I thought I’d have very little extra surfing to do around 9-11 but I got two email; one suggesting that I take a look at the “hunt the Boeing” site and another suggesting that I investigate “the strange case of Atta’s passport”. So here we go…

Both of these little 9-11 mysteries have a little more credibility than the usual conspiracy-theory-for-the-credulous.

First “hunt the Boeing”.

Take a look at this website and you can hunt the Boeing yourself. In case you can’t be bothered: the site shows pictures of the Pentagon after the Boeing 757-200 hit it and, well, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence of a Boeing. The site implies that it couldn’t have been a Boeing 757-200 that hit the Pentagon.

Well sure, there’s no sign of a big airplane but there wasn’t much sign of an airplane in the wreckage of the twin towers either. The problem here is that if it wasn’t a Boeing that hit the Pentagon, then what happened to the real Boeing 757-200?

Shot down by US planes, perhaps – then why no wreckage elsewhere?

And if it wasn’t the Boeing that hit the Pentagon, what did?

Did the US attack the Pentagon with its own planes or with rockets? And then no-one noticed what was happening. I mean, no witnesses? Sounds more than a little unlikely to me. (The more people that have to lie to support a conspiracy, the less likely that it can be kept secret. Keeping people silent is difficult.)

The Boeing mystery is probably similar to the “magic bullet” problem in the assassination of JFK. The JFK conspiracy theory buffs maintained that the bullet that hit both Kennedy and John Conally would have had to have done an ‘S’ bend in mid-air. This allowed them to claim that there were more than 3 bullets fired, which meant (because Oswald’s rifle only fired 3 bullets) that there were other shooters – located of course on the now famous grassy knoll (which, incidentally, looks suspiciously like the grassy knoll that the Teletubbies live in).

Recent investigation of the JFK assassination, using modern software to model the trajectory of the bullets that Oswald (supposedly) fired, demonstrated that the magic bullet wasn’t magical at all, but went in a straight line. Which means only three bullets required and no need for any grassy knollers.

I suspect the Boeing problem is the same. It doesn’t look like it was a Boeing that hit the Pentagon, but it was.

Atta’s Passport 

However, Atta’s passport is a horse of a different colour. Atta was believed to be the leader of the hijackers and on one of the planes that hit the twin towers. In less than a week, Atta’s passport was (supposedly) found two blocks away from the twin towers. So how did that happen?

If Atta’s passport managed to escape the inferno, it was just about the only thing that did, and to honest, he probably wasn’t holding it in his hand when the plane hit the tower. The passport escaping the inferno is a trick worthy of David Copperfield and his ilk, but I guess that’s a hint. In all probability, the passport was never on the plane.

So why was it found near the twin towers? Well either it wasn’t (it was an FBI plant – but that makes no sense at all) or someone dropped it there, quite deliberately. Maybe one of the terrorist gang (who was never caught) was watching in Manhattan and just ditched it as he walked away. There is no official explanation, but so what. Sometimes things never get explained and it drives people crazy.