Well, Border Patrol or not, it was still some rather specific testimony. If only that pilot could be identified.
Does anyone know who the "male interviewer" is? I'm sorry if he's been identified before, John, but I simply don't recall this at all, so it's new information to me. Anyway, I ask because I wonder if that interviewer is willing to either render more detail, or point someone else in a direction to get it.
I agree this is an interesting "loose end" and of course that is why I continue to pursue it. It even tied into the book I was working on for several years but abandoned when it was suggested I trim the size and scope of it down. As you may recall, the theme of the book was AAL77, but the sub-plot was the Falkenberg family and in particular Zoe. It gained even more interest for me when it turned out that Charles Falkenberg's "boss" actually saw the DT helicopter that morning as he crossed the 14th St. Bridge on the way to work and thought it's flight pattern was "not normal" and made him think at the time that "something was up".
The helicopter he saw fit the flight path of the DT helicopter, which has a very good radar record associated with it. As I mentioned before, it had a transponder code of 5175 and I located its flight strip from Andrews AFB very easily. His path was of particular interest to the 911 Commission staff during their visit to Andrews and this particular one caught a staffer's attention. On the ATC audios he is MUS6, or a "Muscle" flight and this guy was a "Muscle" commander. They are with the 316th Wing, 1st Helicopter Squadron stationed at Andrews and charged with COOP/COG. For example, when they did the evacuations of the Pentagon and Capitol, they transported the VIP's and transition to Site R (the back-up Pentagon). The flight path this guy was on was similar to one noted earlier in the day by another "Muscle" flight, straight up the Potomac after a short stop at the Pentagon towards Camp David/Site R. These are the black and white helicopters people see flying around DC on almost any given day.
This brings us to the "second helicopter". I caution you, the MUS6 flight I just spoke of actually happened and is very well documented and verified. The second one is a Park Police helicopter flight spoken of by the interviewer,
John Sherwood. Indeed two helicopters responded from the Park Police facility at Anacostia. They are known as Eagle 1 and 2 on the ATC audios and their transponders can be tracked fairly well until they get into the tidal basin and then their transponders show up intermittently, depending on altitude of course. Neither of these fly the flight path that Sherwood describes and don't respond until after the event.
The helicopter described by Parsons matches the MUS6 flight path and shows up on DT videos. The Doubletree is in the same area as his hotel. The helicopter described by the interviewer, Sherwood, is NOT a match for MUS6. This is intriguing for a number of reasons, not the least of which is how helicopters fit into the defense strategy for just the kind of attack we saw on 9/11. Despite the public claims that we never imagined such a thing happening, it is fairly well documented that the National Security Council had already planned for such tactics. Richard Clarke says as much in his Against All Enemies when he outlines their plans to defend the Atlanta Olympics stadium in 1996 against such an attack. They armed helicopters with 50 cals to shoot down kamikaze planes manned by terrorists. The same strategy is being employed by NYC police today post-9/11. Definitely the intelligence services knew that AQ operatives were coming to the US to meet other AQ operatives already here for
"planning terrorist-related activities" by June, 2001. So in my mind all of this begs the question of whether such a plan was in place on 9/11 for DC and whether any of these helicopters were involved in such a contingency? It is not as exotic as DEW or foam theories, but it is certainly rooted in actual evidence and events.
Yet the problem with the Park Police helicopter scenario outlined by Sherwood is that its existence is based primarily on spurious evidence. His account is second-hand, and most likely third-hand. As far as I know, this pilot, nor his interview has never surfaced. There is some evidence (movement of debris on the ground) in the Pentagon gate footage of helicopter wash in the vicinity of the Mall gate about 8 seconds (if I recall correctly) after impact. There is the "flash" on the wall in the Citgo video that can be correlated to a low-altitude reflective source in the same general direction at the time of impact. There is an account by a ANC worker who saw a "plane" moments after impact in the same area. Now there is this little radar "track" (I am still suspicious of the Citgo canopy being the culprit in this case). Quite frankly, none of it comes even close to the evidence threshold required to say the darn helicopter ever existed.
Sure wish we had those Pentagon videos the FBI lost
