My e-mail to Mark Roberts below.
Dear Mark,
Griffin's newest book, 9/11 Contradictions, arrived a few days ago (Sept.11, to be exact!), and I read through most of it. One chapter I found interesting was the one about Hani Hanjour, in which Griffin attempts to detail a contradiction in the official account of Flight 77. The contradiction is as follows:
(i) Only a highly skilled pilot could have flown AA77 into the Pentagon the way it allegedly did.
(ii) Hani Hanjour, the pilot who allegedly flew AA77 into the Pentagon, was a terrible pilot.
Clearly, (i) and (ii) both cannot be true, so we have a prima facie problem.
(ii) is supported by quotes like the following:
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A. "Freeway Airport evaluated suspected hijacker Hani Hanjour when he attempted to rent a plane. He took three flights with the instructors in the second week of August, but flew so poorly he was rejected for the rental, said Marcel Bernard, chief flight instructor at Freeway. "
B. "Marcel Bernard, the airport manager and chief flight instructor, told FBI agents investigating last week's suicide attacks that one of their suspects in case, Hani Hanjour, had flown with flight instructors on three occasions over the last six weeks…'His flying skills were so poor overall that [instructors] declined to rent a plane to him without future training,' Bernard said of Hanjour."
C. "Mr. Hanjour, who investigators contend piloted the airliner that crashed into the Pentagon, was reported to the aviation agency in February 2001 after instructors at his flight school in Phoenix had found his piloting skills so shoddy and his grasp of English so inadequate that they questioned whether his pilot's license was genuine."
D. "[Managers] reported him not because they feared he was a terrorist, but because his English and flying skills were so bad, they told the Associated Press, they didn't think he should keep his pilot's license…
'I couldn't believe he had a commercial license of any kind with the skills that he had,' said Peggy Chevrette, the manager for the now-defunct JetTech flight school in Phoenix"
(If you'd like a link to any of these quotes I can provide them).
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Hence, it seems, the most accurate assessment of Hanjour's piloting abilities before 9/11 is that they were poor. I haven't found any sources which contradict (ii).
(i), on the other hand, is supported by these quotes below (again, I can provide the links to any of them):
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E. "[J]ust as the plane seemed to be on a suicide mission into the White House, the unidentified pilot executed a pivot so tight that it reminded observers of a fighter jet maneuver. The plane circled 270 degrees to the right to approach the Pentagon from the west…Aviation sources said the plane was flown with extraordinary skill, making it highly likely that a trained pilot was at the helm"
F. "Whoever flew at least three of the death planes seemed very skilled. Investigators are impressed that they were schooled enough to turn off flight transponders -- which provide tower control with flight ID, altitude and location. Investigators are particularly impressed with the pilot who slammed into the Pentagon and, just before impact, performed a tightly banked 270-degree turn at low altitude with almost military precision."
G. "The steep turn was so smooth, the sources say, it's clear there was no fight for control going on. And the complex maneuver suggests the hijackers had better flying skills than many investigators first believed."
H. "The maneuver at the Pentagon was just a tight spiral coming down out of 7,000 feet. And a commercial aircraft, while they can in fact structurally somewhat handle that maneuver, they are very, very, very difficult. And it would take considerable training… And while they are structurally capable of doing them, it takes some very, very talented pilots to do that."
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There are more, but I think the point is clear: according to the relevant experts, only a highly skilled pilot could have flown AA77 into the Pentagon the way it allegedly did.
Now, I have found statements of a few experts who deny (i) and claim that the AA77 maneuver was in fact easy. There are, however, two things to note about this. First, those experts seem to be in the minority (which, of course, doesn't mean they're wrong). Second, and more importantly, there hasn't been any real interaction or debate between the experts who affirm (i) and those who deny it.
Hence, there seems to be an unresolved contradiction here. Isn't, then, the claim that Hanjour flew 77 into the Pentagon at least questionable on reasonable grounds? Perhaps the official story will ultimately win the day, but it looks to me like we have mystery.
regards,
Spencer
