The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.
The official line is that on September 11, 2001, a team of five al-Qaeda affiliated hijackers took control of American Airlines Flight 77, and deliberately crashed it into the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. EDT as part of the September 11 attacks. All 64 people on the airliner were killed as well as 125 people who were in the building. The impact of the plane severely damaged the structure of the building and caused its partial collapse.[32]
At the time of the attacks the Pentagon was under renovation and several offices were unoccupied, resulting in fewer casualties. Contractors already involved with the renovation were given the added task of rebuilding the sections damaged in the attacks. This additional project was named the "Phoenix Project", and was charged with having the outermost offices of the damaged section occupied by September 11, 2002.
However and not surprisingly the conspiracy theories were not far behind as we shall see below;
Did a commercial airline hit the Pentagon?
At 09:37 on 11 September, the Pentagon, headquarters of the American military, was rocked by a huge explosion.
According to the official account American Airlines flight 77 crashed into the building, killing all passengers on board and 125 military personnel and civilians on the ground.
But some people argue that AA 77 could not have hit the building, as there is little visible wreckage, and the hole in the wall caused by the impact is too small to have been inflicted by a Boeing 757 airliner.
The first photographs taken before the front wall of the Pentagon collapsed show the hole appears to be some 18-20 feet across at its narrowest point.
Conspiracy theories argue that a remote controlled drone or missile struck the Pentagon.
The official explanation is that the fuselage - which is 12 feet wide - punctured the building, but the two engines and the wings largely broke up on impact.
US Defense Department photographs taken shortly after the attack show fragments of aircraft wreckage, some with the distinctive American Airlines livery.
The black box recorders and engine parts were found amongst the wreckage, and many eyewitnesses described seeing the plane hit the building.
Engineers and computer scientists at the Rosen Centre for Advanced computing at Purdue University, Indiana have built a computer model to recreate the crash.
Their research suggests that it was the exploding jet fuel which caused the worst damage inside the Pentagon.
Can CCTV footage prove what happened at the Pentagon?
Conspiracy theorists argue that the Pentagon, America's military headquarters, was not hit by a commercial airplane.
They say the initial hole in the outer wall is too small and there is no evidence of visible wreckage. Instead they believe the Pentagon was hit by something smaller, such as an unmanned drone or a cruise missile.
For Professor Jim Fetzer, of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, the evidence is clear-cut. "Whatever hit the building was not a Boeing 757," he told The Conspiracy Files. "Anyone that tells you a Boeing 757 hit the building is saying something that is probably false, that cannot possibly be true."
The Pentagon and the FBI have released some footage taken from CCTV cameras in the vicinity of the Pentagon.
Some of that footage - from the nearby CITGO petrol station and the Doubletree Hotel - does not shed any light on what hit the building.
Frames taken from two cameras at a car park in front of the Pentagon appear to show the silver nose cone and tail fin of a Boeing 757 moments before the explosion, but the footage is of very poor quality and not conclusive.
The FBI will not confirm whether or not it holds other security camera footage of the attack. Its lack of openness has fuelled further conspiracy theories.
There are many reports that security cameras at the nearby Sheraton Hotel captured images of the attack, but the hotel manager told The Conspiracy Files that none of their cameras were pointing in the direction of the Pentagon and no such footage exists.
The Conspiracy Files interviewed rescue workers who said they clearly identified wreckage from a passenger jet in and around the building. And photographs taken in the immediate aftermath of the explosion and shown in the documentary, identify parts of a Boeing 757 including a piece of fuselage with the distinctive livery of American Airlines.
Did a military transport plane control the attack on the Pentagon?
As the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 approached Washington DC, a military transport C-130 aircraft took off from Andrews Air Force Base, en route to Minnesota.
Conspiracy theories suggest that the C-130 may have been controlling the attack that morning as part of a secret government plot, or even fired a missile which downed the Boeing.
The C-130's pilot, Lt Colonel Steve O'Brien, tells a different story. He told The Conspiracy Files that he and his crew were alerted by Air Traffic control to the presence of an unidentified jet approaching the capital.
O'Brien describes seeing a Boeing passenger jet with the distinctive silver and red colours of American Airlines crossing their flight path in an unusually steep bank.
His first reaction was that the aircraft was in trouble and trying to make an emergency landing at the nearby Reagan National Airport. Moments later the Boeing crashed into the Pentagon.
How was it possible the Pentagon was hit 1 hour and 20 minutes after the attacks began? Why was there no response from Andrews Air Force Base, just 10 miles away and home to Air National Guard units charged with defending the skies above the nation’s capital? How did Hani Hanjour, a man who failed as a Cessna pilot on his first flight in a Boeing, execute a difficult aerobatic manoeuvre to strike the Pentagon? Why did the attack strike the just-renovated side, which was largely empty and opposite from the high command?
Essentially there was defiantly wreckage at the pentagon that is obvious. Whether that was the plane or a cruise missile painted like a plane (so scrap would look like the plane) I don't know.
There is also the identification process which was under taken. The DNA sampling and returning of the bodies to loved ones. But saying that, who knows where those bodies came from? If you take it from the non conspiracy side you'd say those bodies came from the wreckage at the site, if you took it from the conspiracy side you'd figure that bodies had to be found and analysed and must have been planted from the real plane which the government must have taken.
The problem with this whole discussion is that it can be 'explained away' from either side. If you believe it’s a conspiracy then all the facts can be skewed that way (government planting objects and such), while if you believe that there was no conspiracy then the fact can be skewed that way (disregarding certain eyewitness accounts, the lack of any mayor wreckage in photos and such).
