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9-11 Archive 2004

Was Flight 93 Shot Down?

September 18, 2004

After spending a week in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, where Flight 93 went down, I can say that most people there believe it was. It should be noted that this rural part of southwestern Pennsylvania is a Republican stronghold. The truth behind what happened to United Airlines Flight 93 is not a partisan issue; it's a matter of finding the truth.

It is clear that the laws of physics do not apply to the official version of events from 9-11. I've seen that before, for example in the final report of the "Estonia" catastrophe which took the lives of 852 people in September 1994 and in the TWA Flight 800, which certainly appears to have been shot down. If Flight 93 was shot down, it would explain why one wing and engine were found more than a mile away and how 6 trash bags full of mail were found in Indian Lake, more than a mile from the crash site. This would also explain why the plane was flying upside-down, or very close to that.

Eyewitnesses told me that they heard the plane gun its engines three times, as if trying to regain altitude. With one wing missing, however, that effort was doomed to fail. This would also explain why the U.S. government was so quick to call the 40 passengers on this plane heroes. Perhaps a better word is martyrs; martyred by the state and its corrupt military. And lastly, this could explain why the smoke cloud from the crash site was so small and short-lived. Plane crashes are usually attended by huge fuel fires with huge clouds of black smoke pouring into the sky.

Eyewitnesses to the "crash" of Flight 93 report having heard a massive explosion - not a crash of a plane into the soft reclaimed soil of a former strip mine. Nena Lensbouer, who had prepared lunch for the workers at the scrap yard overlooking the crash site, was the first person to go up to the smoking crater. Lensbouer told me that the hole was five to six feet deep and smaller than the 24-foot trailer in her front yard. She described hearing "an explosion, like an atomic bomb -- not a crash," she said.

A photograph taken after the crash shows what more closely resembles the smoke cloud from a 500-pound bomb than it does a plane crashing with two-thirds of its fuel still on board.

The ground liquefied, according to the official explanation, and the plane and its contents "buried itself" into the soft ground, but it left this explosive-like smoke cloud. "It [the ground] liquefied," Bob Leverknight, an active member of the Air National Guard and correspondent with Somerset's Daily American, told me about how the wreck and much of the fuel supposedly disappeared. One of the plane's massive engines, Leverknight said, however, bounced off the ground and was found in the woods. Asked what had caused the smoke cloud seen in Val McClatchey's photo, Leverknight said, "Dirt, combustibles, and the trees." This answer seems baffling.

Eyewitnesses report hearing a huge explosion, having seen a huge mushroom cloud of flame, and the smoke cloud that resulted from that explosion resembles a bomb blast more than it does the crash of a plane loaded with jet fuel.

Susan Mcelwain, an eyewitness who saw a military plane over Shanksville before the "crash", spoke to Richard Wallace of The Mirror (UK), whose article from 2002 provides interesting information not reported in the U.S. media:

The unmarked military-style jet swooped down at high speed through the valley, twice circled the smouldering black scar where Flight 93 had careered into the ground just seconds earlier and then hurtled off over the horizon.

At least six eyewitnesses saw the mysterious aircraft on the morning of September 11 last year. But the U.S. authorities deny it ever existed.

What was the white jet doing there and why won't they admit to its presence? Why did other witnesses see smoke and flames trailing from Flight 93 as it fell from the sky, indicating a possible explosion aboard?

Susan Mcelwain, 51, who lives two miles from the site, knows what she saw - the white plane rocketed directly over her head.

"It came right over me, I reckon just 40 or 50 ft. above my mini-van," she recalled. "It was so low I ducked instinctively. It was travelling real fast, but hardly made any sound.

"Then it disappeared behind some trees. A few seconds later I heard this great explosion and saw this fireball rise up over the trees, so I figured the jet had crashed. The ground really shook. So I dialled 911 and told them what happened.

"I'd heard nothing about the other attacks and it was only when I got home and saw the TV that I realised it wasn't the white jet, but Flight 93.

I didn't think much more about it until the authorities started to say there had been no other plane. The plane I saw was heading right to the point where Flight 93 crashed and must have been there at the very moment it came down.

"There's no way I imagined this plane - it was so low it was virtually on top of me. It was white with no markings but it was definitely military, it just had that look.

"It had two rear engines, a big fin on the back like a spoiler on the back of a car and with two upright fins at the side. I haven't found one like it on the internet. It definitely wasn't one of those executive jets. The FBI came and talked to me and said there was no plane around.

"Then they changed their story and tried to say it was a plane taking pictures of the crash 3,000 ft up.

"But I saw it and it was there before the crash and it was 40ft above my head. They did not want my story - nobody here did."

As the Mirror also reported: "Light debris was also found eight miles away in New Baltimore. A section of engine weighing a ton was located 2,000 yards - over a mile - from the crash site. Theorists point out a Sidewinder heat-seeking missile attacks the hottest part of aircraft - the engine.

"The authorities say the impact bounced it there. But the few pieces of surviving fuselage, local coroner Wallace Miller told us, were "no bigger than a carrier bag".

"Nearly all the passengers were reduced to charcoal on impact and the largest piece of human tissue found was a section of spine eight inches long," Richard Wallace reported from what Wallace Miller said. How were the passengers "reduced to charcoal on impact?"

One of the local residents told me that his biggest question is: "How did 6 bags of mail wind up in Indian Lake, a mile from the crash site?" The wing and engine found more than a mile from the crash site and the mail found at Indian Lake suggest that the plane was shot down, while eyewitness testimony and evidence from the crash site suggest explosives accompanied the crash.