Debunked: 9/11: Flight 77 "suspicious" Passenger list

BAE has at least three large office buildings within 3 miles of the Airport. Raytheon has a mega complex less than 5 miles from the airport. Lockheed Martin has two large buildings about three miles from the airport. Nothrop Grumman recently moved their corporate office from California to the DC area in addition they have two large office buildings less than a mile from the airport with even more in the surrounding area. Boeing has two offices again within 2 miles of the airport. Orbital has a complex of 3 or 4 buildings less than 5 miles from the airport. Along with this there are a host of hundreds of small and mid size defense contractors too numerous to mention who have offices in the immediate vicinity of the airport and in the surrounding DC area. I can't stress this enough there are a lot of defense contractors in the immediate vicinity of the airport. Search any of the companies with Herndon, VA or Ashburn, VA or Chantilly, VA the map listings will pop up with offices for the major companies. A couple of the smaller ones from the passenger list are located closer to DC.

Grieves said:

Software developers for defense contractors and satellite engineers for Boeing are rather more high profile than a traveling salesman \ plumbing service consultant \ soccer-mom in the context of our discussion.

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Software developers are run of the mill in this area. They are low level functionaries for the most part. We have at least half a dozen on my current contract.

Grieves said:

I said 'relatively' high profile. Software developers for defense contractors and satellite engineers for Boeing are rather more high profile than a traveling salesman \ plumbing service consultant \ soccer-mom in the context of our discussion.

Washington's state fruit is the apple. I wouldn't expect an inordinate number of apple pickers. Washington's official dance is the square-dance. I wouldn't expect an inordinate number of square-dancers. Washington has an abundance of evergreen forests, and jobs involving the lumber trade rank 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 6th out of DC's most popular jobs, but I wouldn't expect an inordinate number of lumberjacks. Defense-related occupations don't even place on the list of Washington's 100 most common occupations, and yet seven occupants of that plane were employees of defense contractors/firms, and about a dozen had careers involving national defense in general. That's a good 20% of all the passengers on-board with jobs relating to national defense, on the day of the greatest national defense failure perhaps in the history of the nation, on one of the planes used to carry out that attack. That seems an inordinately high percentage of similarly employed people. If you want to prove there's nothing suspicious about that 20% figure, then prove that there were a similar number of passengers in various careers involving food/catering, or careers involving insurance, or careers involving sales in general, or careers involving medicine. They don't even have to be specific to a certain branch of that field, regardless of the prevalence of employees of Defense Contractors amongst those with careers relating to national defense, or that of Boeing employees. Then I'll admit that perhaps it isn't so suspicious to have so many similarly employed people on the same doomed plane.

How-so? Are you assuming, as was done previously in the thread, that my suspicion is directed toward the listed people and not the list itself?

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Washington State??

Boeing satellite engineers are not necessarily relating to national defense.

They were not "similarly employed" -software engineers, lawyers, accountants/economists, pilots, scientists...all very different jobs. That they were involved in tangentially related sectors- to me- does not arise suspicion. They are the type of people I would expect to find on such a flight from DC.

Having flown many times from the DC to the west coast- I have encountered very many people with very similar backgrounds and skill sets....

I don't understand your last comment...please explain.

I think you are confusing Washington state, with Washington DC.

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Gah, quite right.

BAE has at least three large office buildings within 3 miles of the Airport. Raytheon has a mega complex less than 5 miles from the airport. Lockheed Martin has two large buildings about three miles from the airport. Nothrop Grumman recently moved their corporate office from California to the DC area in addition they have two large office buildings less than a mile from the airport with even more in the surrounding area. Boeing has two offices again within 2 miles of the airport. Orbital has a complex of 3 or 4 buildings less than 5 miles from the airport. Along with this there are a host of hundreds of small and mid size defense contractors too numerous to mention who have offices in the immediate vicinity of the airport and in the surrounding DC area. I can't stress this enough there are a lot of defense contractors in the immediate vicinity of the airport. Search any of the companies with Herndon, VA or Ashburn, VA or Chantilly, VA the map listings will pop up with offices for the major companies. A couple of the smaller ones from the passenger list are located closer to DC.

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How many hospitals/clinics in a similar range? How many restaurants/catering halls? How many insurance companies, banks, car dealerships? How many homes? Again, I don't deny DC has a fair number of defense employees living/working there, but it's not a military compound. They still aren't in the majority. My challenge stands. If it can be demonstrated that there's nothing inordinate or unlikely about 20% of a publicly accessible commercial plane's passenger list working in the same general field (a plane flying from a major city mind), even discounting the level of specificity on this particular flight-list, I'll concede the list isn't nearly as suspicious as it seems to some.

Boeing satellite engineers are not necessarily relating to national defense.

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True, that's why I didn't include them as part of the '20%', or count them in that field.

They were not "similarly employed" -software engineers, lawyers, accountants/economists, pilots, scientists...all very different jobs. That they were involved in tangentially related sectors- to me- does not arise suspicion.

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Nurses, doctors, clinicians, pharmacists, therapists, medical clerks, lawyers specializing in malpractice, software developers for online medical databases... all very different jobs. Within the field of Medicine. The link these very different jobs have to medicine isn't tangential, it's intrinsic. The same with software engineers, pilots, scientists and lawyers employed in the field of Defense.

Having flown many times from the DC to the west coast- I have encountered very many people with very similar backgrounds and skill sets....

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And you often ask after the employment of strangers during flights...? Or are such conversations typically reserved for the people next to you alone, and only when they seem amiable? I would certainly hope so. Are you seriously suggesting a majority, or even a sizable portion of the strangers you engage this way in idle conversation on these flights have been defense contractors/Boeing engineers/pentagon officials? Forgive me if I have doubts.

I don't understand your last comment...please explain.

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You said that it was 'counter-intuitive' to think a suspiciously (in my mind) inordinate number of employees in the field of Defense listed as being on a plane used in the 9/11 attacks could be indicative of a grander conspiracy than UBL and AlQueda, whether that conspiracy constitutes an 'inside job' or not. I didn't understand what you meant by 'counter-intuitive'... and wondered if you also thought I was suggesting these people were complicit.

Grieves said:

Gah, quite right.

How many hospitals/clinics in a similar range? How many restaurants/catering halls? How many insurance companies, banks, car dealerships? How many homes? Again, I don't deny DC has a fair number of defense employees living/working there, but it's not a military compound. They still aren't in the majority. My challenge stands. If it can be demonstrated that there's nothing inordinate or unlikely about 20% of a publicly accessible commercial plane's passenger list working in the same general field (a plane flying from a major city mind), even discounting the level of specificity on this particular flight-list, I'll concede the list isn't nearly as suspicious as it seems to some.

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who would you expect to be more likely to be traveling on an early mid week flight- bi-coastal defense contractors or caterers/car dealers?

Besides the Federal govt- the Aerospace/Defense industry is the largest employer in the region.

Its not just defense employees working/living there but its also frequently visited by employees from elsewhere...Jon's comment showing the EXTRAORDINARY number of defense companies with offices within 5 miles of the airport is a great indicator as to the level of traffic one might expect. Boeing is located in Washington state but obviously on would expect a lot of travel to the DC office.

I find the suspicion astonishing...

I find the suspicion astonishing...

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Then please, provide me another example and prove the suspicion unfounded. What I'm asking for is pretty damn light. Not a passenger list with a similar number of defense-employees, not a passenger list with a similar number of people with high security clearance in branches of Government and National defense, not a passenger list of a similar number of people working in fields equally pertinent to the events of 9/11 on a publicly accessible commercial flight besides those involved in the attacks, before/since they took place. Just show me a passenger list for a publicly accessible commercial flight with more than 30 or so people on it in which 20% of the passengers all work in varying branches of the same general field, regardless of what that field is, from any flight, in any major city. If you can show that's not an unusual occurrence, I'll concede the point.

SR1419 said:

who would you expect to be more likely to be traveling on an early mid week flight- bi-coastal defense contractors or caterers/car dealers?

Besides the Federal govt- the Aerospace/Defense industry is the largest employer in the region.

Its not just defense employees working/living there but its also frequently visited by employees from elsewhere...Jon's comment showing the EXTRAORDINARY number of defense companies with offices within 5 miles of the airport is a great indicator as to the level of traffic one might expect. Boeing is located in Washington state but obviously on would expect a lot of travel to the DC office.

I find the suspicion astonishing...

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Flight was from Washington DC, to Los Angeles CA.

Aerospace is a huge industry in Los Angeles too. Los Angeles and the SoCal region have been described as "The Aerospace Capital of the World", although it has declined over the past decade. Aerospace was the biggest industry here until the late 1990s.

http://www.laobserved.com/visiting/2010/01/the_end_of_the_aerospace_centu.php

Northrop Grumman Corporation just announced it will move its corporate headquarters from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. This marks the end of era. Exactly one hundred years ago, Los Angeles hosted the first major air meet in the United States. The meet attracted 225,000 spectators over ten days to Dominguez Field and launched the local airplane business. Famous fliers liked what they saw and stuck around to build planes; L.A. city boosters liked what they saw, and looked to aviation as the future of Southern California.
Northrop Grumman's decision to relocate prompts a consideration of the aerospace industry's remarkable importance to the region over the last century. Southern California as we know it would not exist without aerospace. Over the twentieth century aerospace was the central factor transforming Southern California from Sunbelt orange groves to high-tech metropolis. These transformations included the millions of people who flooded the region for aerospace jobs, the test-rocket firings that flashed and echoed in the foothills, and a local economy tied to the vagaries of defense spending. Southern California aerospace in turn provided the advanced technologies central to national defense, and challenged and transformed the human imagination through the exploration of outer space.


Why did Los Angeles become the aerospace capital of the world? The usual answer is the local climate, which provided good flying weather year-round. But one must also consider a long history of civic boosterism, from newspaper publishers and real-estate developers to Hollywood moguls; cheap land; local universities as suppliers of research, testing facilities, and technical labor; open-shop rules in the labor market; local military installations, which capitalized on their distance from Washington; and a culture of expansive imagination and entrepreneurialism.

Los Angeles to Washington DC is probably the most likely route in the country on which to find Aerospace workers.

Grieves said:

Then please, provide me another example and prove the suspicion unfounded. What I'm asking for is pretty damn light. Not a passenger list with a similar number of defense-employees, not a passenger list with a similar number of people with high security clearance in branches of Government and National defense, not a passenger list of a similar number of people working in fields equally pertinent to the events of 9/11 on a publicly accessible commercial flight besides those involved in the attacks, before/since they took place. Just show me a passenger list for a publicly accessible commercial flight with more than 30 or so people on it in which 20% of the passengers all work in varying branches of the same general field, regardless of what that field is, from any flight, in any major city. If you can show that's not an unusual occurrence, I'll concede the point.

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Can you show a passenger list for a DC to LA flight that does not have 20% of the passengers working in aerospace related industries?

Grieves said:

Then please, provide me another example and prove the suspicion unfounded. What I'm asking for is pretty damn light. Not a passenger list with a similar number of defense-employees, not a passenger list with a similar number of people with high security clearance in branches of Government and National defense, not a passenger list of a similar number of people working in fields equally pertinent to the events of 9/11 on a publicly accessible commercial flight besides those involved in the attacks, before/since they took place. Just show me a passenger list for a publicly accessible commercial flight with more than 30 or so people on it in which 20% of the passengers all work in varying branches of the same general field, regardless of what that field is, from any flight, in any major city. If you can show that's not an unusual occurrence, I'll concede the point.

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Actually- the onus is on you- you are the one who finds it suspicious- provide some evidence other than your gut feeling.

Its been shown why its very logical and likely for the flight contain the types of people it did.

Its up to you to show why it is not likely.



(how many of the passengers in question had "high security clearance in branches of Government and National defense")??

How many car dealers, caterers, doctors and nurses TRAVEL mid week? Mid week Mornings will be mostly business travelers, in DC, in Dallas, in Denver.

I would expect to see a large percentage of mid week morning travelers from DFW and also from Houston International to be in the oil industry.

Now the odd ball occupation list would be into Tucson, during early Feb---since it would be jewelers, bead store owners, rockhounds, and art jewelry creators.

Grieves said:

You said that it was 'counter-intuitive' to think a suspiciously (in my mind) inordinate number of employees in the field of Defense listed as being on a plane used in the 9/11 attacks could be indicative of a grander conspiracy than UBL and AlQueda, whether that conspiracy constitutes an 'inside job' or not. I didn't understand what you meant by 'counter-intuitive'... and wondered if you also thought I was suggesting these people were complicit.

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yea- I guess I do not understand why its suspicious? If its was an inside job and these folks were complicit- then they would not have been on the plane.

if it was an inside job and they (passengers) were NOT complicit how does their being on the plane add credence to it being an inside job?

the whole idea is just bereft of logic.

(how many of the passengers in question had "high security clearance in branches of Government and National defense")??

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by the looks of it, four at the least.

a senior scientist with the US Navy, retired Army. [12] A third-generation physicist whose work at the Navy was so classified that his family knew very little about what he did each day. They don't even know exactly why he was headed to Los Angeles on the doomed American Airlines Flight 77.

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a Boeing engineer in Integrated Defense Systems; he served in the US Air Force for four years, and for the National Security Agency for 14 years. [36]

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a director of program management at Raytheon, US Army (ret.) [28] who helped develop and build anti-radar technology for electronic warfare. Raytheon's website notes that they are leaders in every phase of the Precision Strike kill chain; are the world's leading organization at Missile Defense; provides state-of-the-art technology to detect, protect and respond to terrorism and provide Homeland Defense; and that their technology forms the eyes, ears and brains of Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance systems, from the Predator to the Global Hawk.

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a senior executive at the Defense Department. [29] A budget analyst/director of the programming and fiscal economics division who worked at the Pentagon.

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Its been shown why its very logical and likely for the flight contain the types of people it did.

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No, it's been stated insistently. Nothing's been shown.

Its up to you to show why it is not likely.

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well, just as an example, http://pittsburgh.about.com/od/flight_93/a/passengers.htm I don't see any striking trends in this list, seems like a pretty diverse selection of people in a pretty diverse selection of fields, with no notable area-specific commonalities I can detect. There's a vet or two among them, a couple of CEOs, even a slight leaning toward medical professions, which is one of the broadest fields imaginable... but nothing as notable as the list from flight 77.

Can you show a passenger list for a DC to LA flight that does not have 20% of the passengers working in aerospace related industries?

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That's a little too specific for me I'm afraid Mick, I admit. I think, in fairness, I gave you a rather easier one.

yea- I guess I do not understand why its suspicious?

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What's not suspicious, or at least incredibly strange/unlikely, about employees of Boeing in the field of security, Army/Navy officers in the fields of American intelligence/national security, and employees of major defense contractors in the fields of programming/anti-radar technology- all dieing in the same Boeing plane, in an attack that thwarted American intelligence/national security, in which radar technologies failed to perform properly, and which led to the massive enrichment of major defense contractors?

It's not a smoking gun, but if its true, it's at least a little odd, isn't it? The baseless incredulity being expressed in this thread is a little weird.

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If its was an inside job and these folks were complicit- then they would not have been on the plane.

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Presumably.

if it was an inside job and they (passengers) were NOT complicit how does their being on the plane add credence to it being an inside job?

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Because they're people in positions that directly relate to the attacks themselves. Some of them are employed in fields which would have clearly made them part of the broad security mechanism in place to prevent terrorist attacks and monitor activity threatening American citizens, such as those employed in air defense or national security. The various inferences and scenarios which might be drawn from this are somewhat irrelevant to the issue you're currently arguing, which is that there's nothing suspicious, or even odd, about the list whatsoever. I think I've made a relatively reasonable argument as to why the list could at the very least be considered in defiance of the odds. The counter-argument has been that, given the location and time of day involved, such a flight would inherently carry a large percentage of such individuals. Something like 2 million people fly domestically in the states every day, and this was a flight with no exclusivity attached, supposedly just your average commuter flight. It would hugely surprise me to see so distinct a regional trend, or even such a trend in general, region aside. That's why I've asked for any example of a similar trend, regardless of region, field, and most all other excluding factors besides a fair number of passengers and that the flight/s in question be publicly accessible.

Grieves said:

Because they're people in positions that directly relate to the attacks themselves.

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really? which job description relates to hijacking planes and flying them into building? Budget analyst? satellite engineer? scientist? director of program management?

Grieves said:

Some of them are employed in fields which would have clearly made them part of the broad security mechanism in place to prevent terrorist attacks and monitor activity threatening American citizens, such as those employed in air defense or national security. The various inferences and scenarios which might be drawn from this are somewhat irrelevant to the issue you're currently arguing, which is that there's nothing suspicious, or even odd, about the list whatsoever.

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Since you can't answer it its "irrelevant"- classic!

Grieves said:

No, it's been stated insistently. Nothing's been shown.

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BS! Its logical to expect a significant number of passengers on a midweek business flight to be in the industry that is a major employer in the area. You are simply refusing to accept basic logic.



Funny- out of 40 people on flight 93- to San Francisco...an IT hub....8...or 20% were in the IT field.

One even worked for "Safe Flight Corporation"...suspicious?

thanks Grieves!!

Since you can't answer it its "irrelevant"- classic!

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irrelevant to the issue you're currently arguing,

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get it straight. I'm not omniscient and not going to pretend to be. If you want another made-up scenario to rail over how made up it is, I can oblige, but it's not going to get us anywhere.

Funny- out of 40 people on flight 93- to San Francisco...an IT hub....8...or 20% were in the IT field.

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Sorry, which 8?

Waleska Martinez - She was traveling with co-worker Marion Britton to a computer operations conference in San Francisco when Flight 93 went down in Shanksville, PA, on September 11, 2001. The 37-year-old Puerto Rican from Jersey City, N.J. worked as a supervisory computer specialist for the New York regional office of the U.S. Census Bureau. Waleska Martinez is survived by parents, Juan and Irma Martinez; brothers Juan Jr. and Reinaldo; and sister, Lourdes Lebron.

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Patrick Driscoll - He retired in 1992 from his job as director of software development for regional Bell telephone companies, and started traveling. Flight 93 was the start of a trip with friend and fellow Flight 93 passenger William Cashman to hike in Yosemite National Park, Patrick "Joe" Driscoll, 70, was from Point Pleasant Beach, N.J., and is survived by his wife, Maureen; sons Stephen, Patrick, and Christopher and daughter, Pamela.

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Edward Porter Felt - A computer engineer for BEA Systems from Matawan, N.J., Edward Felt was taking Flight 93 to get to a business meeting in San Francisco. The 41-year-old left behind his wife, Sandy, and daughters, Adrienne and Kathryn.

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Joseph DeLuca - A trip to California wine county with his new girlfriend, Lindo Gronlund, put Joseph DeLuca on Flight 93 on September 11, 2001. The 52-year-old computer program designer for Pfizer Consumer Healthcare lived in Succasunna, N.J. and left behind parents Joseph Sr. and Felicia, and his sister, Carol Hughes.

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That's my count, and though they do all have careers with computers, they work in largely unrelated fields. Who am I missing?

BS! Its logical to expect a significant number of passengers on a midweek business flight to be in the industry that is a major employer in the area. You are simply refusing to accept basic logic.

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Sorry, but that looks like another insistent statement to me. Don't tell me, just show me. Like you said had already been done.

thanks Grieves!!

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Dude, It's not a competition... if you can actually prove that sort of stacked passenger-list is more or less commonplace, I'll accept that. You won't have won, I won't have lost, my mind will just be changed. For now all I've heard is 'it's commonplace because of course it is.' That might be logical, but that doesn't make it correct.

Do the airlines normally release the occupations of the folks on flight lists? I would think that they do not.

What is WRONG with LOGIC?

Grieves said:

Originally Posted by Grieves I said 'relatively' high profile. Software developers for defense contractors and satellite engineers for Boeing are rather more high profile than a traveling salesman \ plumbing service consultant \ soccer-mom in the context of our discussion.

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I don't see software developers or engineers high profile at all. What's so high profile about them?

Nurses, doctors, clinicians, pharmacists, therapists, medical clerks, lawyers specializing in malpractice, software developers for online medical databases... all very different jobs. Within the field of Medicine. The link these very different jobs have to medicine isn't tangential, it's intrinsic. The same with software engineers, pilots, scientists and lawyers employed in the field of Defense.

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How often do doctors and nurses travel for business? How many are off on Tuesday and flying somewhere for pleasure?

You said that it was 'counter-intuitive' to think a suspiciously (in my mind) inordinate number of employees in the field of Defense listed as being on a plane used in the 9/11 attacks could be indicative of a grander conspiracy than UBL and AlQueda, whether that conspiracy constitutes an 'inside job' or not. I didn't understand what you meant by 'counter-intuitive'... and wondered if you also thought I was suggesting these people were complicit.

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Rather than continuing to debate the veracity of the passenger list, I'd really like some theories into why the list was not real.

Grieves said:

Then please, provide me another example and prove the suspicion unfounded. What I'm asking for is pretty damn light. Not a passenger list with a similar number of defense-employees, not a passenger list with a similar number of people with high security clearance in branches of Government and National defense, not a passenger list of a similar number of people working in fields equally pertinent to the events of 9/11 on a publicly accessible commercial flight besides those involved in the attacks, before/since they took place. Just show me a passenger list for a publicly accessible commercial flight with more than 30 or so people on it in which 20% of the passengers all work in varying branches of the same general field, regardless of what that field is, from any flight, in any major city. If you can show that's not an unusual occurrence, I'll concede the point.

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Grieves, I have absolutely no idea what point YOU are trying to make with this.

Taking a different tack on this I have been looking for information supporting the idea that 20% of the people in the area working in the defense industry here would not be out of the ordinary.

This is from a .pdf on Northern Virginia Economic Snapshot.

It is dated November 2001

Northern Virginia has emerged as one of five leading high technology centers in the country and
home to the largest concentration of high-tech service firms in the nation. A large portion of the
high-tech employment base is concentrated in software/hardware engineering, internet/ECommerce,
and telecommunications.

In addition, the region’s proximity to Washington, D.C. has helped the area become one of the
largest concentrations of government contractors in the nation, particularly in the defense sector.

Grieves, I have absolutely no idea what point YOU are trying to make with this.

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Y'all are claiming what seems to me a rather inordinate number of defense/defense technology professionals working in similar/related fields to one another, fields that often bear a rather distinct relationship to the events about to transpire, all dying in the crash of flight 77 isn't even unlikely, let alone suspicious. I'm trying, rather desperately admittedly, to understand this. Like, look at this stuff...

which job description relates to hijacking planes and flying them into building? Budget analyst? satellite engineer? scientist? director of program management?

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I don't see software developers or engineers high profile at all. What's so high profile about them?

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yea- I guess I do not understand why its suspicious?

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Boeing satellite engineers are not necessarily relating to national defense.

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What am I supposed to say? How am I supposed to gauge the disconnect here..? Boeing satellite engineers aren't related to national defense...? Whats high profile about these people? What's suspicious about it...?

a senior executive at the Defense Department. [29] A budget analyst/director of the programming and fiscal economics division who worked at the Pentagon.

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THE PENTAGON.
If you're telling me that alone isn't an exceedingly strange coincidence at least, you're blowing smoke.

Grieves, I have absolutely no idea what point YOU are trying to make with this.

Y'all are claiming what seems to me a rather inordinate number of defense/defense technology professionals working in similar/related fields to one another, fields that often bear a rather distinct relationship to the events about to transpire, all dying in the crash of flight 77 isn't even unlikely, let alone suspicious. I'm trying, rather desperately admittedly, to understand this. Like, look at this stuff...

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And the relationship is. . . THE PENTAGON? What is their relationship to THE PENTAGON? Other than they all died crashing into it? What are you getting at, this is very frustrating, I feel like I'm watching a soap opera. You're moving at a turtle pace. Get to the point. Lay it all out. What is the suspicion. Cause I don't find anything suspicious in the passenger list, and apparently no one else does either.

Other than they all died crashing into it?

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Other than...? Are you kidding me?
A man directing the Defense Departments fiscal economics program in the Pentagon was murdered, coincidentally, when a plane he was in flew into his regular place of business, a crash which may well have killed several of his colleagues, and you don't find that even remotely suspicious on any level?
The point is it's fucking suspicious. Which is the topic of the thread. The suspicion obviously being that maybe, even if only the vaguest flicker of a maybe through the pea-soup of your preconception, it wasn't a coincidence, given how huge a coincidence it is. To go beyond that is pretty pointless, wouldn't you say? There are guys out there with very complex theories as to how and why the crime was committed beyond UBL and his hijackers, many firmly rooted in factual connections. If you want to judge those scenarios, you go ahead... I swear by none, but find many very compelling. I don't know what happened. I'm not going to pretend too. Why do you?

28,000 people work in the Pentagon.

Come on Grieves, these are simple odds. There's nothing suspicious in the composition of the passenger list. It just reflections the intersection of people who work in Los Angeles and DC, and who travel for work.

No it is not suspicious to anyone but you and maybe a handful of others. It is not coincidence that folks working in the defense industry would have been on that plane.

What jobs would you think should have been represented by folks on that plane?

First something would have been needed to get a certain subset of folks on the plane. Were they all going to a certain conference? or had someone all given them tickets to Disneyland ? or ????

Why were they 'selected'? What did their jobs have in common?

It takes 2 distinct points to define a line, and you have ONE.

Please expand on one of my questions, your choice. Define a second linking point than they flying to the West Coast that day and the plane crashing is NOT a second point.

Taking a different tack on this I have been looking for information supporting the idea that 20% of the people in the area working in the defense industry here would not be out of the ordinary.

This is from a .pdf on Northern Virginia Economic Snapshot.

It is dated November 2001

Northern Virginia has emerged as one of five leading high technology centers in the country and
home to the largest concentration of high-tech service firms in the nation. A large portion of the
high-tech employment base is concentrated in software/hardware engineering, internet/ECommerce,
and telecommunications.

In addition, the region’s proximity to Washington, D.C. has helped the area become one of the
largest concentrations of government contractors in the nation, particularly in the defense sector.

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That's fair, and there could well be 20% of the population in that region working for defense-contractors/Boeing/pentagon affiliates, and other fields pertaining to National defense... that would seem heavy to me, but WTF would I know, I got my Washington's mixed up earlier in the thread. Why would that be any assurance of a large number of such professionals being on any given afternoon commuter plane leaving the DC airport, though? Commuter air-traffic isn't exactly a slave to regional biases, especially in hubs like major cities.

28,000 people work in the Pentagon.

Come on Grieves, these are simple odds. There's nothing suspicious in the composition of the passenger list. It just reflections the intersection of people who work in Los Angeles and DC, and who travel for work.

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I don't see why there's anything simple about them, Mick. Maybe you could explain.

A man was murdered. The weapon used to kill him, the plane in which he was flying, targeted his place of business, meaning he himself had inherently already been a target of the crime to which he 'coincidentally' fell victim. Given that connection, is it not worth the vaguest consideration, from an investigative standpoint, that perhaps the plane he was on might have been targeted as well? That maybe his presence there, and the presence of other (debatably) high-profile defense professionals, had something to do with why that plane was 'chosen'? That he himself, and those with him, might have been targets? Doesn't seem a remotely unreasonable line of inquiry to me.

No it is not suspicious to anyone but you and maybe a handful of others.

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You must have big, strong hands....

Grieves said:

A man was murdered. The weapon used to kill him, the plane in which he was flying, targeted his place of business, meaning he himself had inherently already been a target of the crime to which he 'coincidentally' fell victim. Given that connection, is it not worth the vaguest consideration, from an investigative standpoint, that perhaps the plane he was on might have been targeted as well? That maybe his presence there, and the presence of other (debatably) high-profile defense professionals, had something to do with why that plane was 'chosen'? That he himself, and those with him, might have been targets? Doesn't seem a remotely unreasonable line of inquiry to me.

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If it happened to be his ten employee place of business, then maybe. But this is the biggest place of work by far in the area. It's fairly likely that someone from the Pentagon would be on any given flight from DC to LA.

How 'fairly likely'? I'm not trying to make unreasonable demands, it just seems like a broad sort of statement, maybe somewhat presumptuous.

I find this whole supposition a bit silly. One of the first lies spread after 9/11 was that there were no Jews killed in the WTC because they had been forewarned of the attacks and had stayed home.

If there had NOT been a sizeable proportion of business and defence related personnel travelling from the defence headquarters of the USA on that flight, there would have have been a hoo ha about how suspicious that was and how the "Elites" had been tipped off!

Its called having it both ways and it is despicable.

If there had NOT been a sizeable proportion of business and defence related personnel travelling from the defence headquarters of the USA on that flight, there would have have been a hoo ha about how suspicious that was and how the "Elites" had been tipped off!

Its called having it both ways and it is despicable.

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Total nonsense. Rendering a harsh judgement on people for something you imagine they'd do to boot.

One of the first lies spread after 9/11 was that there were no Jews killed in the WTC because they had been forewarned of the attacks and had stayed home.

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Equating the push for further investigation into the events of 9/11 with antisemitism. Nice.

Grieves said:

Total nonsense. Rendering a harsh judgement on people for something you imagine they'd do to boot.
Equating the push for further investigation into the events of 9/11 with antisemitism. Nice.

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Are you telling me that it wouldn't happen like that? That is total nonsense. Reading many of the posts on these pages reveals that streak in people.

I didn't invoke antisemitism but I recognise it when I see it. I also recognise the tendency to exaggerate a normal phenomenon for other purposes.... That is what is going on here.

Oxymoron said:

Flight 77.. this is truly a bizarre passenger list.

All four flights have extremely low occupancy rates and those passengers that are on there are like a 'who's who' of military and technical.

http://911review.org/Wiki/Flight77Passengers.shtml

Well, if you look at the occupations of the passengers of Flight 77, you get a strange feeling that something is wrong with this picture:

For a random collection of passengers, this is a very impressive manifest. We use the results of Killtown's work on the passenger list, which was drawn from the canonical sources of 9/11 victims biographical information on the Internet: the numbers in square brackets are the numbers in Killtown's listing .

• a senior scientist with the US Navy, retired Army.
  
• a Boeing engineer in Integrated Defense Systems.
• a director of program management at Raytheon, US Army (ret.)
• a retired naval aviator
• an electrical engineer with defense contractor
• 2 Boeing propulsion engineers: a lead Propulsion Engineer and a Project Manager with Boeing Satellite Systems, and a lead engineer for Boeing Satellite Systems.
• a software architect with Lockheed Martin Corp., US Army (ret.).
• a Vice President for software development, EMSolutions and retired Lieutenant Commander, Navy.
• a technical group manager at Xon Tech, a defense-related research and development firm.
• a retired Navy Rear Admiral, former Navy pilot, and retired American Airlines pilot. [24]
• a senior executive at the Defense Department.
• a former Navy electronics technician
• managing partner and co-founder of Stratin Consulting. and retired Marine Corps Lieutenant and Vietnam War veteran
• a lawyer
• and of course, there was Barbara Olson, attorney, CNN Commentator and wife of the United States Solicitor General. [39]

The odds against this being a random group of 53 American Airlines passengers are simply astronomical! There are more top secret security clearances here than in most medium-sized cities in America.

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I've edited out some of the extra info in that list. So, what we have here is a plane leaving an airport on a Tuesday morning with 53 passengers on board. Of these, those who see a conspiracy have identified 15 as being suspicious - either for being on the list, or being on the plane. A who's-who list, of sorts. It's not though, is it? It's 15 people out of 53, boarding a plane in a city where defense and military are the main employers. Some are retired. Some are not.

Obviously, the passengers not in the list of 15 must have had absolutely no important role in either the defense or military arenas or the 'truthers' would not have left them out.

And still NOTHING to show a second point of connection between them.

No explanation on HOW all of them were convinced to take that flight. Without that there is nothing.

There is more evidence for Big Foot and the Loch Ness monster.

Grieves said:

How 'fairly likely'? I'm not trying to make unreasonable demands, it just seems like a broad sort of statement, maybe somewhat presumptuous.

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How likely? I would almost guarantee it, be willing to bet my salary on it. I, myself, have hundreds of flights in and out of the metro DC area (via all three major airports) in the 10 years I was assigned there. And yes, we often purposely took flights at what could be considered odd times so that we could make meetings/obligations at the distant end or get home for special family or work related functions or god forbid to save travel money. I bet most of them were traveling light, aka carry on baggage only.

I find your assertion that its its unusual based on your lack of knowledge of the region to be ridiculous. Those of us who have had and do live and work in the Metro DC area, that have done this type of traveling for our means saying that is the norm should be good enough. If I had a wild theory on the Canadian legal system, like the ramifications 3CP1 taking over the airwaves of SCTV, I would find your input worthy based on your experience in a legal office compared to mine of zero.

to exaggerate a normal phenomenon

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What is remotely normal about a high ranking member of the Defense Department being flown into his own place of business? That seems a pretty goddamn unusual series of events to me.

How likely? I would almost guarantee it, be willing to bet my salary on it. I, myself, have hundreds of flights in and out of the metro DC area (via all three major airports) in the 10 years I was assigned there.

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So you worked at the Pentagon for 10 years? Which ten, if you don't mind my asking? And how many flights is 'hundreds', by your best estimation? How many of your co-workers were also frequent flyers? What, if you don't mind my asking, was your general role during these business trips? I'm assuming a fairly large percentage of those 28k jobs at the Pentagon don't require frequent air-commuting, am I wrong in that? Did you speak often with your fellow passengers? If so, did you often find yourself speaking to employees of defense contractors/Boeing?

I find your assertion that its its unusual based on your lack of knowledge of the region to be ridiculous. Those of us who have had and do live and work in the Metro DC area, that have done this type of traveling for our means saying that is the norm should be good enough.

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I'm being provided with knowledge on the region, and I understand now there are many defense contractors in the area, that some of their employees would do a fair bit of flying, and that the Pentagon employs 28k people. but I stand by my doubts that these facts are some kind of powerful evidence against the idea this particular collection of passengers being on that particular plane during those particular events is a suspicious coincidence. It's being said a lot, and with all sorts of inflammatory language attached, but I've still not even seen any actual indication such a trend is a commonality as claimed. That aside, I have to say again, a director of fiscal economics for the Defense Department, working at the Pentagon, was on a plane which was flown into a section of the pentagon which coincidentally had been recently refurbished and reinforced against attack, a section of the Pentagon which also coincidentally contained a large number financial personnel, at a time when massive amounts of money was unaccounted for in the Pentagon's budget. Why is that not even remotely suspicious? Please, someone, explain that to me, besides saying 'Oh, well, pentagon people fly all the time...!' Yeah.. right... no doubt... but they don't typically wind up being murdered in an express flight to their own office. That's a little unusual, No?

And still NOTHING to show a second point of connection between them.

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A director of fiscal economics for the defense department was flown into a section of the pentagon containing a large number of Army employees working as economic functionaries for a department of Resource Services which lost about 75% percent of its employees, a section of the pentagon which according to the official account was targeted at random, in spite of the unquestionably complex maneuver carried out to strike the building there. A Navy Scientist doing 'black-ops' work, and several Navy/ex-navy personnel, some of which were since employed by defense contractors, are flown into a section of the Pentagon containing the Navy Command Center, where the majority of the fatalities in the Pentagon took place. Those are supposedly coincidental passengers with direct connections to the targeted victims. Why is it so mind-boggling to thus suspect they may have been targeted victims as well, given this obvious connection?

No explanation on HOW all of them were convinced to take that flight. Without that there is nothing.

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Once more, I'm not prescient. Why the fuck would I guess after details I can't possibly know? What purpose does it serve? Why is there such a desire to veer back into what's imagined might have happened over discussing reality?

There is more evidence for Big Foot and the Loch Ness monster.

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Better start up some new threads then Cairenn.

Grieves said:

Please, someone, explain that to me, besides saying 'Oh, well, pentagon people fly all the time...!' Yeah.. right... no doubt... but they don't typically wind up being murdered in an express flight to their own office. That's a little unusual, No?

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But if they do fly all the time, (which you conceded) then surely it's reasonably likely than not that one or more of them would be on the plane when it crashed into the pentagon.

Just like any plane flying from New York would quite like have had WTC workers on it.

The plane flew from Dulles. Dulles is the airport that anyone who works at the Pentagon flies from. It's 20 miles from the Pentagon.

Given any flight from Dulles to Los Angeles, it is not at all unusual for a Pentagon worker to be on it.

I think you need to get beyond this raw sense of incredulity. You are asking the wrong questions. It's not "what are the odds that a man would be murdered by hijackers flying him into his own place of work", it's "what are the odds that someone from the Pentagon would be on that flight".

Yes, it was very usual to die in that manner, but no it was not unusual that someone from the Pentagon be on the flight.

Grieves said:

What is remotely normal about a high ranking member of the Defense Department being flown into his own place of business? That seems a pretty goddamn unusual series of events to me

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Indeed it is!! The events of that day - across the board- were unusual.

But he was not a "high ranking" as in military- he was a civilian employee of the Defense Department- He was their budget analyst.

Why was he even on the flight? he was flying out to CA to make a speech. Is that unusual?

Look at every reason every passenger was on that flight...were the reasons unusual or were they just going about their daily/working lives...and happened to be on an ill-fated plane?

SR, are you going to address this statement you made?

Funny- out of 40 people on flight 93- to San Francisco...an IT hub....8...or 20% were in the IT field.

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Again, I only counted 4 passengers in IT jobs, all in largely unrelated fields. Did I miss anyone? Who are your other 4 examples? You didn't just say it was 8 because that's 20% of 40, did you..?

But he was not a "high ranking" as in military-

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a high ranking member of the Defense Department

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Grieves said:

SR, are you going to address this statement you made?

Again, I only counted 4 passengers in IT jobs, all in largely unrelated fields. Did I miss anyone? Who are your other 4 examples? You didn't just say it was 8 because that's 20% of 40, did you..?

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No - you missed:

Todd Beamer - An account manager for Oracle Corporation

Mark Bingham - The Bingham Group in San Francisco, IT Marketing firm

Marion Britton - Headed to San Francisco for a computer operations conference with fellow Flight 93 passenger, Waleska Martinez,

Mark Rothenberg - worked for MDR Global Resources- an IT company.


Are they any more unrelated than lawyers, scientist, budget analysts, engineers, project managers and pilots?

Marion Britton - Headed to San Francisco for a computer operations conference with fellow Flight 93 passenger, Waleska Martinez,

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was not employed in the IT field herself. Was simply attending the conference with an IT employee, both of whom worked for the Census Bureau.

Todd Beamer - An account manager for Oracle Corporation

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Does not have an IT related job. His job is in the IT field though, unlike most all the other listed employees with jobs in computing.

Mark Rothenberg - worked for MDR Global Resources- an IT company.

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Mark David Rothenberg, 52, of Scotch Plains, New Jersey, was an intense, successful businessman accustomed to frequent flights to Asia for his importing business, MDR Global Resources.

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from his obituary. Owner of an import business doesn't equate to an IT job, or a job within the IT field in my mind.

Mark Bingham - The Bingham Group in San Francisco, IT Marketing firm

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He was CEO of The Bingham Group, which is a marketing firm period, with no exclusivity to the web. Web design was one of the nine services they offered, and if their portfolio is any indication it's not one of their primary breadwinners.

So you've got 4 computer techs/programers in wholly unrelated fields, and one account-manager for an IT company. 'They all used computers/teh web!' isn't a trend of IT professionals. It's the 21'st century. All those jobs likely involved paper/paperwork too, but that can hardly be considered a significant trend.

Are they any more unrelated than lawyers, scientist, budget analysts, engineers, project managers and pilots?

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Depends on the field. If it was an agricultural scientist, a budget analyst for an insurance company, a locomotion engineer, a project manager for Walmart, ect... then no, they wouldn't be any more unrelated, given they're all in very different fields. The difference being these were lawyers, scientists, budget analysts, engineers, and project managers all with jobs either directly relating too or very pertinent too national defense, some in positions which made them targets of the attack they were coincidentally about to fall victim too. That is a somewhat distinct relation.