EDIT: My imagination got carried away. I am now certain it's just the flag that sits at the top of the flagpole on the Whitehouse building, superimposed in line with the Washington Monument.

I was going through Wikileaks' 9/11 Pager intercepts and came across some curiosities.

There certainly was a lot of conflicting reports about what was going on (like the supposed 'car-bombing outside the state department' - which was both confirmed and denied by department officials) - but the one that really got me was reports by a FEMA staff member that the Washington Monument has been hit.

2001-09-11 10:21:33 Skytel [003914132] B ALPHA Kristina.Miles@fema.gov||washington monument has been hit. -kristina

It was also reported by someone else:

2001-09-11 10:19:18 Arch [0951878] B ALPHA Fred, "Red Alert". Capital and Washington Monument also aledgely hit. All govenment employees in Washington sent hom [sic]

There is only one piece of footage I could find that showed something happening at the Washington Monument, in this (terribly edited) video.

It was filmed during the morning in Washington directly after the explosion at the pentagon, and shows an extremely brief shot of the monument, with what looks like a plume of smoke puffing out the side of it. It was supposedly taken by BBC world news and aired during an afternoon update.

I found the original footage of that moment, but it's the footage that was aired during the morning, and the beginning of the shot with the monument in it, is not shown: https://youtu.be/01KxvTo_9HA?t=5424 @1.30.24

The same footage was aired again, apparently in the afternoon at 5:04pm, and contains the very beginning of the shot. I know this is the same shot, due to the shape of the smoke coming from the pentagon.

Can anyone find the original BBC footage from that afternoon, that still shows the Washington Monument?

EDIT: The only other place I could find anyone even mentioning this online was this, rather unhelpful, video (still frames... really?).

However according to the video, there is footage of a man outside the pentagon talking to a reporter who was "interrupted by another guy that said the Washington Monument was hit".

The video seems to suggest that this guy might be the person, but it's not very clear.

Has anyone seen an interview with this guy before? Do the streets behind him even look like DC, or more like New York?

http://imgur.com/a/cHqHa

35 comments

1 mmfb16 2017-07-12

There are only two supported accounts of confiscated footage outside the five-frame Pentagon security tapes: Citgo and Doubletree. These tapes were publicly released years ago.

There is no proof that more than three tapes around the Pentagon's vicinity were seized by the FBI.

There is no proof that other tapes apart from the parking lot footage depict a Boeing 757 impact.

The rest of the claimed "85 confiscated videotapes" were voluntarily sent in from private individuals to the FBI's field offices, and are privately held footage. Thus, in order to release them publicly, permission would need to be secured from the individual who owns that footage. The majority of the tapes sent in have no relation to the Pentagon crash at all.

Neither the DoD nor the FBI ever claimed to have eighty-five tapes depicting a Boeing 757 crash into the Pentagon, if that's what you're referring to.

A 2004 FOIA request asked for footage depicting the crash of Flight 77. The agent who replied to the FOIA request determined that the FBI "was in possession of eighty-five videotapes related to 9/11". It then went on to categorize what was contained on 29 of the tapes she reviewed personally. (The other 56 cropped up in an initial database search and didn't even show the Pentagon building).

16 of those 29 tapes showed the Pentagon, but "did not show the Pentagon crash site nor the impact into the Pentagon." Of the remaining 13 videos, 12 showed the Pentagon only after the impact. That leaves just one tape: the parking lot footage. Which was released. 14 years ago. The other videos weren't released, because those did not fulfill the claimant's request. The person asked for footage of Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon, and the closest tapes to that request that the agent could find were the Doubletree and Citgo tapes (i.e. it captured when the impact happened, but not directly).

In other words, the agent was simply itemizing the tapes she thought the FBI had, and excluded the ones which weren't relevant to the person's request.

Somehow, no-planers read the quotation above, and got the idea that the FBI confiscated 85 tapes that showed clear footage of the impact. This is how the "confiscated tapes" claim got started: from a misreading of a reply to a FOIA request.

In complying with the FOIA request, the FBI released the relevant footage it had. This is how we got the Doubletree and Citgo videos. Up until 2006 we only had the five-frame Pentagon video (which is the only tape the Pentagon has which clearly depicts the crash).

The seized footage has been publicly released and is available on YouTube.

Doubletree Hotel footage Note the upload date.

Citgo station. Note the upload date.

Parking lot footage of impact. Released 2002.

Here is an analysis of the Boeing 757 impact from the Pentagon camera footage.

1 castle_kafka 2017-07-12

Thanks for this very thorough write up - I too would like to see more videos of the Pentagon being hit. But the topic of this post is specifically about the Washington Monument supposedly 'being hit'.

I am specifically looking for the raw BBC footage, that this video used so I can see whether the 'plume of smoke' was post-edited, or whether something really happened there that day.

1 RaiseMachine 2017-07-12

Missed my post from 2 weeks ago?

1 castle_kafka 2017-07-12

Actually, YES, I did miss it. In fact your comment is literally invisible in this thread, and I only just saw it after clicking your name. Even if I click 'context' or 'full comments' under that post, it doesn't redirect me anywhere - just says "there doesn't seem to be anything here". That sure is weird.

But, bravo for finding it - this is footage is highly strange, and pretty big news. I'm going to make a new thread.

1 castle_kafka 2017-07-12

Thanks to your find, I can see a lot more clearly - I'm 100% certain it's just the Whitehouse flag...