Posted on 11/16/2001 1:09:50 PM PST by smorgle
'I Know What I Saw...That Was No
Mechanical Problem...No Way!'
By Peter Gelzinis
BostonHerald.com
11-13-1
ROCKAWAY BEACH, NY -"I will never believe it was an accident.
They'll never convince me of that."
Eugene Sanfilippo kept looking past the microphones and
notebooks, down 131st Street toward Jamaica Bay and a vision
that the rest of us could not see.
It was past three in the afternoon, the sky above this sliver of
Queens was clear, but all this lanky, 45-year-old bus mechanic
could see was a huge orange ball of flame; he could still feel the
unbearable heat; he could hear people screaming; he could taste
the acrid black smoke.
And he was still afraid.
"When I heard the explosion, I thought we were under attack,"
Sanfilippo said.
"My first impression was that they'd hit us with a nuclear bomb. I
figured it was just like the World Trade Center. And I watched that
burn from the (Jamaica) bay."
Miles away from where Eugene Sanfilippo stood, at the edge of a
new Ground Zero, a mayor, a president's spokesman and a slew
of FAA officials were urging us to think "accident."
But they were not standing in Rockaway Beach.
They did not lose neighbors and friends across the bay in
Manhattan on Sept. 11. Black crepe still hangs here, along with
the memories of funerals for roughly 80 cops, firefighters and
stockbrokers.
To look into Eugene Sanfilippo's eyes was to see there were no
coincidences.
"Every day," he said, "I fear more and more for the safety of my
family. Why should we be made to suffer this way?"
Tommy Rayder, who works at JFK Airport, kept looking past the
fire barricades, toward a place where the autumn leaves had been
burnt off the trees.
The homes that were gone belonged to neighbors Tommy knew,
"because in this part of the city, we all know everybody."
"I want to believe it was mechanical. I'm hoping it was an accident.
These days," Tommy Rayder sighed, "an accident is what you
pray for.
"That's a weird thing to say isn't it? Here, a jet plane comes down
in the middle of a neighborhood, and you pray it's an accident
because you can't bear to think they'd do it again to us.
"Not here, not in Rockaway. You figure it couldn't happen again
cause we already suffered enough."
Standing a few feet away, James Gill tried as best he could to
comfort his wife who appeared to be deep in the throes of this new
suffering.
"We are up on the Cross Bay Bridge," James Gill said, "driving
over from Richmond Hill to look at a house.
"My wife saw the whole thing. What she saw was an explosion,
way forward on the engines, sort of just behind the cockpit.
"I had to pull over, just there on the bridge. Amanda was hysterical.
She dialed 911 on the cell phone, and just started to scream, `Help
me! Help me!' "
After being rocked by the sound of an initial explosion, James Gill
said he looked up to see American Flight 587 in flames and
attempting to bank, only to wind up in a flat death spiral.
"I was in munitions in both the Army and also the Navy. I know
what I heard and what I saw. That was no mechanical problem. No
way!"
Howard Greenberg rushed home from his law office in Manhattan
to find his wife shell-shocked.
After seeing the plane fall, and believing it was going to kill both
her and her children, Howard Greenberg said his wife spent the
next few horrific hours running over body parts in the direction of
her neighbors' burning homes. She was carrying blankets and
water.
"I'm afraid," Howard Greenberg said, "that my wife believes this is
another incident. She'd probably tell you that herself if she was
able to talk. I'm afraid that's impossible.
"Personally I might like to believe that it was something else, but
when you've been told that this whole area is being considered as
a crime scene, and that FBI agents are looking in your yard and on
your roof for evidence, for pieces of jet wreckage or human beings,
then it becomes hard to make a case for coincidence.
"Now that all may change, but right now this is simply too much to
fathom."
After being told to vacate her home, Lilly Reynolds looked into the
faces of the strangers swarmed around her.
"You know, after so many of our neighbors and friends died in
September we were just getting back to some idea of normal, then
this happens.
"My God, you say, they've done it again. What else are we
supposed to think?"
Note the dearth of recognition by Tobin of any possibility that maybe eyewitness reports were true, but the cause of material failure arose elsewhere concurrently.
If FBI or other authorities had sensitive information which they couldn't reveal without disclosing or implying their source, then it seems like Tobin could easily be the type to label their pursuit as sophmoric.
Tobin reads to be very good at Materials Science and Metalurgy, developed in many skills, and perhaps his testimony casts justifiable doubt that the cause of the crash was a missile of 4" cross sectional area, but he also fails to describe the dual of his argument, namely from the evidence available, if a missile existed, what constraints would have arisen?
The reference provided a plausible cause for failure.
Let me suggest another. Perhaps a weapon system or other device capable of producing sonic vortices in a directional fashion was the root cause of both crashes. Such a device with sufficient power to be comparable to an artillery weapon, but without the directly manifest logictical overhead, if developed would appear to be a revolution in military affairs to armament makers. IMHO, although a fringe notion, the concept might nicely explain the observed phenomenon in both cases.
This is a family website, we don't talk about the "clavicle," or anything else you perverts are into. Yes, I know, we all have clavicles, but that doesn't mean we should run around talking about them all the time.
</kidding>
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