Flight 93 crash sight photographer - 'Nothing bigger then a phone book'

[DoYouEverWonder]

Interesting report I just stumbled across from one of the Reuters photographers who arrived at the crash site on the afternoon of 9-11. Three seperate times he repeats there was nothing at the crash site larger then a phone book.

No survivors, just debris and a large crater. No engines. No fuselage. “Nothing larger than a phone book”. So where's the plane?

<snip>

After exiting the turnpike an exit too early and winding my way along a mountainous stretch of the Lincoln Highway (U.S. RT. 30), a sign for Shanksville said turn left six miles. Four miles ahead the silhouette of a Pennsylvania State Trooper stood guarding the long driveway of a landfill. After identifying myself to the trooper I commented about the size of the debris field. He told that there was no debris field that the largest piece of the plane was “nothing larger than a phone book”. Nothing left.

After some ribbing on the fact that I had just covered a long drive in a short period of time the trooper directed me to the press staging area, but I proceeded into Shanksville to find Jason Cohn. Jason had been allowed near the scene. Jason pulled his car beside mine. I asked him to take me as close to the scene as possible as my cell phone signal was stronger near the crash scene than in Shanksville, and this is how we would transmit his images.

The pictures from Shanksville were not dramatic or exciting, couldn’t hold a light to the World Trade Center photos. They would help to tell this horrendous story. Jason had bummed a digital camera from a friend as his Reuters issued camera was in for repair, shot a few frames of white suited emergency personnel walking near some trees. The trooper was right, “nothing larger than a phone book”. Jason headed on his way, as he had shot film of the scene as well and needed to process and transmit these. No access to the debris field area until tomorrow was the answer from the command center as my arrival was too late. I secured a motel room for the night, had a quick sandwich for dinner and sat glued to the television waiting for the news of survivors from the World Trade Center.

Up early, to the crash scene at first light, through the mist the sight of many tall radio antennas appeared magically in the overnight on the hill overlooking the crash site. The word from the NTSB and the FBI was that media would be allowed to the scene on two buses in the early afternoon. Sit and wait, listen to and photograph an angry Congressman, Special Agent in Charge, National Guardsmen putting up a tent. Time to go to the crash scene. A lot of media, television, photographers, writers, anxious to see the crash site. The buses unloaded in an area overlooking the landfill crash site, maybe 500 yards away.

Yellow tape marked a stopping point on the hillside. Nothing in view said "plane crash". It was just a field, with people in yellow and white suits, and lots of little flags. A plume of smoke starts to rise in the woods, and outlines some trees that were charred in the fiery crash. A piece of metal hangs in a tree. “Nothing larger than a phone book”. To the top of the hill, not far enough. "Stop! Now!", I’m told.

The crater starts to take shape higher on the hill. The crater with crash debris as far as eighty feet deep in the landfill. A ridge blocked most of the crater from view as the people in suits walked aimlessly around the site pausing to look at items on the ground. A few trailers from the various investigative agencies lined an access road on the edge of the landfill. No survivors, just debris and a large crater. No engines. No fuselage. “Nothing larger than a phone book”.

Tim Shaffer
5-15-02


http://americanhistory.si.edu/september11/collection/supporting.asp?ID=44

[bushatbooker]

1. That's because small debris is easier to plant

and all the plane debris seen at Shanksville looks obviously planted, especially this...


http://www.rcfp.org/moussaoui/

[New World Odor]

2. but of course

but of course...the red bandana ploy

[BuddyYoung]

3. Has the Government announced the results of DNA testing on the bandana?

Seems pretty basic that DNA testing would have been done, especially in light of the fact that the Government said it would provide proof of their version of what happened on 911.

[Ferry Fey]

4. Mrs Tiggywinkle of the FBI

They appear to have washed and ironed the DNA out of the "bandana." So sorry.

[mirandapriestly]

5. hehheh.nt

[mirandapriestly]

6. It is coming out that the CIA planted evidence

in the Lockerbie bombing for those of you that don't think intelligence agencies plant stuff. Especially during republican administrations.

" A FORMER Scottish police chief has given lawyers a signed statement claiming that key evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial was fabricated.

The retired officer - of assistant chief constable rank or higher - has testified that the CIA planted the tiny fragment of circuit board crucial in convicting a Libyan for the 1989 mass murder of 270 people. "...

http://news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1855852005

[bushatbooker]

7. Good find!

Now OCT's can't say our CIA doesn't plant evidence!

[Bolo Boffin]

8. Find the Lear Jet!!!

Somebody says a Lear Jet crashed here...how can that be! There's no debris anywhere!



Somebody else said a DC-10 crashed here...where? All that little debris, it must have been planted!



The Value-Swamp! Swallows huge planes whole and heals instantly! Maybe they used this stuff to develop the Penta-Lawn!

[bushatbooker]

9. 1st photo is a bad close-up...

2nd photo shows TONS of debris (something you'd expect with the Shanksville crash).

3rd photo....yes....it's a swamp. No surprise there...it's a swamp.

[Bolo Boffin]

12. Stop evading the obvious.

One picture tells the whole story, doesn't it?

I don't see a scrap of Lear Jet there, do you? The Payne Stewart incident was obviously a pre-false flag operation, to establish the long time that fighter jets would use to get to those planes. It's all a lie!

[bushatbooker]

13. which pic are you talking about?

[Bolo Boffin]

15. Which picture has the Lear Jet in it??

It should be obvious, shouldn't it?

The very fact that you have to ask which picture has the Lear Jet in it shows just how devious these false flag operations are. The government obviously planted all of that evidence!

What gets me is how they created this golf pro all those years to set this whole thing up...or maybe Payne Stewart accepted the call of his government and helped get the place where all the plane "passengers" were taken to rebuild their lives apart from their loved ones. Those Bushistas, they think of everything (except framing Saddam overtly for the attacks...I wonder why they didn't do that? Oh, it was probably to throw people off the trail. When do the Bushistas ever go to the bathroom?)

[bushatbooker]

17. the 1st pic is bad, 2nd shows a plane crash, 3rd

is a swamp.

[DoYouEverWonder]

10. The Value Jet that went down in the Everglades

was eventually recovered and rebuilt. So even though the mucky swamp that it flew into swallowed the plane, it didn't disappear. The 'crash site' in Shanksville was not a mucky swamp. Rescue teams eventually dug down 45 feet, yet still no plane.

BTW: The first two picture do show recognizable parts of planes. Try again.

[Bolo Boffin]

11. Recognizable pieces of planes? They were planted.

Prove they weren't.

95% of Flight 93? Recovered. The black boxes were 25 feet down.

I'm curious: what's your source that they dug 45 feet down?

http://www.post-gazette.com/headlines/20010925scene0925p2.asp

[bushatbooker]

14. Funny "95% of UA 93" was recovered

when there is hardly any plane debris seen around the crater or when the excavated there.

Who told the media that much was recovered?

[Bolo Boffin]

16. I think my links speaks for itself.

Try reading it - it's not going to install unstoppable spyware on your computer to sap your precious bodily fluids.

I promise.

[bushatbooker]

18. Ah yes, the FBI "said so"

"The FBI said yesterday that it has finished its work at the crash scene of United Flight 93 after recovering about 95 percent of the downed airliner and concluding that explosives were not responsible for bringing it down."


Do you believe them?

[Bolo Boffin]

21. The FBI said it dug 45 feet down.

Do you believe them?

[bushatbooker]

22. I'll answer your question as soon as you answer mine

which I asked you first.

[Bolo Boffin]

23. I'll answer yours if you answer mine... n/t

[bushatbooker]

36. Why won't you answer my question that I asked you first?

scared?

[Bolo Boffin]

38. Why won't you answer my question that I asked you second?

scared?

[DoYouEverWonder]

32. According to the OCTer version

Flight 93 suddenly went nose down straight into the ground. The area it landed in was an old strip mine and the ground was relatively soft. We now have evidence from an 'official' source that says they dug 45 feet down.

Question 1 - Do you accept this version of events?

Question 2 - How long is a Boeing 757-222?

[Bolo Boffin]

33. How long IS a Boeing 757-222?

Are you about to compare the depth to which investigators dug and the length of the jet and conclude that the plane couldn't fit in there?

Of all the strawmen in the world, the literally-minded one is one of my favorites to behold in construction. You look at it and say, "They couldn't be so silly as to think that's a possibility, and yet they've spent so much energy dissecting it."

[DoYouEverWonder]

34. Of course, I would expect a plane flying into the ground

to end up significantly shorter then it was to begin with.



But here's what doesn't make sense with the OCTer theory, which seems to vary. Either the plane exploded above ground and scattered or it plowed into the ground relatively in tack. (Which OCTer theory would you like to go with?)

If it exploded, when did it explode? At 10,000', 5000', 200' or 10'? The crash site would certainly be larger the higher up the plane was when it exploded and there wouldn't be such a small and compact gouge. If the plane stayed together and nosedived into the ground, then you would expect that at least some of the 44' high tail would be visible?

(My apologizes if you've already hashed this out before, but some of these areas of speculation are new for me. It's only been the last few months that I've hung out down here a fair bit and have gotten into looking at the physical evidence.)

[DoYouEverWonder]

19. Source = PA DEP

See the caption for the 2nd picture from the top on page 6.

9/16/2001 - Somerset Crash Site- FBI and other investigators at the scene have excavated the crash site down to a depth of about 45 feet looking for clues. Digging a trench that deep requires special care to avoid cave-ins and constant monitoring to ensure any fumes from soil contaminated with jet fuel and hydraulic fluid do not present a hazard to emergency workers.

http://www.dep.state.pa.us/dep/emergency/pictures/091201f.htm


In regards to the article you posted, I'm still chewing on that one. Interesting how they could recover most of the plane, despite the fact that parts of it were found spread around an 8 mile area, some of which was recovered from a lake, in just 2 weeks. Seems a pretty quick rush to judgment to claim that the plane exploded but there wasn't any bombs involved. It usually takes months if not years to put a passenger plane back together and figure out what went wrong.

[Bolo Boffin]

20. The explosion happened (I take it) on impact.

It's a given that the plane exploded. The statements about no explosives aboard seem aimed at the terrorists having bombs. Passengers reported that the hijackers had bombs. The agent was making it clear that wasn't the case, based on what he'd seen.

[mhatrw]

24. Interesting, then, that only 8% of the bodies were ever recovered.

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/103-09102005-539399.html

Only about 650 pounds of human remains, just 8 percent of the total the people on board would have weighed, were collected - leaving little traditional pathology work to do, Miller says.

I'd venture that when they estimated that 95% was recovered in the article you linked, they meant 95% of what they felt could be reasonably recovered. Wouldn't you agree?

[mike923]

25. I was driving home last night....

and a bug hit my windshield. I couldn't tell what kind of bug it was, nor make out what parts of the bug the mess that remained was.

I'm assuming it was a bug, but i can't prove it.

[mhatrw]

30. That's supposed to be what?

Funny? Illustrative? Poignant? Insightful?

Is the your point that you cared about the bug just as much as the people looking for remains cared about Flight 93's victims? That they didn't care about the victim's remains as long as they recovered 95% of the plane?

[Bolo Boffin]

26. Bodies are made of different things than airliners.

I think the article is pretty clear about recovering "95% of the downed aircraft". They released an inventory of the recovered pieces.

[DoYouEverWonder]

27. How could they even claim they recovered 95% of the plane

Since most of it burnt to a crisp supposedly?

Besides wouldn't it require a rebuild of the plane to determine how much was actually recovered? Seems it usually takes a lot longer then one month to recover and rebuild most planes from crashes? Yet the article claims that 95% of the plane was recovered and they were even able to determine a bomb was not used. These are pretty amazing folks.

[mhatrw]

29. Really? Care to produce it? (nt)

[Bolo Boffin]

35. Sure! I just happen to have my copy right here.

[Andre II]

41. Funny, funny, funny

especially as coroner Wallace Miller talks of 8% recovered. This is slightly less than the 95% the FBI claims....
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=125x42307

[sgsmith]

28. ValueJet

Sorry - ValueJet 592 was not rebuilt. From the NTSB final report, page 100
http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/1997/AAR9706.pdf

"Evidence from the CVR revealed that about 6 minutes after takeoff from Miami,
the crew of flight 592 became aware of a fire in the passenger cabin. Approximately 10 minutes
after takeoff, flight 592 crashed into the Florida Everglades. The accident was not survivable.
The catastrophic impact and destruction of the airplane precluded complete recovery of all
airplane components. However, the wreckage that was recovered provided evidence of fire
damage throughout the majority of the forward cargo compartment and areas of the airplane
above it, with the most severe fire damage found in the ceiling area of the forward part of this
compartment. Other areas of the airplane did not show significant fire damage, including the
cockpit and the electronics compartment of the airplane located beneath the cockpit."

There is no discussion in the report about rebuilding the wreckage.

[DoYouEverWonder]

31. Until 9-11

the NSTB and the airlines always put back together as much of the plane as possible. It was SOP. The only time they have not done this in recent memory is with the planes that crashed on 9-11. A recent Boeing retiree told me that they never recovered enough of any of the planes to even try a rebuild. 4 separate crashes, no bodies, no planes. Yeah, right.


Here's a reference for the Valujet recovery:


Much was made of this recovery, which -- prior to the offshore retrieval of TWA's Flight 800 -- the NTSB called the most challenging in its history. It is true that the swamp made the search slow and difficult, and that the violence of the impact meant that meticulous work was required to reconstruct the critical forward cargo hold. However, it is also true that the physical part of the investigation served to confirm what a look at a shipping ticket had already suggested -- that ValuJet Flight 592 burned and crashed not because the airplane failed but, in large part, because the airline did.

http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:lIE3yMMIq84J:www.brooks.af.mil/web/af/courses/amp/AMP_Online/AMP_Lectures/THE%2520LESSONS%2520OF%2520VALUJET%2520592.doc+Valujet+592+reconstruct&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=3&client=firefox-a

[Jazz2006]

37. Well, these look "larger than a phone book" ....

[bushatbooker]

39. But they said the ENTIRE plane went underground at 580mph

how did they pieces manage to escape???

And of the engine photo, why did the rest of the plane dig further than the hardest/strongest/heaviest piece? And why is there like hardly any other pieces of debris around near the engine in the crater?

[Andre II]

40. Nothing of this was found

on September 11 but later.