PENTAGON RESEARCH

EXIT HOLE

The Pentagon exit hole is one of the most anomalous features of the Pentagon attack. It is 310 feet away from the impact area, near perfectly round and absolutely inexplicable in terms of the composite nose of a Boeing 757-200 "punching out" through it. The other sore thumb about it is that it's not explained in the Building Performance Report, the Shoring Report, the Arlington County After-Action Report or the 9/11 Commission Report.

There is a lot of confusion about the area between the collapse and the "exit hole". There were no ground floor exterior walls between the "E" ring outer wall and the A/E Drive. That was all continuous open office space on floors 1 and 2.

The outer "E" ring wall where the aircraft impacted had just been renovated in case of a terrorist attack. The exterior columns were 21 inch square steel reinforced concrete covered with 6 inches of limestone facade. In panels with windows it had the 6 inch limestone facade and 8 inches of brick backed with Kevlar mesh. In panels without windows it was 8 inches of brick and 10 inches of concrete. The new 1,600 pound windows had glass that is an inch-and-a-half thick. The blast resistant windows sat within a matrix of reinforced structural steel that was bolted to the slabs of each floor above and below.

Inside the building there were concrete columns 21 inches square (on floor one) with vertical rebar in the center wrapped with spiral rebar. These columns were every 10 feet. In the renovated section the interior walls between "E" ring and "D" ring were of ordinary construction with wood framing and gypsum wallboard. Where the path to the exit hole crossed over the renovation line into "C" ring the original interior walls were masonry (brick on floor 1 and concrete block on the floors above). Included in the spaces would have also been the office contents since they were moving back into Wedge 1. Then finally the "C" ring wall had steel mesh, rebar and 8 more inches of brick.

If any solid part of an aircraft survived after traveling through this structure then why didn't it show itself in the A-E drive after breaking a clean hole through the wall? How did it break such a clean hole and then decelerate in the space of 40 feet so as not to even chip the opposing "B" ring wall?

The only other possibility was produced by Purdue University. It involved the "liquefaction" of the aircraft. It supposes that a ball of energy and debris stayed intact throughout the building and made a perfect hole on the other side 310 feet away. One problem with this is the pattern of the column damage and the fact that you can't find a clear, straight line from the facade to the A-E drive. You can see the Purdue simulation here. The brief video presumes the aircraft did not have engines and that the fuel wasn't vaporized in the initial explosion. It also doesn't show the path of the aircraft through the building to the exit hole.

Since both a solid aircraft part and the Purdue "liquefaction" theory are without historical precedent or physical evidence, what if we could find a device that matched the exit hole damage almost perfectly? A weapon already in the possession of the military and something readily concealable and deployable. This is the most important page to read all sidebars to your right in order. Because if this "exit hole" can be explained with evidence that proves something other than the official story then the Pentagon incident falls apart. If the Pentagon incident falls apart then ALL of 9/11 is in question.

The photo at the top of this page is the earliest photo of the exit hole that I've been able to find. No hose lines have been stretched by the fire department and nothing has been displaced. This photo was taken on the 11th probably by a firefighter doing an initial size-up on the building. The only place it has appeared officially is in the Arlington County After-Action report implying that its source is from emergency personnel.

Before we continue let's be certain what the official story was and is. Some people in retrospect try and suggest that the hole may have been made by rescuers. The Secretary of Defense, the building construction manager, a Pentagon spokesperson, and the only three official reports that mention it ALL attribute the cause of the hole to the nose of a 757-200. In addition to that I have personally interviewed rescuers on the scene and they all concur that it was caused by the aircraft.

Mr. RUMSFELD: Yeah. And then came in about—between about the first and second floor over here. And it went in through three rings. I’m told the nose is—is still in there, very close to the inner courtyard, about one ring away.
(ABC News SHOW: Good Morning America (6:00 AM ET) - ABC September 13, 2001 Thursday)

Mr. LEE EVEY (Program Manager Pentagon Renovation Project):
Question (reporter): That seems to indicate that it came to rest in ring C, the nose cone.
Evey: Let me talk to that, because you've asked a number of questions already about the extent of penetration, et cetera. This is an overhead of the building. The point of penetration was right here, and we blocked that out to show that's the area of collapse. The plane actually penetrated through the E ring, C ring -- excuse me -- E ring, D ring, C ring. This area right here is what we call A-E Drive. And unlike other rings in the building, it's actually a driveway that circles the building inside, between the B and the C ring. The nose of the plane just barely broke through the inside of the C ring, so it was extending into A-E Drive a little bit. So that's the extent of penetration of the aircraft.

Question: It broke through which one?
Evey: The rings are E, D, C, B and A. Between B and C is a driveway that goes around the Pentagon. It's called A-E Drive. The airplane traveled in a path about like this, and the nose of the aircraft broke through this innermost wall of C ring into A-E Drive.

Question: One thing that's confusing -- if it came in the way you described, at an angle, why then are not the wings outside? I mean, the wings would have shorn off. The tail would have shorn off. And yet there's apparently no evidence of the aircraft outside the E ring.
Evey: Actually, there's considerable evidence of the aircraft outside the E ring. It's just not very visible.
(News Briefing The Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia September 15, 2001, 11:00 A.M. EDT)

TERRY MITCHELL (Chief, Audiovisual Division, Office of ASD PA): "It's more to the right of where we were at. This is the -- this is in a renovated section on the opposite side, if you were facing the opposite side. This is a hole in -- there was a punch-out. They suspect that this was where a part of the aircraft came through this hole, although I didn't see any evidence of the aircraft down there."
(News Briefing The Pentagon, Arlington, Virginia September 15, 2001, 11:00 A.M. EDT)

ASCE BUILDING PERFORMANCE REPORT: "The path of damage extended from the west exterior wall of the building in a northeasterly direction completely through Ring E, Ring D, Ring C, and their connecting lower floors. There was a hole in the east wall of Ring C, emerging into AE Drive, between column lines 5 and 7 in Wedge 2 (figure 5.16).The wall failure was approximately 310 ft from where the fuselage of the aircraft entered the west wall of the building. The path of the aircraft debris passed approximately 225 ft diagonally through Wedge 1 and approximately 85 ft diagonally through a portion of Ring C in Wedge 2."
This quote can be found on Page 28 of the ASCE Building Performance Report .

FEMA URBAN SEARCH & RESCUE: "The plane entered E ring at an angle and the force of the explosion punched through three of the five rings of the Pentagon. A nine foot diameter exit hole was created in the wall of C ring and the remainder of the debris from the impact ended up in the alley between C ring and B ring known as A & E Drive........is a photograph taken in A&E drive showing a 9 foot diameter "exit wound" where the plane debris exited the C ring. There were very few identifiable plane parts in the wreckage. Most of the plane disintegrated from the intense heat of the fireball. Other than some fire and smoke damage, there was a relatively small amount of damage in the A and B rings."
This quote can be found on Page 9 of the Shoring Report.

ARLINGTON COUNTY AFTER-ACTION REPORT: "Flight #77 penetrated the outer wall of the Pentagon’s E Ring and the damage extended all the way through the inner wall of the C Ring, a distance of approximately 285 feet. Penetration through the inner wall of the Pentagon’s C Ring."
This quote can be found in Annex "A" Page A-8 Arlington County After-Action Report.