9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001: Pentagon Security Cameras near the Crash Site Are Switched Off due to Renovation Work

Many security cameras at the Pentagon that could have captured the building being hit are currently switched off or have been taken down due to construction work that is taking place and therefore do not film the attack. [Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 11/9/2006 ; Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 244] The attack occurs “close to the Pentagon’s heliport, an area that normally would be under 24-hour security surveillance, including video monitoring,” the Washington Times will later note. [Washington Times, 9/21/2001] “There are a lot of cameras within the facility at any one time,” Steve Pennington, a private consultant responsible for the Pentagon’s security cameras, will comment. However, due to renovation work that is being carried out on the Pentagon, many cameras close to where the attack occurs are currently out of use. Some cameras have been taken down temporarily. “There were cameras on poles at the other end, along the roadway, but they were down for construction projects or being changed out during the process,” Pennington will recall. Other cameras that would normally focus on the area where the crash occurs have been switched off. “Because that area was being renovated, a lot of the connectivity of these cameras and the infrastructure that allowed those cameras to be connected back to the building had been removed or destroyed, so they weren’t capturing images and offering fields of view,” Pennington will say. [Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 11/9/2006 ] Furthermore, a number of cameras near the area of impact are either destroyed or lose connectivity when the crash occurs (see Shortly After 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001). [Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1/31/2006 ; Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 152-153] Two recently installed cameras north of the crash site are apparently the only Pentagon security cameras that capture the building being hit (see 9:37 a.m. September 11, 2001). [CNN, 5/20/2006; Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 11/9/2006 ; Goldberg et al., 2007, pp. 161]