Not a Single Clear Video or Photo of AA Flight 77 Approaching the Pentagon

Reflecting on the nonexistence of clear video footage of a Boeing 757 maneuvering around, approaching, and then crashing into the Pentagon.

I recently had a long conversation with an old friend who was a Naval pilot and now flies for a major airline about American Airlines Flight 77 (a Boeing 757) that was purportedly hijacked shortly after takeoff from Washington Dulles airport. At an altitude of 34,000 feet, the hijacker (Hani Hanjour) then turned the plane around and headed back to Washington D.C., where he then performed a radical corkscrew diving turn around the Pentagon and—hitting an estimated speed of 460 knots (530 mph)—then lined up on the western facade (75 feet tall) and perfectly pinned it.

According to the official narrative, Hani Hanjour received some flight simulator training—that is, a few sessions at the Sawyer School of Aviation in Arizona—though his primary training was in actual aircraft at other schools like Arizona Aviation. In 2001, he purportedly moved to New Jersey, where he—according the 9/11 Commission Report—he received additional instruction at Air Fleet Training Systems in Teterboro, New Jersey, and at Caldwell Flight Academy in Fairfield, New Jersey. None of the sources I can find have provided any clear documentation of what, if any, training he received for the 757. Some sources state that he received 757 simulator training; others vaguely suggest that he didn’t.

In the estimation of my old pilot friend, to pull off the extreme maneuvers in question would have required thorough practice in a simulator. And not just general practice, but practicing the specific maneuvers that Hanjour purportedly executed. This would have necessitated being left alone in the simulator, unless the flight school instructor was a co-conspirator.

The other concern that my friend expressed was that the extremely rapid descent and hard turning would have likely pushed the aircraft beyond its operating envelop and wing loading capacity. My friend proposed that a proper investigation would precisely examine this element of the crime.

The conversation prompted me to wonder if there is any good video footage of AA flight 77 executing the radical maneuvers in the sky above Arlington, Virginia, then lining up for the short final approach to the Pentagon, and then striking the building.

I had heard that the available video footage is poor and fragmentary. What I didn’t realize is that is that there is ZERO available video footage in which a Boeing 757 can be clearly identified approaching or striking the Pentagon. According to an A.I. query about the available footage:

Yes, there is released security camera footage of American Airlines Flight 77 crashing into the Pentagon, but it does not show a clear, continuous approach of the plane.

The footage that was released by the Department of Defense in 2006, in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by the group Judicial Watch, consists of a few frames from a security camera at a parking gate.

• The quality is very grainy, and the plane appears only as a thin white blur in one or two frames before the explosion.

• The cameras were designed to capture still images once every few seconds, which was considered standard for the technology in 2001, making them ill-suited to capturing a fast-moving object like a Boeing 757 traveling at an estimated 530 mph (850 km/h).

The first question that comes to my mind is why didn’t the Department of Defense immediately release the footage in 2001? Why did Judicial Watch have to file a FOIA request to obtain video footage of the event that we were told had occurred?

Note that the Pentagon is clearly visible from the tower at Washington Reagan airport, which is equipped with video cameras. Was there really ZERO video footage of the 757 captured from the tower at Reagan?

The following is a compilation of what is purportedly the sole video footage of the event.

Note that the 757 is 155 feet long—about the length of 15 Corvette sports cars parked bumper to bumper. We are told that what is visible as a thin white streak was the 757 grazing the ground directly in front of the facade before slamming into it.

NOTE that NO debris, smoke, or fire is visible on the grass in front of Pentagon after the explosion erupts on the facade. On the contrary, the lawn appears to look exactly as it did just before it was grazed by the white streak.

The frame rate of a typical surveillance camera in 2001 was between 7.5 to 15 frames per second, which makes footage of fast-moving objects appear choppy.

We are told that the 155-foot jet was moving too fast to be captured by a surveillance camera.

However, in perusing surveillance camera footage of cars passing by at high speeds, I noted that, even with the slow frame rate of 8 fps, it is still possible to play back the footage at a slow rate to see specific frames in which the object is visible.

The following video footage—from a car lot video surveillance camera—captures a Corvette speeding past just before it crashed. Note that the news desk plays the video back at a slow speed, capturing multiple, clear images of the car.

The following is footage— apparently shot from a mobile phone video camera—of an F/A-18 Hornet doing a supersonic flyby of an aircraft carrier.

The aircraft is 56 feet long and flying over 661 knots (760 mph). The default frame rate of an Apple iPhone video camera is 30fps.

Is it just me, or is it strange that there isn’t a single clear image of AA flight 77 approaching or striking the Pentagon that is available to the public?

ATTENTION: My purpose with this post is NOT to claim that AA Flight 77 didn’t strike the Pentagon, but to point out the strangeness of the fact that the U.S. government has apparently been unable to find a single photograph or video of the incident.

Please share this post and let me know what you think in the comments. If you found it interesting, please become a paid subscriber to Focal Points. For just $5 per month, you can really support our efforts to investigate and report what is going on in our weird world.