Eye Witness My Eye

The below is an exchange with a person claiming they witnessed a jet do the impossible with their own two eyes.  She even gave a name and a map of her location.  Unfortunately for her she chose the wrong location.  Here’s how you spank a spook:

Ok, fair enough.

Who: Myself, obviously. Also my sister.

When: 8:47am-9:03am

Where: Battery Park City apartment (visiting my sister who had married a New Yorker and moved there in 1999) with a good view of the towers to the North East and of West Street.

What: I guess you would class this first part as a so-called no-plane witness but I was asleep at the time of the first crash. Something woke me, the sound of the explosion maybe. I saw something out the window and went over for a closer look, seeing debris and paper raining down, flames and smoke shooting from the south side of the North Tower.

My sister had woken at the same time, she had that same feeling of being suddenly wrenched from sleep by a loud noise. We watched in horror as the building burned. It was just a couple minutes later when people started to jump, my brain couldn’t immediately process that those falling shapes were people. The window was open slightly, sirens blaring all around us.

We were so paralyzed by what we were seeing neither of us even thought of turning on a tv. There was a faint smell of something, my sister (a flight attendant) recognized it as jet fuel. We couldn’t see the gaping hole in the North face but it seemed possible a plane had struck the building.

I heard a roaring sound and looked out to try and find the source. A large blue-looking plane streaked by. I also thought I saw a flash of red and being a Brit it made me think of a BA plane’s livery. The plane hit the South Tower within about 3 seconds of seeing it. We evacuated our building right after this.

Why: Not exactly sure what you mean here but why did I see a plane? Because I was looking at it, no mistaking what it was to me even if my initial thought on it’s airline livery was wrong.

Hope this helps, whatever you make of it.

Anneliese.

EDIT: I would like to add that although my instinctual thought was British Airways, my sister had no doubt which airline it belonged to. The very same one she worked for, United. She was very sure of this.

What’s with the French names.

I have met many online characters who have claimed they saw the jets enter the buildings with their own eyes. One even claimed he was a fireman evacuating people from WTC7, standing directly below the south tower, looking straight up when 175 hit.

Mostly the tactic is to use some perspective they read about or saw on T.V., and make it sound unique by putting their own personal twist in the story. In the fireman’s case he was obviously using the perspective of a couple other Frenchmen, Jules and Gedeon Naudet, who filmed the first AND second strikes. I don’t know if he was a pro or just disturbed, but his story didn’t add up and sure enough, after enough contradictions were exposed, he finally admitted he hadn’t seen squat.

So you can understand my excitement to meet you. You make my fifth online personality eyewitness! And you even gave me a map and a good description of your experiences, for which I am grateful. Alas it turns out your apartment complex isn’t where you pointed to, but that’s an easy mistake to make so I won’t hold that against you.

You were amazingly close to yet another Frenchman, Luc Courchesne who had set up shop to film the second strike just up the street from where you were. You could have hit him with a spitball, imagine the coincedence! You sure you don’t know him?

Luc’s footage was on the Naudet film “9/11” a full two years before it was released to the public, so I’m assuming you folks with the French names must like to stick together.

Anyhoo, since Luc immortalized the time period you described, and ironically enough, from practically the same perspective, we can see a couple things immediately.

•  One, you have eagle eyes to be able to recognize jumpers at that distance.
•  Two, there were no jumpers, watch the video and see. You’ll also see how distant you were.

Here we see your location:

I got the impression you just woke up and got out of bed, but you must have meant you were in the street. No matter though, this is how it looks today:

Eagle eyes Anneliese

Here’s Luc Courchesne’s perspective – just up the street

Here’s the closest I could get to the same spot in Google Earth:

Which puts you both right like so:

Here’s Luc’s footage, including the second strike.  I have the full length footage too, which includes the audio, but there is no mention of the jumpers; but he was very excited to catch the plane. This footage doesn’t include the sound but as you can see – it was quite some distance, and there were no jumpers.

In conclusion, your description of events uses evocative, emotional language, as propagandists usually do, your perspective mimics that of Luc Courchesne’s, and you were too far away to identify jumpers even if there had been jumpers.

I’m pretty sure you didn’t see a jet fly through a steel skyscraper with your own two eyes.

Yank

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=9007290#post9007290

More images for the JREF nutcases: