out of their offices, and four fifths of the people who had offices in Wedge 1 had moved back in. 

Among the renovations specific to hardening the facade were the insertion of vertical steel beams, 6 by 6 inches, on each side of every exterior window. Each beam was bolted into reinforced concrete slabs located between each floor. Above and below each window were horizontal beams that were welded to the two vertical beams on each side. Replacing the old exterior windows were steel-framed windows with blast-resistant panes two inches thick. Total weight for a single window was about 2500 pounds. Although these renovations were originally designed to neutralize truck bombings, they could also serve as a barrier to any incoming aircraft.

Fears about DU radiation led Moret to call a friend, Janette Sherman, who lived about twelve miles from the Pentagon. (Tests have shown that DU dust can spread as far as 25 miles.) Sherman was a doctor specializing in the hazards of radiation. The two women agreed that the most pressing task was to monitor the air with a Geiger counter. Sherman took her first reading around noon EST and made additional readings throughout the day. She called her friend back the next day. Radiation levels twelve miles from the Pentagon were ten times higher than normal. The situation called for immediate action. Protective gear with air tanks must be issued to all emergency responders working at the Pentagon.

Not trusting government agencies to move fast enough, Sherman made a call to an influential person in a non-governmental organization. That person in turn notified emergency responder organizations and the Environmental Protection Agency. Two days later, the EPA informed Sherman’s contact in the NGO that the crash site was indeed radioactive, and added, “We believe it's depleted uranium.” From that point on, emergency responders suited up in full protective gear.

Through his contacts in the military, Doug Rokke received aerial photos of the Pentagon that had not been released to the public and sent copies to Moret. After viewing the photos, she began to question the story that a plane hit the Pentagon. Clearly visible was an entry hole about sixteen feet in diameter with a perfectly round shape. Absent on the lawn was any evidence of aircraft debris. The picture was taken from an Army helicopter soon after the building was hit but before the hole was covered up by the collapsing floors above it.

Another telling picture shows a large hole on the inner wall of C-ring. On the right side of the hole are the words “Punch Out" painted in big letters by a crash site inspector. The term is used on gunnery ranges to mark the back of targets where a bullet or shell had punched through. Evidently, something punched through the first, second, and third rings of the Pentagon.

Whatever it was, it was not an airplane, according to Specialist April Gallop, who was among the small number of people who had not moved out of Wedge 2. In fact, September 11 was her first day back at work after a maternity leave. She worked at the Information Management Support Center (IMCEN) on the first floor in room 1E517. Since her babysitter was sick, she brought her two-year-son Elisha to work and put him in a stroller by her desk. As she was about to turn on her computer, boom! she was suddenly buried under an avalanche of jagged pieces of wallboard, ceiling tiles, furniture, and computers. Arms and legs sprouted strangely out of the debris. In the smoke-darkened room, flames provided the only light. She managed to find her son, who was still alive, took him in her arms, and exited the building through the gaping hole allegedly made by an airplane. At first, she thought that it was a bomb explosion but when told it was an airplane, she scoffed at the idea. She said, "l was fifty feet from the impact zone. The engine should have been in my lap." Recalling what she saw that day, she said she saw smoke and flames but no aircraft wreckage nor any jet fuel infernos. The illustration below shows where her room was located.

.Since it was not an airplane, what was it?

Rokke had extensive contacts throughout the military establishment. As early as twenty minutes after the attack, around 10:00 am, he got an email from a colonel, who said that a cruise missile had just hit the Pentagon. 

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld also said it was a missile. According to Leuren Moret:

“Rumsfeld has said in three different press conferences (one of them is still on the Pentagon Press Room web page) that a missile hit the Pentagon. He said it three different times.”

Radiation emanating from the crash site is evidence that the missile was armed with a depleted uranium warhead. This would explain how it could penetrate so deeply into a retrofitted section of the building.

Rokke sent Moret an army publication for officers. It had an interview with Dalisay Olaes, a civilian who worked in the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Peronnel located on the second floor in room 2E477.

Well, we were all standing around in our offices watching the planes flying into the World Trade Center. It was really kind of Orwellian. I called my husband and said "you better come and get me." We were watching that, and then right below where we were standing, there was, all of a sudden, this big noise. We really couldn't quite believe it but the missile hit, or whatever it was, hit right below us.

As recalled by Olaes, the floor beneath them shuddered and fractured. They heard a loud bang, and a fireball passed through. Burning ceiling tiles began to drop on them like hot cinder balls. The hair of the women caught fire, and they had to bat out the flames. Filing cabinets and blizzards of paper flew around the room. The room filled with a black acrid smoke. Specialist Michael Petrovich instructed everyone to form a human chain and follow him, crawling underneath the smoke toward the inner wall of C-ring. From a second floor window, one by one, they leaped into the arms of people gathered in the service road between the C and B rings. Olaes broke her leg, when she jumped out of the window, but otherwise, she and all her co-workers survived with only first and second degree burns. Other people were not so fortunate. In spite of the elaborate design of the renovations, 125 people perished out of approximately 800 that were on the premises at the time.

It is a wonder how anyone on the second floor could have survived with a missile passing only five feet below them. Normally, a missile makes a path into a target by pushing material out of its way, creating a lot of secondary damage before it explodes. Anyone within the zone of secondary damage, such as the people on the second floor, would have been severely wounded or killed.

If the missile had a DU warhead, it creates a path by melting much of the material in front of it. It could therefore travel much further into a target than an ordinary missile. Secondary damage would be minimal.

The Pentagon is the most protected building in the world. It had ample means to shoot any missile or plane coming towards it. It is only when a stand-down order is given that it becomes vulnerable to an attack. This was brought out during the testimony of Norman Mineta, Secretary of the Transportation Department.

MR. HAMILTON: We thank you for that. I wanted to focus just a moment on the Presidential Emergency Operating Center. You were there for a good part of the day. I think you were there with the vice president. And when you had that order given, I think it was by the president, that authorized the shooting down of commercial aircraft that were suspected to be controlled by terrorists, were you there when that order was given?

MR. MINETA: No, I was not. I was made aware of it during the time that the airplane coming into the Pentagon. There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, "The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out." And when it got down to, "The plane is 10 miles out," the young man also said to the vice president, "Do the orders still stand?" And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, "Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?" Well, at the time I didn't know what all that meant. And --

MR. HAMILTON: The flight you're referring to is the --

MR. MINETA: The flight that came into the Pentagon.

Not only was Vice President Dick Cheney responsible for what happened at the Pentagon, he also tried to maximize the number of deaths by deliberately not warning people of the impending attack.

Two more malefactors conspiring to attack the Pentagon were Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (On September 11, the Chairman, General Hugh Shelton, was on board a C-135 traveling to Europe for a NATO  meeting. When he heard about the attacks, he turned the plane around to go back to Washington.) Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Myers were defendants in a lawsuit brought against them in 2008 by April Gallop. Although a court dismissed the lawsuit as "frivolous" in 2010, credit should be given to Gallop for exposing the leading perpetrators.

As indicated by Mineta, a plane was heading toward the Pentagon. Excellent work done by the Citizen Investigation Team (Craig Ranke and Aldo Marquis) located and interviewed witnesses who saw a passenger jetliner heading toward the western side of the Pentagon. They were consistent in their statements that the course of the plane took it past the north side of a CITGO gas station (represented by blue line), banked to the right, straightened out to approach the Pentagon at approximately a 90 degree angle. This is different from the official version (represented by red line) that said the plane passed the south side of the gas station and flew toward the Pentagon at a 42 degree angle. 

The plane the witnesses saw did not have the typical markings of an American Airlines jetliner. It was all white in color with black-colored numbers on the tail, and a single horizontal stripe below the windows along the side. (The plane was moving too fast for witnesses to determine precisely the color of the stripe.

Artist reconstruction

Ranke and Marquis believe that the plane did not actually hit the Pentagon but flew over it. Demolition charges inside the building were timed to go off as the plane flew by. The charges were arranged in a line to simulate the path of a plane crashing into the building. Even the "Punch Out" hole was created by a demolition charge. The direction of travel for this fake plane crash was 42 degrees

I agree with Ranke and Marquis, except that I would add that the white jetliner launched a cruise missile as it was approaching the Pentagon. The path of the missile was 90 degrees to the face of the Pentagon. The missile entered the E-ring of Wedge 1 but did not punch through to the next ring.

Among those who died in the firestorm of vaporized DU were the accountants, bookkeepers, and budget analysts of the Resources Services Washington Department. They had just moved into their new renovated office, 1E400. Since it was the end of the fiscal year, they were on the verge of releasing a financial statement. But that statement was never brought to completion. On September 11, the Program and Budget Division was hit especially hard, losing 25 of its 28 members. The Arlington County After-Action Report noted that "It was the end of the fiscal year and important budget information was in the damaged area." Insight Magazine editorialized that "the Department of the Army, headed by former Enron executive Thomas White, had an excuse [for not making a full accounting]. In a shocking appeal to sentiment it says it didn't publish a ‘stand-alone’ financial statement for 2001 because of ‘the loss of financial-management personnel sustained during the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.’"

On September 10, 2001 Rumsfeld said in a speech that the Pentagon's auditors had lost $2.3 trillion in transactions. The destruction of the budget office and the deaths of people in it the following day prevented the public from learning the details about this ongoing corruption scandal.

A building struck by a DU missile would of course, in the aftermath, become a hazardous place to work. This can be mitigated however by replacing as much contaminated structures and building materials as possible. Yet no matter how much effort clean-up crews apply in removing all the DU, there will always be a significant amount left. According to Leuren Moret, in 2009, anyone with a Geiger counter could go around the Pentagon, take soil samples, take samples of bark and tree leaves, and find that it is still radioactive.