Pentagon Videos of 9/11 Released

By Tom Vanden Brook

WASHINGTON — The Defense Department released videos on Tuesday of the American Airlines jet that slammed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. The terrorist attack killed 189 people.

The Pentagon made the videos available for the first time on its website in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from Judicial Watch, a public-interest group.

“There’s so much rumor and conspiracy theory stuff out there, and we thought it was important to get to the bottom of it and set the record straight,” said Christopher Farrell, the group’s director of research. “These are the first official releases from the Pentagon ever. Now the public can draw their own conclusions.”

A film called Loose Change has raised the theory that the Pentagon was hit by a cruise missile fired by the military as an excuse to go to war. The film, developed by two men in their early 20s on a laptop computer, has become a cult hit in university towns and some European cities.

Farrell says he believes the videos released Tuesday show an airliner slamming into the building.

The videos, taken by security cameras, show the front of the airliner entering the screen from the right an instant before impact. An orange fireball then climbs into the blue sky as the jet hits the military headquarters. Black and gray smoke billow from the building and bits of debris appear settle on the road in front of the camera.

Cheryl Irwin, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said families of the attack’s victims had been informed of the videos’ release.

The Pentagon withheld release of the videos until the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui was completed, Farrell said. Moussaoui, 37, pleaded guilty in April 2005 to six counts of conspiring with al-Qaeda to fly planes into U.S. buildings. He received a life-without-parole prison sentence this month.

On Sept. 11, five hijackers took control of American Airlines Flight 77, which had taken off from Dulles International Airport outside Washington. They slammed the jet into the Pentagon at 9:38 a.m., killing all 59 passengers and crewmembers aboard the flight. An additional 125 people inside the building were killed. The five hijackers also died.

Four airliners were hijacked on Sept. 11. Two were flown into the World Trade Center in New York. Passengers on a fourth jet fought with the hijackers, and the jet crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pa. In all, about 3,000 people were killed by the attacks.

(c) Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.