Robert Smith - The Planner

Psyop-7, probably the youngest person in the room, sighed.

Bates looked at him and said curtly, “Do you have a better idea?”

Psyop-7 started twisting in his seat uncomfortably, “Well we have multiple options here. One, to actually use planes or, two, use cruise missiles or some other military drone. So you’ve researched option one, civilian jets, and option two the use of military drones, and that’s great. Let’s explore that second scenario a bit more. Remember, we do have the media on our side to tell the story. The public will believe what we tell them and show them. So what do we have to worry about? Witnesses seeing the drones and somehow able to report it? People say crazy stuff all the time! And we can trot out our witnesses to say anything we want, even saying it was pink elephants. Then we show the video: hey, it really was flying pink elephants! And that story will be believed by the majority of the population, even if there are experts saying Flying Pink Elephants don’t exist! You catch my drift?”

Some of the generals chuckled a little but Planner was not impressed.

“Well maybe not.” He stood silent for a second before continuing. “But suppose we tell them what they would expect to see. What if we say,” said the young man smugly, “it was a big jet; people will certainly believe that. It is what they are expecting. If there are then contrary witness reports, then the-more-the-better in my book; They’ll just look like they’re crazy people! The TV viewers will believe the talking heads even more if people report that there was no big jet when we can show two, three, four videos of a big jet crashing into the towers.”

Planner nodded slowly, knowing he had been saying something similar the previous week.

“The first impact, say,” continued Psyop-7 nodding encouragingly back to Planner, “Fast and unexpected. No-one is too sure what it is, or whether they saw it correctly. Even if a few witness report it as a missile or small planes, this gap of uncertainty is just for a few minutes before the whole world sees another big jet, live on TV.”

“Indeed, with no air crash investigation, then I would recommend that scenario. Of course, you’d need to rig up explosives in the right area. That would take quite a long time to prepare…”

The Senator interrupted, “Planner, you might not be aware of this but we have been running a contingency plan for the past year or so. We haven’t only created an animation to cover the approach of drone aircraft, we have also been preparing the impact locations on the twin towers. Our primary plan, the one you have working on, is to use drone airliners. Our contingency plan, has been to use explosives in the towers and merely use TV animated graphics to display the impact on the towers.”

“Animation?” said Planner stunned.

“Yes,” said Psyop-7, “Using commercially available real time animation technology.”

“So you are proposing a scenario where aircraft or drones are not used at all?” said Planner incredulously.

Pysop-7 continued crisply to the quiet room, “Yes, no aircraft at all. We manage the news. The world will see explosions and we’ll provide animations of the planes hitting the towers. Before you say anything let me tell you some more. There are multiple benefits: accuracy; you can’t miss with pre-planted explosives and computer animation. Control, flexibility, cost… It’ll definitely much cheaper: we’ve spent $1million on the animation. On the drones it would be $400million. That’s quite a difference. And there are less things to go wrong. We’ll just use our own witness reports and later, we can show poor quality video live and then show high quality animation of the crash event later…” Psyop-7 stood up and asked for some media to be loaded into the laptop connected to the projector.

Pysop-7 explained the video being presented. “This is the first crash, as seen from the ground. The plane arrives from the north but we only have to animate from this building, here, to the impact point. The jet will look as though it flies behind this building and then absorbed into the north tower.”

“What happens if the weather is different,” asked Bates.

“This is just the animation, we’ll capture footage from the day and apply the animation as a composite,” said Psyop-7 coolly, and continued. “For the second impact, we have suggested multiple views and viewpoints: from the side, the bottom, flat-on and also, and I’ll think you’ll like this, live from helicopters!”

“How are you going to do that?” said Planner, surprised and unnerved.

“While the side and flat-on views uses the same high quality animation models as the first impact video, and will be slow to deliver, the helicopter views will have simple models, seen from a long distance and from the other side of the tower. The tower itself becomes a mask to the animated image. You won’t see the actual crash.”

“And you can do that real-time on live TV?” said Planner.

“Actually no. There will be about a five second delay. Record the explosion, add the animation, broadcast then cut back to live TV. Ten second delay, tops. You can do this live: composite three images together: the bottom layers is the live TV view, the next layer is the aircraft model and the third layer is live view by with the bright sky keyed to be a transparent layer. The aircraft will look like it’s flying behind buildings and into the towers,” said Psyop-7 smugly.

“I don’t know about this,” said Planner.

“TV replay will be instantly available, making people doubt their own recall of the event. There will be very few who remain unshakable in their belief that it was not a large plane that just crashed and those sceptics will not get much air time on the day or ever after. After the airlines announce they’ve lost two jets, any witness dissent will be obliterated. If someone says there were no planes, their views will be dismissed because, you know, everyone has seen the TV. Shall I show you the psychological experiments we’ve conducted upon memory recall when confronted by faked TV evidence?”

“I’m sure it’s very compelling. Depressing, but compelling,” sighed Planner.

“So, the problem of contrary witnesses is a easily overcome. Any lingering doubts or suspicions, will be quickly silenced by our Psyop personnel and the overwhelming pressure of the TV footage. Most will develop false-memory syndrome and believe that they witnessed the planes themselves. They’ll tell their friends they were there and saw the aircraft!”

“Just like War of Worlds,” injected Bates. “Orson Wells’ radio broadcast. People believed they actually saw Martians!”

There was a mild chuckle in the air while Planner was springing his fingers together deep in thought.

“Now you do have second order problems,” continued Psyop-7. “Will the video be good enough? It needs to be perfect. What you’ve seen here are just the draft animations. Except for the live feeds we have several hours if not a day to splice together real footage of the explosions and the animated aircraft.”

As Planner formulated his response, one of the Generals stated in a gruff tone, “The animated aircraft will be 100 % on target, that much we know. But will the drones be 100 %? Could they miss the target? We’re aiming for specific parts of the building, it could interfere with the demolitions.”

“Or lose the whole justification of the collapse?” suggested another General. “Or suppose one of the drones just clipped the edge the tower and spun into the Plaza, in front of TV cameras, to reveal a bunch of empty seats?”

The Senator tilted his head. “Indeed any such mistake, a botched crash, would be far worse than anything that a bunch of witnesses could say. No crash, no debris, and so perhaps… less loose ends? As you’ve said yourself, Planner, we need to be as tight as possible.”