I THEN JUMPED OVER A HEDGE ABOUT NINE FEET HIGH
'The Surprising Adventures of Stanley Praimnath'
© Gerard Holmgren: Oct 25 2006 - This article or any part of it may not be reproduced without express permission from the author in writing. This prohibition excludes quotation for reasonable reference purposes, providing that the article is linked to. [I consider this a reasonable reference purpose...linking to here from
South Tower Anomalies III - Addressing the Debunkers ]
The claim made in the (above) title comes from a novel by Rudolp Erich Raspe entitled 'The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen'.
It is just one of the many surprising exploits narrated by the Baron. Of course, the novel is a lot of fun but not meant to be taken seriously. It seems however that when equally surprising assertions are made by people claiming to have seen a plane fly into the South Tower of the WTC on Sept 11, then the standards of plausibility are somewhat lowered by those eager to lap up "eyewitness accounts" of the event. This article examines the surprising adventures of one Stanley Praimnath in the WTC on Sept 11 2001.
For those not already familiar with the reason for this article, analysis of the videos of the alleged plane strike and the resulting forensic scene proves conclusively that no big plane flew into the South tower (or the North tower, but this article deals with an alleged witness report to the former ).
The plane which we saw on TV hitting the the Sth tower was a fake - a cartoon, an animation, a computer generated insert. Whether the South tower was hit by some other kind of much smaller flying object or whether it was merely an internal explosion is still a subject for debate, but whatever caused the explosion it was not a large passenger jet. The Flight UA 175 to which the impact is attributed is better described as Cartoon 175.
Due to the inability to make any coherent counter argument on the basis of video or physics evidence, the large plane theorists obsess with witness reports, ignoring both the fact that witness reports don't support any such conclusion anyway, and even if they did, where witness evidence contradicts video and physical evidence, then it is the latter which is more reliable.
Even in cases where witness testimony must be relied upon because is the only form of evidence available, it is normally required that a witness report should be intrinsically plausible. Witnesses to a large plane hitting the WTC however, seem to enjoy an exalted status, aloof from the rigorous cross examination and detailed deconstruction normally applied to something which purports to be important witness evidence relating to a crime.
Stanley Praimnath is a case in point. The witness report attributed to this individual is the equivalent of the above claim attributed to Baron Munchausen. This has not stopped it from being triumphantly presented to me via email debates as proof that a big plane hit the Sth tower. Such presentations have been frequent enough that I felt it necessary to write this article.
First, here are some sources for the Praimnath report. His story is all over the web, so I've selected just a few here, giving priority to those which best fulfill some combination of the following 4 requirements.
1. The earliest. 2. From recognized news outlets. 3. Contain significant variations from other versions. 4. Praimnath directly quoted rather than described as a narration.
1.The Independent Terror in America: Escapees - One week on, survivors tell. Sept 18 2001 by Thomas Sutcliffe
2.The Power of Prayer Sept 18 2001
3.Community People News Undated but the copyright notice indicates 2001/2
4.The Age June 1 2001
5.CNN Saturday Morning News Sept 7 2002
6.An Improbable Escape CNN Sept 9 2002
7.Sept 11 One year On The Guardian August 18 2002
You can read these accounts yourself, and search for more if you like, but below is the basic outline of the story that Praimnath tells, bearing in mind that it differs somewhat from one account to another. Where a significant point is contained only in certain accounts or contradicted by other accounts, I have inserted the number of the relevant account in brackets, to make it easier for you to get an overview of which account says what.
He worked on the 81st floor of the South Tower. He was on the phone and he looked up and saw a big plane heading towards him. He said "I've got to go. There's a plane aiming for me." He dropped the phone and jumped about 6 feet across the room to his desk. Just before doing this he was "eyeball to eyeball" with the jet - "the biggest thing I've ever seen". He was close enough that he could see red letters on the fuselage and the wing (2), and the writing on the underside (1) and then it banked and headed directly towards him (4). In accounts 5 and 6, the plane is heading straight at him from the moment he sees it, and he freezes in repose. After jumping across the room he dived under his desk -which as it turned out, was about 130 ft from where the nose hit. In account 7 he was already at his desk. .One account (3) says that he first placed his bible on the desk before crawling under it, although another account (2) indicates that the bible was already on the desk. He curled up into a fetal position under the desk and started crying and praying. All this happened before the impact. When the impact happened he was miraculously protected as the wing sliced through his office. Later, in watching the video of the impact, and seeing a slight deviation that the plane supposedly made just before hitting the building, he came to believe that the prayer he said just before impact induced God's hand to spare him by causing that slight change of direction which saved his life. In other accounts he says that cried out to Jesus just as the plane hit.(3).
In some accounts (3) he immediately started crawling through the rubble in an attempt to find his way out before someone arrived to help him. In other accounts, he is trapped under a collapsed wall (1), and had to be pulled free by his rescuer. In others, the exits are blocked so he punches a hole in the standing wall (2,4,6) which separates him from the staircase, to allow his rescuer to get to him. In accounts 3 and 5, the hole in the standing wall was already there.
When he made it down to the concourse, he was trapped by flames and so after wetting himself under the building's sprinkler systems, he ran through the flames to safety. I don't find any account where he talks of having suffered any burns.
It's difficult to make a precise examination of a story which keeps changing it's important details (which doesn't do it's credibility a lot of good to begin with.) So for the purpose of the examination below, I'm going to take one version which represents a reasonable composite of those above and treat that as "the story".
It was originally published by CBN. We don't know the exact date, because the original CBN link is now dead, but we know that it was prior to March 11 2002, because a blog with that date refers to and links to the CBN dead link. The blogger (who is not disputing that a plane hit the tower) makes some good points about the implausible nature of Praimnath's story.
The blog quotes only a small part of the CBN article,so here is a later posting which contains more of it.
Brotherhood Forged in the Carnage of the Twin Towers
On the anniversary of 9/11 a hero and the man he saved talk about their bond. David Smith reports.
An interesting anomaly. The linked article attributes Stanley's story as told below to "the anniversary of 911" - that is Sept 11 2002 - but we know from the blog reference that CBN published this much earlier. There isn't anything particularly suspicious about this, it's probably just the normal poor standards of verification of the media in not giving good information about their original sources. So the anomaly isn't important to our analysis. It's just that I'm a stickler for keeping the highest possible standards of source verification and taking a note of any anomalies as routine process.
So here is the plane strike part of Stanley's story as quoted from the article linked above.
[['I was looking towards the Statue of Liberty and telling her no, I'm fine. Something caught my eye: a giant airplane, with U on the tail. I said, "I have got to go. A plane is aiming for me." I dropped the phone and jumped towards my desk, which was six or seven feet away.
'I said, "Lord, I can't do this. You take over," and I went into the foetal position. I just huddled under my desk and prayed and cried.
'Just before I jumped there I saw this plane eyeball to eyeball, the biggest thing I've ever seen coming towards me. But it was happening in slow motion, giving me time. I could hear this ripping engine sound, and the bottom wing just swiped right through my office. It crash-landed and the bottom wing was stuck in my office door 20ft from where I was. Everything looked like a demolition crew ripped the entire floor apart.
'I thought, if I don't get electrocuted, the plane is gonna blow, I'm gonna die. If that don't get me, the air pressure's going to suck me out. I'm trapped under the only desk that stood firm - my Bible's on top of that. ]]
First let's look at the timing elements of this story. The mythical plane is generally claimed to have been doing about 500mph. That's about 250 yards a second. From the time between dropping the phone and the plane hitting, what does Stanley do? He jumps 6 or 7 feet across the room and dives under his desk. For a person of average athleticism this takes about two seconds if they move quickly and efficiently - which you certainly can't do if you're still watching the plane instead of the desk under which are aiming to dive. Then he huddles into the foetal position and says a prayer. How do we know that he says the prayer before the plane hit ?
For this we have to add something from the original CBN article which was omitted from the linked article above. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find a copy of the CBN article , otherwise we would be able to see all of this text in one place. But the CBN article contained the identical text quoted above, plus this.
[[Later on, when I watched TV, I saw the plane swerve, that little turn that it made, whatever reason it did that for. I was able to rationalize that I said what I did when I prayed that prayer. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that my Lord's giant hand pushed this plane a fraction of an inch.]]
You can find this part of the text referred to in this blog (scroll almost to the bottom to the Post entitled "God Saves One Man, Leaves Others to Die".
I received this text from a Praimnath supporter in an email dated July 2004, linking to the CBN article, but the link had gone dead by the time of writing this up on my website.
So in the story as published by CBN, Stanley took two seconds to jump across the room and dive under the desk and then took more time to huddle up in the fetal position and say a prayer before the plane hit. That's because he thinks that his prayer changed the direction of the plane, so he's obviously claiming to have prayed before the plane hit. So let's give that another two seconds. This means that the last he saw of the plane - when he dropped the phone - was at least 4 seconds before impact. That doesn't sound like a lot, but when we are dealing with something coming towards us at 500 mph, that means that it was at least 1000 yards away, when he got his last glimpse of it. More than 1/2 a mile.
This would be an alarming sight, but not consistent with
[[Just before I jumped there I saw this plane eyeball to eyeball, the biggest thing I've ever seen ]]
If this were true, he wouldn't have had time to do anything. And it makes this observation an impossibility
[[Something caught my eye: a giant airplane, with U on the tail ]]
Particularly when this observation was alleged to have been made before
[[I said, "I have got to go. A plane is aiming for me." I dropped the phone ]]
This takes at least another 2 1/2 seconds. So it was something like 2125 yards away - at least - that's about 1.2 miles away - nose straight at him, "aiming at him" but he could see the U on the tail.
Setting aside the distance factor for a moment, here is a photo of a United Airlines 767 ,with the U on the tail displayed prominently. As you can see, to view the U, you need to be at least somewhat side on to the plane. So even if Stanley could make out the U from more than a mile away, in order for him to be able to see the U on the tail and have the plane
[[aiming for me ]]
it would have be flying at least somewhat sideways.
Not as ridiculous as the above, but still worth noting as not particularly plausible is that when dealing which such unfamiliar sizes and speeds, there is no way that Stanley could have known with such certainty that the plane was "aiming" for him from such a distance. Certainly, there may have been alarm that the plane should have not have been there, and the thought that there was a danger of it hitting the building, but those kind of speeds and distances are well outside the range of what human perceptions can actually gauge in any coherent way.
I was once involved in a near collision of two jets as we flew into Melbourne. I saw the other plane through the window. But I have absolutely no idea of how close we actually came, whether it was really close or just an "incident", even though I saw the other plane pass over the top of ours. There simply isn't anything on which to base any sort of reference point at those speeds and sizes and distances.
As we were well into our descent, I saw another plane well off in the distance, it's path roughly at right angles to ours. It didn't even look close at first, but I vaguely realized that we shouldn't really be seeing another plane at all. As it drew closer, I felt our plane descend quite suddenly, and saw (I think) the other plane lift upwards. As I got my final view of it as it passed overhead, I really had no idea whether it passed directly overhead or whether it was some distance in front of us and I really had no idea at all of how far above us it was. It all happened in a few seconds, and there was simply no comprehending anything accurate at those speeds and distances. All I knew was that we weren't meant to have been that close. At the time, it was a surreal and detached feeling with no fear. I suppose that somewhere there was an awareness for a moment that a collision seemed possible, but the situation was too fast and dynamic and dealing with such incomprehensible speeds and distances, that any such awareness couldn't be translated into any kind of identifiable reaction. It was more like detached curiosity than anything else.
I guess it must have been reasonably close, because when I mentioned it to a friend a few days later, she said that she had heard something on the news that there might have been a collision if "someone hadn't noticed something". But that still gives me no real idea of what kind of distances were involved.
Of course my situation involved two moving objects, which makes it more dynamic than Stanley's situation, and different people react in different ways, but the idea that someone in a 70 yard wide building, situated about 115 yards from the top of the building could catch a glimpse of a plane from more than 2000 yards away and instantly know that it was
[[aiming for me ]]
is of very dubious plausibility.
When all of these factors are added up, it makes it clear that Stanley would be a serious rival for Baron Munchausen in the story telling stakes. This alone does not prove that Stanley is making everything up. Perhaps he's just wildly embellishing, but the basic substance of the story - catching a glimpse of a plane - is true. Viewing the report in isolation so far, there is no way to disprove such speculation. However even a plausible and consistent witness has an uphill battle to claim to trump physical and video evidence. When it is proven that the witness is - at the very best - wildly embellishing, then the report loses any claim to be taken seriously.
But the fun is only just beginning.
[[It crash-landed and the bottom wing was stuck in my office door 20ft from where I was.]]
Hmm. What is one of the most memorable images of the Sth tower strike ?
The huge fireball which erupts after impact. In case you don't remember, this photo should refresh your memory.
Supposedly, this was the plane's full load of fuel exploding. Stanley would have been right in the middle of this fireball.
The Baron must be getting very nervous about his tall tale crown now. Not only did Stanley survive this conflagration, I don't find any mention of him suffering any burns at all, even though he then ran through another fire shortly after being softened up by being right in the middle of an enormous explosion.
In fact, article 2 as linked above notes that after the crash
[[Miraculously, Stanley was unhurt.]]
And it's not that Stanley is too stoic to mention minor injuries and discomforts. From the same article, the following discomforts were apparently worthy of note.
[["We hobbled our way down...Cut and bloodied, with clothes tattered and wearing a borrowed shirt, Stanley finally made it home hours later..."I'm so sore, but every waking moment, I say 'Lord, had you not been in control...]]
Article 3 above notes
[[I was bruised and gashed.]]
Article 4 above relates
[["You must jump," Clark told Praimnath, whose hand and left leg were now bleeding.]]
According to article 6
[[Both men now had open wounds on their hands. ]]
So it's not as if the minor injuries were stoically ignored in these stories. But being right in the middle of a huge explosion,and then running through another fire after that didn't leave Stanley with even any temporary burns worthy of mention.
It's worth clicking on the link to article 6 above, because there's a few photos of Stanley. He shows no evidence of any permanent skin damage despite having been in the middle of a massive explosion involving about 20,000 gallons of kerosene. An explosion which allegedly blew a giant aircraft to smithereens.
By contrast this photo from Newsday is entitled
[[A young woman sits in a bed at Gardez Civil Hospital after suffering severe burns to her arm caused by an explosion of kerosene fuel as she was trying to light an oil lamp.]]
So Stanley, who was right in the middle of a huge fully fueled plane exploding in spectacular fashion into a massive fireball, blowing out several stories of a building and blowing the plane out of existence, came off better than someone who had an accident with a kerosene lamp.
The dethroned Baron is slinking out the door...
Not only should a witness be plausible, they should be consistent. Uncertainty about minor details and minor changes over time as memory becomes clouded are of course acceptable. But there should be a basic thread of fundamental consistency each time the story is told. Let's look at some contrasting passages from various versions of the Praimnath report.
(2) [[ "I looked up and it was like eyeball to eyeball with the plane. It was coming right at me. "I took out my Bible and put it on the top of his desk. I crawled under the desk just as the plane came through the window.]]
Taking out the bible and putting it on the desk adds at least 3 seconds to the time, which adds 750 yards to the distances deduced above. So it was "eyeball to eyeball", with a U on the tail when it was 2800 yards away? Unless of course in this version, he didn't take the time to say "I have to go, there's a plane aiming at me."
Another interesting anomaly. Notice how the quote switches from first person [[I took out my Bible]] to third person [[and put it on the top of his desk.]] within the same sentence. It is possible that this is just a speech mistake from Stanley or a transcription error, but it is equally possible that some writer is just making this up and got mixed up about where they were attributing quotes to Stanley and where they were writing narrative.
(4, 7) [[The body of the United Airlines jet grew larger until he could see a red stripe on the fuselage. Then it banked and headed directly toward him.]]
CBN.[['I was looking towards the Statue of Liberty and telling her no, I'm fine. Something caught my eye: a giant airplane, with U on the tail. I said, "I have got to go. A plane is aiming for me."]]
(5,6) [[ I just happened to raise my head, watching toward the Statue of Liberty and as I watched I saw this giant aircraft -- big, great plane -- is coming in slow motion towards me. Eye level, eye contact. And I just froze.]]
So it was aiming right for him the whole time from the moment he saw it ? Or it was initially flying somewhat side on, enabling him to see the red stripe from more than a mile away, and it only started aiming for him later after taking a a sharp change of direction? Who cares ? It appears that witnesses to a large plane at the WTC enjoy special immunity from the standards of consistency normally demanded of important witnesses.
(1) [[He had time to read the writing on its underside]]
From over 1000 yards away ? At the same time as noticing the U on the tail? Which probably would have been obscured anyway with a view that showed the underside. And he also saw the red stripe on the fuselage from the same angle ? In relation to the distance factor, he saw all of this from at least 1000 yards away ? Unless he was reading the wings at the same time as jumping across the room, taking out his bible, and placing it on the desk, and sizing up his dive under the desk, the lack of focus on his movements not adding any extra time and therefore distance traveled by the plane during this action.
(5,6) [[And I just froze.]]
Perhaps he just forgot to mention the freeze in the CBN report. Fair enough, but that adds maybe another half second to the time, adding another 125 yards to the distance. So now he's reading the underside of the wing (and perhaps the tail and the fuselage at the same time) from about 3000 yards away or maybe more (depending on whether he did or didn't stop to take out the bible and put it on his desk, and whether he did or didn't take the time to say "I have to go, there's a plane aiming at me" and depending on whether he was looking at it somewhat side on or whether it was already "aiming" at him - a perception which would have impossible to discern with such certainty when it was nearly two miles away.
(2) [[Stanley then dove under his desk. "My Testament [Bible] was on top of my desk," explained Stanley. "I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Lord was going to take care of me once I got there." ..."I don't know where I got this power from, but the good Lord, He gave me so much power and strength in my body that I was able to shake everything off. I felt like I was the strongest man alive."..."I felt goose bumps all over my body and I'm trembling, and I said to the wall, 'You're going to be no match for me and my Lord.' " Moments later, he punched his way through the wall...]]
CBN [['I thought, if I don't get electrocuted, the plane is gonna blow, I'm gonna die. If that don't get me, the air pressure's going to suck me out]]
(6) [[And, I'm shuddering. And I'm trembling. And I'm crying. Lord, don't leave me to die...And I'm screaming, (to his rescuer Brian Clarke ) "I'm right here, this is Stanley Praimnath from the Loans Department, don't leave me to die."...And Brian said, jump. And I said I can't jump. He said if you jump over this wall, I'm going to grab you. And as I jumped I grabbed and I held on to this wall.]]
Stanley seems to have conflicting memories about whether the power of the Lord caused him to laugh in the face of danger and perform feats which make James Bond look like a whimpering weakling or whether he was feeling helpless and doomed and crying out desperately in his despair and frailty.
In closing, I'd like to digress ever so slightly and make an observation about Stanley which relates not to the implausibility of his report but to the subconscious ethical message.
[[Later on, when I watched TV, I saw the plane swerve, that little turn that it made, whatever reason it did that for. I was able to rationalize that I said what I did when I prayed that prayer. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that my Lord's giant hand pushed this plane a fraction of an inch...
"I held my wife and my two children and we cried," said Stanley. After thanking God for sparing his life, Stanley told God whatever he did, it will always be for His glory... "I'm so sore, but every waking moment, I say 'Lord, had you not been in control, I would not have made it.'
"For some divine reason, I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the good Lord's mighty hand turned the plane a fraction from where I was standing," said Stanley. "Because when it crash-landed, it was just 20 feet from me. I don't care who would rationalize -- what people would say now or years from now, but I know it was the handiwork of the Lord that turned that plane. My Lord Jesus is bigger than the Trade Center and His finger can push a plane aside!"]]
Divine intervention to divert the plane in such a manner that Stanley was saved - quite possibly at the expense of someone else who might not have been killed if not for the Lord's little diversion - is truly the measure of an all powerful and universally loving God.
Well... that's how Stanley sees it.
As one of the previously mentioned bloggers observed
[[I'm disturbed that Stanley seems to think that the Lord is just there for his life and nobody else's. A greater miracle would've been if the Lord's hand had pushed that plane away from the building averting profound death and catastrophe]]
CONCLUSION
Just because Stanley is telling self centred whoppers and cynically exploiting the events of that day, doesn't in itself prove that he wasn't there and that he didn't see a plane. Perhaps he just decided to add a little fizz to his story. Well... a lot of fizz actually.
Nevertheless, if a witness is identified as a proven liar, then we lose any reason to believe anything they say unless there is something else which actually proves that they are not lying about some particular aspect. ( In which case we don' t need them anyway to prove the point) The video and physics evidence only provides more evidence that Stanley is also lying about the fundamental idea of having seen a plane.
Just because Stanley is lying doesn't prove in itself that anyone else who claims to have seen a plane hit the building is lying. Whenever a notable event occurs there will always be those who see an opportunity to exploit it whether in little ways or big. If someone makes up a little lie about having seen Hendrix at Woodstock that doesn't mean that Hendrix wasn't there. On the other hand, we are not using this person's testimony as important evidence in determining whether or not Hendrix was there.
The fact that this modern day Munchausen is taken seriously as a witness at all tells us something about the mindset of those eager to believe that a plane hit the tower. The fact that the media presents his tale as a real event indicates the eagerness to push such a view with no semblance of any critical thought whatsoever. If someone says they saw a plane under whatever circumstances, that's good enough to be news.
Why ? After all, the media loves to catch a cynical fraud, and exposing Stanley doesn't in itself necessitate disputation of a plane hitting the tower. He could just be presented as having told self centred whoppers about his particular experiences on Sept 11. The media doesn't mind exposing people who have falsely claimed victims money.
Neither of the Bloggers linked earlier expressed any doubts about the basics of planes hitting the buildings. But they at least both had the good sense to be highly critical of Praimnath - one of the grounds of plausibility, and the other on the grounds of religious ethics.
But such insight appears to be all too rare.
Stanley is even on the speaking circuit with this garbage. The reverential treatment of Stanley Munchausen as a serious witness is an indicator that for many people, any form of critical thinking whatsoever in relation to Sept 11 and it's supposed planes is a form of treason.
In the case of the two bloggers who were critical of Praimnath, regardless of what else I might not agree with them on, they at least showed enough independence of thought on that occasion to realize when their intelligence was being grossly insulted, even if they bought the bigger lie behind it.
But many in the so called "truth movement" haven't got as far as those two bloggers in their basic thinking processes. Many of them continue to promote Praimnath as evidence.
When Praimnath has been presented to me in email debates, it is even forgivable that a person might not have properly thought it through before presenting it, and needs someone to point out the problems with the report to help them come to their senses.
But on some occasions when I and others have provided deconstructions of this report, it has often simply provoked anger and fierce support of Praimnath's credibility.
I can only describe such reactions as a form of mental illness. Whatever the merits of any other arguments which might be presented in support of a large plane hitting the South Tower, the staunch support of Stanley Munchausen as a supposedly serious witness report indicates that some people are desperate to believe in planes and damn what the evidence says.
“Note: This poster, Philadelphia, has obtained the express permission of the above author to post this article here. Re-copying and re–posting without first also gaining express permission is a breach of copyright.”
