Citizen Grand Jury & Radioactivity at Pentagon

 by Christopher Bollyn 


October 29, 2004

LOS ANGELES, California - A citizens' grand jury has voted to indict the highest officials of the U.S. government for complicity in the events of 9-11 after considering evidence presented by five researchers.

The 6-hour presentation, Solving the 9-11 Crime - A Citizens' Grand Jury, was organized by Lynn Pentz of www.911truthla.us and held at the Bob Hope Patriotic Hall in Los Angeles during the evening of Saturday, Oct. 23.  After discussion of the legal basis for the grand jury it was decided to enlarge the original grand jury to 23 in order to comply with California law.

The grand jury heard five researchers: Webster Tarpley, Barbara Honegger, Don Paul, Jim Hoffman, and this writer, present evidence. Some of the photographic evidence that I presented to the citizen's grand jury had never been seen before.

Jim Hoffman supported the government's version of events regarding the Pentagon attack arguing that because some eyewitnesses claim to have seen a 757 hit the building, any discussion of evidence that contradicts that version "discredits" independent 9-11 research as a whole.  The naysayers notwithstanding, after hearing the researchers and viewing the evidence the jury voted to indict President George W. Bush and other high officials of a number of charges of complicity in the 9-11 attacks and other offenses related to actions taken by the administration in their "war on terror."

MYSTERIES AT THE PENTAGON

From the Pentagon, I showed photos of the extensive decontamination procedures that were carried out on workers at the site. The full body suits, respirators, disposable boots, and scrub downs seen at the Pentagon indicate that the Dept. of Defense, which supervised the work at the Pentagon, was aware of the danger of an unusual contaminant at the site, such as depleted uranium.

I also presented official FEMA photographs from the Pentagon showing the unexplained presence of pieces of a small jet engine, roughly three feet in diameter.  Since these photographs were first published in my articles last year no one has proven that they are part of a Boeing 757, the kind of aircraft that supposedly hit the Pentagon.  While some readers claimed that the small turbine wheel seen in the photo could have come from the auxiliary power unit (APU) in a 757, an engineer with the Arizona-based manufacturer of the APU confirmed to me that the piece was "no part of an APU."

The fact that the 3-foot turbine was found next to insulation and parts of the housing that match its diameter suggests that the part came from a small jet engine of similar size. This piece of evidence could prove that a jet engine with an opening diameter of between 3 and 4 feet struck the Pentagon. The opening diameter of a 757's jet engine is about 9 feet.

EVIDENCE OF A GLOBAL HAWK

When my articles about this mystery part were first published with photos of these unexplained pieces, more than one year ago, I raised the question whether they could be from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), such as the Global Hawk.  Identifying the piece in the photo would prove what kind of aircraft hit the building.

The Global Hawk is a singe-engine drone that uses a Rolls Royce Allison engine hand-built in Indianapolis, Indiana. The AE3007H engine has a diameter of 43.5 inches.  Because the Global Hawk is a surveillance drone, the engine is contained in a heavily insulated housing to be extremely quiet. This corresponds with eyewitness reports.  I asked eyewitness Steve Riskus, who said he was within 100 feet of the aircraft, what he heard. Riskus said he "did not recall hearing anything." If a 757 or jet fighter flew at high speed 100 feet from an eyewitness, the sound would be deafening.

The fact that no evidence of a 757 has been seen at the Pentagon crash site, and the discovery of parts from a much smaller engine, strongly suggest that what struck the Pentagon was not a Boeing 757.

The extensive decontamination procedures followed at the Pentagon indicate concern that the site was contaminated by something like depleted uranium (DU).  Boeing recently informed me that their 757 and 767 aircraft do not contain DU counter weights. So what was the reason for this concern?

DU MISSILES AT THE WTC?

With no evidence of a Boeing 757 hitting the Pentagon available to the public, some 9-11 researchers claim a DU tipped missile, launched by an armed UAV, like the Global Hawk, struck the Pentagon. The Global Hawk followed the missile into the building and was destroyed leaving behind only its most durable parts, such as the engine parts and parts of its landing gear.

Because DU is extremely dense, a wide variety of missiles in the U.S. arsenal are tipped with DU rods to penetrate the armored steel of military vehicles and buildings. Because uranium is a spontaneous pyrophoric material, it ignites in air and generates extremely intense heat when it strikes its target.  This is what causes the bright flash seen when a DU missile impacts upon its target.  The white flash seen in videos of the two planes striking the twin towers is exactly the kind of flash that occurs when a missile with a DU penetrator strikes. If DU penetrators caused the flashes seen on videos of the planes smashing into the towers, where did the uranium rods go?

I have located several photos that show a pyrophoric object burning white-hot passing through the initial explosion in the South Tower. This object, displays all the characteristics of a burning DU penetrator.  The photo of the conflagration that occurred immediately after the crash of the plane into the South Tower shows two fast moving objects that passed through the tower far ahead of the inferno. One appears as a black dot leaving a trail of white smoke; the second appears to be a dark rod burning with a white flame followed by a trail of black smoke.

The second object displays the characteristics of a burning DU penetrator. I sent enlarged photos of the object to Marion Fulk, a retired chemical physicist from the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, and asked him if this object could be DU.  "Yes, it is possible," Fulk said. Asked about the dark smoke trailing behind the nearly pure white flame, Fulk said, "It could be uranium oxide."

"Let's assume it is uranium," Fulk added. "It's burning near the surface and it's pretty hot." It is a small object with great mass and has huge momentum behind it, Fulk said. "It's way out ahead of the explosion and nothing stopped it."

If the object is a DU penetrator, that would explain its intense heat, radiation expert Leuren Moret said. The pyrophoric DU would have already been burning before it hit the tower. The burning uranium would have acted to ignite the fuel in the aircraft causing the tremendous explosions seen in both towers. As it passed through the building some of the penetrator's kinetic energy would have been converted to heat energy.

The difference between the orange colors of the flames coming from the explosion in the tower and the white flame of the small dense object are indicative of "a huge temperature difference," Moret said. The white flame coming off of the uranium suggests it is burning at a very high temperature although it is not possible to determine the exact temperature from the photograph, according to Fulk and Moret.

The gap between the burning object and its dark smoke trail is because the vapor coming off of the burning object is very hot and has to cool in order to condense and form the visible dark colored uranium oxides, Moret said.