Disinformation
By Proxy & Other Misdemeanours
Holmgren and Webfairy “Toilet Paper” 911 TV Fakery
Introduction
This critique is based on Gerard
Holmgren’s “Analysis Of Hip Hop Plane”
dated 2nd
October 2006 with video
extracts provided by the Webfairy.
Back To Front
Holmgren begins his “Analysis
Of Hip Hop Plane”
article with the
following conclusion:
“The video has been broken into frames, and the quickest and easiest way
to see how fake this video is…”
One would imagine
that an investigative article would start with something along the lines of (1)
a brief précis, (2) the presentation of information, (3) an interpretation or
analysis of that information and finally (4) a conclusion drawn from the
information analysed.
For some reason
Holmgren has decided to waive this process in favour of a more unconvincing
methodology that involves starting with the conclusion and working backwards.
The act of annexing himself from any logical methodology doesn’t credit
Holmgren and probably wouldn’t instil any confidence in the reader either.
Avoiding “Any
Deep Analysis”
We are then
guided to poor quality captures from the “Park
Foreman” WTC2 strike video provided by Webfairy and told that…
“If you have your eyes and brain connected,
it will be obvious without any deep analysis that this video—purported to be
real footage of a real plane hitting the WTC and aired as such on CNN—is a
pathetic fake. “
So “any deep analysis” is obviously out. I
wonder what “any deep analysis” was
and what it would have involved. Why did Holmgren chose to abandon “any deep analysis” and how did he get
to the “fake” conclusion so quickly
without any evidence?
Holmgren confuses
the reader in the next paragraph (excerpt below) with terms like 78,
disturbance, 85, noses, 2/3, spots, 1/3, building, 84, signs, wings and
lots of other stuff which would be rather good if we actually knew what it
meant.
“You’ll also see that at
frame 79 the nose is just making contact with the building. In frame 80, it’s
in exactly the same spot. In frame 81, it’s about 1/3 of the way into the
building—with no sign of any disturbance to either plane or building, and in
frame 82 it’s still in exactly the same spot. In frame 83, it’s about 2/3 the
way in, still with no disturbance of any kind to plane or building, even though
the wings are now completely “inside” the building…”
Perhaps if
Holmgren had chosen to utilise “any deep analysis” the reader might not have been subject
to this meaningless cocktail of numerical and grammatical utterances. Why render
that which is supposedly “obvious” in
such a confusing fashion?
The Missing
Frames
The
aforementioned are small points when you consider Holmgren’s primary mistake,
that being the speed calculation of the “Hip
Hop Plane” based on the video captures supplied by Webfairy.
“Convert this to mph. 1600 x 60 x
60 ft per hour = 5,760,000 ft per hour = 1090 mph.”
It should be
obvious to Holmgren that the figure of 1090 mph cannot possibly be correct. You
only have to look at the video to see this. Why is Holmgren’s speed calculation
so inaccurate? It’s because the source material provided by Webfairy was
defective. Webfairy’s video frames are reproduced below as a montage:
In her version
the “plane” hangs in the air for one
frame and advances in the next.
“A video of a real plane would show the plane moving every frame…”
This observation
form Holmgren should have been the first warning that something was wrong with
the video source. It wasn’t necessarily the video captures themselves that were
the problem, more to the point, the lack of them.
“Then there’s the problem of how it can be doing 1090 mph in one frame
and then suddenly zero in the next frame, and then 1090 again in the next frame
and then zero again and then 1090 again…”
The reason Holmgren
made such a mess of the speed calculation was because Webfairy supplied him
with either captures from a defective video source or a sequence of captures
from a genuine source with some of the original captures missing having been replaced
with duplicates.
Chop Job
As it was
Webfairy who had procured the video captures for Holmgren’s speed analysis I decided
to quiz her by e-mail on the origins of her version of the “Park Foreman” video. Webfairy responded promptly with the
following:
“It is from what we saw
RIGHT AWAY, the first day, or maybe the second. It is what they showed us on TV
THEN, not later when they could regenerate the animation at leisure.”
(4th October 2006)
In that case where did “Frame
X” (below) come from? It does not appear in the Webfairy sequence shown
previously although they appear to be from the same source – look at the text
at the bottom of the frame “TWO AIRCRAFT
CARRIERS” and compare it to the previous montage (above).
So according to Webfairy the video frames used in the analysis
were taken from North American television either on the first showing or
subsequent replays on the same day or the day after.
In
As there is evidence that the “Park
Foreman” video was recorded using the NTSC standard then when it was
broadcast using that same NTSC standard the viewers should have essentially seen
a facsimile of the original on their television sets, that is 60 unique images
shown every second.
Webfairy claims that her version of the “Park Foreman” was taken from a North American television
transmission that should have been NTSC yet it only has 15 unique images per
second. The comparison source used here was the NTSC DVD called “In
Memoriam -
I’ve illustrated this point below. Webfairy has supplied the
fields marked “77/78” and “79/80”. I’ve filled in the gaps using “Frame X” from another source on the web
(I could have used my own DVD version here, it didn’t matter either way) and
the two remaining fields marked “Park
Foreman –
If it were the case that North American broadcasters were showing
this very strange version of the “Park
Foreman” video then the situation was even more peculiar in the Britain
because at roughly the same time a 25 FPS (“frames per second” - with 2
fields in each frame as the PAL standard resulting in 50 unique images per
second) version was being shown with no sings of frame rate conversion.
The montage below shows captures from the PAL transmission in
question. They were sourced from a VHS recording of the “Park Foreman” video that was transmitted at approximately 6:00pm
on the evening of September 12th 2001 in the
Quite a
difference from the Webfairy version which runs at 15 images per second presumably
with plenty of duplicates to raise the frame rate to the NTSC standard implied.
Webfairy
continued:
“One later version, from
National Geographic's Inside 911 http://webfairy.org/inside911/jetcrash.htm
features 4 unique frames and one dupe, which makes me think the footage was
raised up from PAL fps to NTSC (24 to 29.995 fps).”
(4th October 2006)
The British version does look as if it has been originally
recorded at 25 FPS because there is no
visual evidence of any conversion from one frame rate to another.
The montage below shows one possible
visual side effect of a frame rate conversion from NTSC (30 FPS approximately)
to PAL (25 FPS). In the example frame merging / blending has been utilised to
eliminate 5 frames from the original NTSC source thus allowing smooth playback
at the PAL frame rate. Comparison between field 1 (white text below) and field
4 (red text below) should make the concept of frame merging / blending clear:
The same technique can be used to raise frame rates from PAL to
NTSC but in this case extra frames are created from the merging / blending of 2
adjacent frames, the resultant frame inserted between the 2 original adjacent
frames to boost the frame rate. The other way to convert frame rates is to
eliminate frames (frame rate step down) or to create frames (frame rate step
up) but the problem here is that the playback is not smooth making it apparent
that such a conversion has taken place.
The PAL version of the “Park
Foreman” detailed previously shows
no obvious sign of being converted from one frame rate to another. The playback
is smooth and there are no signs of frame blending / merging. Therefore one
could assume that PAL was the format of choice for the original “Park Foreman” recording.
The only problem with this assumption is that it is challenged by the
existence of any NTSC DVD version of what we are led to believe is precisely
the same video. In this case I’ve chosen the version from “In Memoriam -
Just like its PAL counterpart this DVD NTSC “Park Foreman” version shows no obvious signs of frame rate
conversion. The playback is smooth and there’s no evidence of any frame merging
/ blending.
If the Webfairy version was recorded in PAL as she suggests then we
should see some sign of frame rate conversion equivalent to a step up from PAL to
NTSC but we don’t.
Did anyone in
Which one was the original anyway? The Webfairy version? The British
PAL version? The North American NTSC version? Was there an original as such and
in what form was it recorded?
It is conceivable that Webfairy unwittingly obtained an inferior
version of the video (in whatever form) and assumed it was suitable for
Holmgren to analyse for the “Analysis Of
Hip Hop Plane” article. I find this
explanation unsatisfactory as there have been plenty of good versions of the “Park Foreman” readily available since
2001 either via the Internet, video shops or mail order companies like
Amazon.com. Perhaps Webfairy does have a better version of the video but due to
her incompetence she failed to present it to Holmgren, which would be as bad as
giving him a defective version on purpose.
But the quality of some of Webfairy’s previous work makes this
explanation unlikely. The error she made seems too big to be unintentional.
The Question Of
Speed
“The plane is alleged to be a 767 which is about 160 ft long. A 767 has
a typical cruising speed of 530 mph at 35,000 ft….A plane which normally flies
about 530 mph at high altitude somehow doing double this at low altitude—while
barging it’s way through a building…A plane which has a normal cruising speed
of 530 mph at 35,000 ft is alleged to be travelling so fast at low altitude…”
Once again Holmgren has not proved that the video is fake. He
assumes the “plane” is meant to be a Boeing 767-200 and bases his video
forgery test based on that assumption. There’s no attempt to ascertain the real
length of the “plane” from the video.
If the “plane” was shorter or longer than 160 ft / 48.5 meters the speed
calculation would be different. But how do we know the video is genuine showing
a hologram of a Boeing 767-200 or a modified Boeing 767-200 designed for high
speed operation at low altitudes?
Holmgren never
tells us why the 530 mph speed at “lower
altitude” (whatever height that refers to is anyone’s guess) would be a
problem for the Boeing 767-200 aircraft. Does Holmgren assume that the reader
has a sound understanding of aerodynamics and aircraft handling?
Holmgren needs to explain why the “550 mph commercial jet at sea level scenario” is at best,
unlikely, if not totally impossible. Failure to make this clear would render
the speed calculation meaningless for anyone who did not already know this.
I decided to calculate the speed of the “plane” in the “Park Foreman” video using field captures from the “In
Memoriam -
1 – The recording is of a
sufficient visual quality to perform a reasonably accurate speed analysis.
2 – The DVD version used is
representative of the original source.
3 – The original recording
was made according to the NTSC standard.
4 – The aircraft in the
video is an unmodified Boeing 767-200 at 48.50 meters in overall length.
5 – The aircraft fuselage
is horizontal in the cameras field of view.
I’ve used the south-west corner of WTC2 as a fixed visual
reference to gauge the transit of the 48.5-meter “plane” fuselage across
its vertical edge and I’ve broken down the video into fields to obtain a
timeframe for fuselage transit across that vertical side. With these two
factors known it is possible to measure how much time has elapsed during the
passing of the “plane” from nose-tip to tail-fin section and therefore
calculate the speed of the “plane” relative to the WTC2 tower.
It took roughly 12 fields for the 48.5-meter fuselage to pass the
vertical southwest corner of WTC2 (see field 0 and field 12 above). 12 fields
equates to 0.2002 seconds so we can say that the “plane” had travelled
48.5 meters in 0.2002 seconds.
Those values convert to 242 m/s or 871 km/h or 470 knots or 540 mph or depending on your
inclination.
So Holmgren’s speed calculation from the Webfairy version turned
out to be quite accurate making it the only valuable piece of information in
the paper.
It’s a shame he chose to halt the analysis at this point leaving
the reader pondering over an unexplained 3-digit number.
The Partially Visible Non-Visible Hole
“The impact area is partially masked by a building in the foreground,
but we can still see enough to see that the hole which should be in the
building has not appeared.”
How is Holmgren able to see a point on the tower that relatively
speaking has such inadequate illumination that one can barely see any detail on
it’s surface? The
But the “Park Foreman” video (above lower) has an added
bonus. The impact area is partially obscured by another building (as Holmgren
points out) making it practically impossible to see any hole the “plane”
might have created had the impact area been adequately illuminated. Additionally the video quality isn’t brilliant
and the hole would only have been a few of pixels across making visual
detection of any such hole very difficult.
It’s a bit like thinking you can quickly escape from a dark room
to another equally dark room via a small door that is partially blocked by
another object. Extremely difficult, if
not impossible, without adequate illumination of either rooms and / or the
removal of the doorway obstruction.
The only part of any hole that we’d potentially be able to see
would be the area where the right wing of the “plane” appears to impact
against WTC2’s south wall (red arrow below) and the only evidence of this is
the appearance of “dust bubbles” from
the corresponding area.
The video source used here cuts out long before the explosion dies
away thereby removing any chance to see any hole so I’m not quite sure what
Holmgren is trying to prove with the following:
“…we can still see enough to see that the hole which should be in the
building has not appeared…”
Suffice to say it means very little and makes it the most
irrelevant and confused part of “Analysis
Of Hip Hop Plane”.
The Christian, The Madman And The Holmgren
“Firstly, we can see that
there is no sign of deceleration. The last third of the plane enters in the
same number of frames as the first. In a real crash of a plane into a building,
assuming that the plane did enter fully inside the building, the last section
would enter more slowly than the first. The deceleration wouldn’t be discernable
at full speed, but the whole idea of frame-by-frame replay is that it enables
us to see things like this in increments of 1/30th of a second. This is how we
are able to pick real events captured on video from animations.”
As Holmgren points out the major oddities of the WTC2 strike
videos are the way the “plane” vanishes inside the tower with no sign of
deceleration and no deformation of the airframe during impact.
Holmgren can deliver an exceptionally convincing argument about
how it would be impossible for a commercial passenger jet to punch a hole in,
and vanish inside of, the WTC towers as we see in the 911 videos. Similarly a
Christian could present an extremely convincing argument that proves God exists
and that He created the entire universe with everything in it. No doubt a
madman could develop a sound argument to prove that the moon was made of
cheese. Unfortunately for the Christian, the Madman and Holmgren their
respective arguments are arguments and nothing more.
Some readers may be already be aware of a video (see photographs
below) that shows an F4 Phantom being deliberately rammed into a solid concrete
block at about the same speed of the alleged 911 “planes”.
The airframe shows no noticeable deceleration during the collision
and is pulverised in the process. Anyone who has seen this video might
counter-argue that something similar happened to the “planes” at the WTC
on 911 with the debris passing inside the tower.
An argument is not as meaningful as a scientific analysis no mater
how convincing it is.
Plaguepuppy v The “Cat Mincer”
Holmgren’s “Analysis Of Hip
Hop Plane” article might have come
closer to achieving it’s aim had it included interviews from suitably
experienced and / or qualified engineers from the relevant disciplines. An obvious example of this would be Jeff King
(aka Plaguepuppy) who has spoken publicly about the implausibility of the WTC “plane”
impacts as we see in the videos.
Kings describes himself as:
“…a 50-something former
engineer (MIT class of '74, about 10 years in electronics and
electro-mechanical engineering), gainfully employed as a family physician for
the past 25 years…”
And elsewhere:
“…after graduating from
MIT in 1974 I went to med school at UVM in Vermont, then spent a year at
the Harvard School of Public Health in the Pulmonary Physiology lab doing
electrical and mechanical engineering work before deciding to do an internship
and practice clinical medicine..”
Holmgren has an article on his site called “WTC Forensics” that deals with the impact physics. Here’s a quote
from it:
“Think of the cartoon scene,
where the cat chases the mouse through a mincer. The cat emerges from the other
side still running, not realizing that its now made of a jigsaw type shapes. It
keeps running for a while, and then with a look of resignation realizes that
its been cut up, stops and collapses into a pile of little jigsaw type pieces.”
According to Holmgren’s website he is a professional musician. I’m
guessing that in the eyes of the reader his “cat
mincer” argument would not carry as much weight as an analysis provided by
Jeff King.
Let me illustrate this point.
Compare this transcript from Jeff King, the MIT graduate with electrical
and mechanical engineering work experience…
“…what you should see is
something like a squashed flat plane with probably 2 holes where the engines
have gone thought the walls, but you should see a great deal of crumpling at
the point where the plane is actually interacting with the surface of the steel
columns. You should see the longitudinal elements of the plane buckling. You
should see the wings crumple up. You should see a great deal of material either
bouncing of the wall or essentially falling after impact…”
To this (complete with original capitalisation and line spacing)
from Gerard Holmgren, the professional musician:
“In real life, the cat either
Gets immediately cut into pieces and ceases
all co-ordinated movement as a single object, and doesn't damage the blades or
Bursts through the mincer blades, breaking them or Mangles itself, stopping
almost immediately and also causing significant damage to the blades.
So what we asked to believe at the WTC is a
Tom and Jerry cartoon.”
Who’s description do you think the reader would find more
convincing that an aeroplane cannot pass through a steel tower in the way the
WTC2 impact videos show us. Holmgren’s “cat
mincer” argument or King’s “squashed
flat plane” description?
Morgan Reynolds has adopted a similar approach to the impact
physics issue as Holmgren has with “We
Have Some Holes In The Plane Stories” but his attempt is superior in that
it is far more detailed, flashes a few numbers around to quantify things and
has some good graphics to explain the points he makes, thereby making the
subject material accessible to the reader.
Had Holmgren bothered to do some research on the web he might have come
across this revealing image (below) that gives a graphical representation of
what King describes:
The graphic shows what should have happened to a Boeing 767 had it
been flown head on into a solid object. But as we know WTC walls were not
solid, they were made from a grid of steel beams that were designed to
withstand aeroplane collisions. So even if this simulation were accurate it
would not be entirely representative of the WTC “plane” impacts as
revealed in the official version of events. But given the strength of the WTC
towers what we see here is a good visual approximation of what should in the
event subject to hardware and software limitations of modern computers and
limitations of the computer model utilised.
Holmgren chooses not to link the “Analysis Of Hip Hop Plane” article to “We Have Some Holes In The Plane Stories” or any of Kings material
even though both are freely available on the web and are far better than
anything he has to offer.
What’s strange is that he won’t provide a link to his own article,
“WTC Forensics”, that supposedly
deals with the impact physics.
An oversight or intentional?
Straight From The Horses Mouth
Some time ago I found myself wanting to make an important update
the then “Ghost Gun UA175” article. I
needed to know how fast a Boeing 767-200 could feasibly fly at sea level. I
could have developed an argument for why a B767-200 couldn’t have flown at 550
mph at sea level but I’ve never flown that type of aircraft or studied its
aerodynamic properties so what would be the point? My ramblings would be
meaningless and it would have been dishonest to present them publicly.
Fortunately I knew an experienced airline pilot who had flown the
B767-200 and B767-300 aircraft and had trained pilots to fly them. I simply
knocked on his door and asked if I could talk to him about the performance
limitations of the B767-200. He agreed and after the interview I had enough
material to update the “Ghost Gun UA175”
article. I did this because I had no
knowledge of the operational limitations of the B767-200 and therefore I needed
to interview someone who did.
Similarly a 911 researcher by the name of Dr Stefan Grossmann did
the same thing while preparing the then forthcoming article “T-911 An Insiders On
There was no reason for Holmgren not to do the same thing for the “Analysis Of Hip Hop Plane” article.
Perhaps informing the reader of the implausibility of what we see
in the “Park Foreman” video was not
on his list of priorities.
The Germania
Explanation
Holmgren claims that:
“The plane in this video is a crude fake”
Most of the WTC2 videos don’t show the
approach to WTC2 they just show the impact and a great deal of these seem to
have been recorded using a video camera mounted on a stand making it easier to
add a “plane” into the video.
Comparatively speaking the “Park
Foreman” video is clever in the sense that it shows the approach and impact of
a “plane” that supposedly never existed while at the same
time providing camera shake, motion blur and other qualities that make the
video look genuine. The “plane” as you see it is more or less
the correct size, has the correct livery, the correct illumination and obeys the
laws or perspective.
If we are to
assume that there never was a second plane then the forger who made the “Park
Foreman” would have to have set up a camera and then mimicked the camera
movements to coincide with the movement of a non-existent plane as it flew
towards lower
One possible explanation for this
effect is that the “Park Foreman” video was
recorded using multiple video cameras mounted on a platform for the purposes of
producing a large static panoramic view of
The reader might think that this
explanation is far fetched, but think again because a similar method was being
used in the film industry prior to 911.
Here is an example of the technique
taken from the bonus disc of the extended version of Ridley Scott’s epic “Gladiator” titled “
I’d argue that the “Park Foreman” is one of the better fakes at least in comparison
to, say for example, the “Cheney Hit” video or the “Jennifer
Spell” video which is full of easily detectable flaws. The claim that “The plane in this video is a crude fake” highlights
Holmgren’s poor
grasp of the subject matter and another example of his avoiding “any deep analysis”. approach to 911 TV Fakery.
Prognosis
Webfairy hasn’t helped Holmgren by supplying him with a misleading
video source for the “Analysis Of Hip Hop
Plane” article. Webfairy does this kind of thing with monotonous
regularity, that is, using inferior versions of a video for the purpose of
analysis when there are better versions readily available. By their very nature
these lower quality videos allow the analysis to be subjective and therefore
worthless because the analyst can essentially see what they want to see in the
video.
With regards to the suspicious procurement of the inferior video
captures, I suspect that Webfairy took an original NTSC video source and
hacked it to pieces using a video editing application like
VirtualDub. The resulting chop job would be dished up at a later date for the “Analysis Of Hip Hop Plane” paper. The
purpose being to make Holmgren look like an idiot. It worked. In my view this
was “disinformation by proxy”. As for
the origins of this chopped up version I could not say. Perhaps she got it from
“Peter Pan” or a pixie that flew by
her window one night.
On a positive note Holmgren did manage
to get the correct speed from Webfairy’s mangled version but sadly this was more by chance than
anything else.
For the “Park Foreman” video
proof of forgery does not lie in the understanding of what the video shows. The
proof of forgery lies in the pixels and there is plenty of evidence to support
forgery using this approach. But Holmgren skilfully misses the opportunity to
imply or prove forgery by choosing abstinence from “any deep analysis”, producing a speed calculation without
explanation or relevance and avoiding the discussion of impact physics.
It’s hard to tell if Holmgren’s “misdemeanours” were
intentional. From past experience it has become apparent that Holmgren has no
aptitude for the visual analysis of anything. But he could have avoided being
the Patsy (or possibly the Sheila) by looking around for other versions of the
video or at least confirming that the version he was using was representative
of the original. If he had done this maybe he would have become aware of the
suspicious coexistence of what looks like unmodified PAL and NTSC versions of
the same video. Neither Holmgren nor Webfairy seem to have noticed this, a
point of which strongly indicates video forgery and the sole purpose of the “Analysis Of Hip Hop Plane” article.
Did Holmgren collude with Webfairy to produce one the most
underwhelming 911 to date? Is Holmgren
really as dumb and impressionable as “Analysis
Of Hip Hop Plane” makes him out to be? Or is the Holmgren / Webfairy duo just
a “Laurel and Hardy” act with
delusions of grandeur?
“Analysis Of Hip Hop Plane” is too brief and superficial, covers old
ground, is propped up by a foundation of assumptions, is written is such a
style that it belittles the reader, assumes the reader has a good understanding
of science, offers no evidence that proves the video is fake, contains
irrelevant information and is generally useless for the purposes of what it
claims to prove.
As I see it “Analysis Of Hip
Hop Plane” is a joint Holmgren / Webfairy effort to “toilet paper”
911 TV Fakery and additionally damage the credibility of other researchers in
the same field.
Sources
Holmgren’s “Analysis Of Hip Hop Plane” can
be viewed here:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~holmgren/hiphop.html
Webfairy’s images can be observed here:
http://thewebfairy.com/whatzit/jetcrash/act_one/index.htm
The phenomena of “Toilet Papering” can
be scrutinised here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toilet_papering
A “Cheney Hit” video analysis can be seen here:
http://www.911research.dsl.pipex.com/ggua175/cheney
A “Jennifer Spell” video
analysis can be seen here:
http://www.911research.dsl.pipex.com/ggua175/spell
According to NIST (see screen capture below)
the name of the person who made the film used in the “Analysis
Of Hip Hop Plane”
article was Park Foreman.
Disclaimer
The official 911
story, all names and incidents portrayed in the 911 production are entirely
fictitious, no identification with actual events, persons, places, buildings
and aeroplanes is intended or should be inferred. The names and personalties of
“Webfairy” and “Holmgren” are the intellectual property of the Federal Bureau
of Investigation. Any unauthorised reproduction, exhibition, distribution or
copying of the “Webfairy” and “Holmgren” personas or any part thereof is an
infringement of the relevant Federal Bureau of Investigation copyright and will
subject the infringer to severe civil and criminal penalties. That is all.
December 2006