9/11: How they faked the videos.

Have you ever seen the movie of the bank heist where the criminals dupe the security guards by placing a snapshot of the unopened vault in front of the security camera, to cover up the thieves’ actions of breaking into the vault?

According to the “TV Tropes” website, this trick is called a “camera spoof,” which comes in two basic versions:

First, the “Polaroid Punk,” where the criminals place a snapshot or a Polaroid photo in front of the security camera.  Second, the “Splice and Dice,” where the tech man on the team manages to capture some live camera footage, which he then feeds back to the security monitors in an endless loop.

 

On September 11, 2001, We the People were the security guards, and our Television sets were the security monitors.

The media, military, government, and industrial complex acted like the heist crew running a “splice‑and‑dice” operation. They took live footage of a missile attack on the twin towers, overlaid a jet to the footage, and then broadcast it back to us as “news.” They performed this camera spoof for the same reason they do in the movies: to hide the actual crime in progress. We were shown a plane crash because they didn’t want us to see the missile attack.

What we think of as “live television” is rarely actually live. Broadcasters usually build in a delay – just enough time for human censors to cut to a commercial if something unexpected happens. Technically called, “deferred live,” the practice of delaying their live shows by 30 seconds began when networks realized they could eliminate gaffs, profanity, or anything else they don’t want on the air. To the audience, the program feels live; to the broadcaster it is already recorded.

But that delay can work both ways. Sure, they can eliminate unwanted content, but they can also insert content. With a 30-second window – or more – they can insert any creative editing they desire, and the audience won’t know the difference.

To camera-spoof 9/11 required only a handful of shots to be prepared for broadcast, and a set of pre-made jet animations, each matched to the appropriate angle.

 

A transparent background makes inserting graphics onto existing footage easy. Only the graphic is visible, allowing it to blend into whatever scene it is added to.

Thus, on the morning of September 11, the jet animations were already prepared and ready to go. All that remained was to capture the explosion from the predetermined vantage points. Once the footage was recorded, it would have taken only seconds to composite the CGI jet onto the just-captured explosion using standard video-layering techniques – well within the buffer of a broadcast delay.

No one on earth ever saw flight 175 crash on live television.

To this day, the vast majority of humanity still believes the crash was shown live. But it isn’t so. The crash itself was not shown live. What was shown live was an object resembling a jet passing behind the towers, followed by the fireball. No crash. The impact was never shown as it happened.

After the first explosion in the North Tower, no one knew what occurred. But most of the eyewitness reports were that something other than a jet hit the tower. Some people said it was a bomb, some people said they saw a small plane, and some people said they saw missiles. The witnesses that said they saw a jet were members of the media, and their descriptions conflicted with every other account at the time. But, with only an 18-minute gap between the first explosion and the arrival of flight 175, there wasn’t enough time to think about it. While commentators were still speculating about what cut the hole in the North Tower, they broadcast a jet-object appearing to pass behind the complex and a fireball erupted from the South Tower.

Explained brilliantly by Gerard Holmgren:

This video shows four of the perspectives simultaneously. As described above, none of them capture south face of the South Tower, and for that reason they don’t show the impact itself.

Because no one expected a second explosion, every network kept its cameras trained on the north face of the North Tower. From that vantage point, the south face of the South Tower wasn’t visible, which means no one on earth ever saw the impact live.

They couldn’t show it live because it didn’t happen. And, because they didn’t want to show us what did happen, they drew from the experience of Hollywood and staged what the TV Tropes folks call “a camera spoof.” In other words, a staged illusion. Just as in the movies where the crew must first record the footage before looping it back to the security guards, the same logic applies here: before inserting a CGI jet into the broadcast, they needed to first record the real explosion.

From National Treasure: capturing the footage that will later be used for the camera spoof.

From National Treasure – capturing the footage to use for the camera spoof.

Ace Baker offers a detailed explanation of how the “ghost plane” effect could have been created using off‑the‑shelf software.

It’s a chicken‑and‑egg thing. Just as movie effect artists do today – adding or removing whatever they want from so-called “live” video – the CGI jet could only be added to the sequence after the actual footage was captured. Genuine video must first be captured before any digital elements can be layered onto it.

To get around this problem they made sure the live broadcasts were from vantage points that didn’t show the impact. 

It was the small army of propagandists posing as amateurs that was tasked with capturing the missile impacts. I’ll call this the “actual footage.” Once that footage was recorded, the next step was to edit out all signs of missiles and edit in a plane. These amateur videos showing a plane hitting the tower were released later – hours, days, months, even years afterward – but they were never shown live as it happened.

Ultimately, the initial shock-and-awe videos of flight 175 were relatively simple to fake on “almost-live” T.V. They didn’t need to show the impact itself – only a jet animation appearing to pass behind the building – followed by a real fireball. The jet was a pre-made CGI object, but the explosion was real. This, in turn, explains why the jet’s wings appeared to pass through the building without causing any damage to the structure or the jet, because the broadcast was just merging two video layers – the CGI jet and the undamaged tower. It also explains why the explosion didn’t erupt until the jet had fully penetrated the building; if it had happened earlier, the fake layers would have obscured the real fireball and spoiled the illusion.

If the jet and building were fake up until the jet penetrated the tower, but the fireball was real, that means the only place to merge the fake-jet layer with the real-explosion layer was at the point between where the last of the CGI jet disappeared into the tower, accompanied by added smoke, ala Ace Baker, above, and the point where the fireball erupted. This is why the jet didn’t collapse and break up on impact, because it was just a picture of a jet. And this is why the hole wasn’t visible in the wall after being penetrated by the wing, because it was just a video of the undamaged wall.

Remember, the broadcast wasn’t truly live, which means there was plenty of time for editing.

The locations chosen for the “amateurs” were selected in advance so they could rehearse the camera movements they would use on 9/11. As a military operation, the timing would have been practiced and refined until it could be executed with precision.

Targeting beacons were placed in the designated strike zones to reduce the margin of error to nearly zero. The missiles followed precise waypoints approaching at angles of attack nearly parallel to the face of the towers. This angle allowed them to hit multiple columns at once. A perpendicular angle of attack would have struck at most a single column – or even passed between two. Only by targeting them from the side could they ensure one missile would hit multiple columns, as explained here:

Operatives on the ground used their rehearsed camera-movements to mimic the motions of tracking an incoming jet, ensuring that the camera was centered on the crash zone when the countdown reached zero.

The operatives had already created the CGI jet–with a transparent background tailored to match each camera angle – so all they needed to complete the illusion was live video footage.

Here is the Hezarkhani footage aired on CNN. Note how the wings penetrated the tower but there was no damage to the wall. The only explanation for this phenomenon is the intersection of two video layers – one layer of the CGI jet, and the other of the undamaged face of the South Tower. The combined layers were used as a camera spoof designed to mask the missile impacts.

He zooms away from the tower to keep the hole out of view. The resolution is poor, and he adds enough smoke to mask the point of impact for a full minute and a half after the explosion.

He used footage of the undamaged South Tower to create his mask layer.

He then added the CGI plane to the mask, as described by Ace Baker. And that is what was broadcast on CNN: a plane that appeared to cut through the wall completely without causing any damage to either the plane or the wall.

The same goes for the Courchesne footage – heavy smoke, low resolution, a strange filter that added so much noise to the footage that tasks like adding a vague plane-shape, and drawing in smoke were no trouble at all.

This kind of fakery would be impossible today, with nearly everyone having a camera capable of live streaming to the Internet. But in 2001 cell-phone cameras didn’t exist yet so the only people with video equipment were mostly tourists and professional photographers. And given that the media and the authorities were the perpetrators, the public would only see the footage they wanted us to see.

As the old Latin saying goes, “Fortune Favors the Audacious.” The sheer boldness of the operation is what assured its success.

In sum:

How they spoofed the “live” shots of flight 175:

• The fireball was planned to erupt from the south face of the South Tower.
• The rehearsed “live” vantage points were focused on the north face of the North Tower.  
• By design, these perspectives could not capture the actual crash of the alleged plane.
• A CGI jet animation – with a transparent background- was created to match each of the half-dozen “live” shots.
• On the big day, operatives captured footage of the fireball from the same rehearsed perspectives.
• Utilizing the broadcast delay, they overlaid the prepared CGI jets onto the live videos of the fireball.
• The layers were then flattened, and the merged video was released as if it were live.

How they spoofed the “amateur” videos (not live):

• Deploy dozens of photographers posing as amateurs and position them around the city with clear views of the south face of the South Tower.
• Rehearse each vantage point a CGI jet animation with a transparent background to match each perspective.
• The first fireball erupts from the north face of the North Tower. The countdown begins: 18 minutes until the next fireball.
• All the network broadcasts focus on the hole in the north face of the North Tower and do not show the south face of the South Tower.
• The second fireball erupts from the south face of the South Tower.
• The Networks broadcast camera-spoofed “live” videos showing what looks like a plane crashing into the towers; the world is horrified.
• Each of the “amateur” photographers edits their respective video, erasing any signs of missiles, adding smoke, and inserting a plane.
• The propaganda organs release these videos periodically over the following days, weeks, months and years.