Columbo investigates the Pentagon

Imagine if Lt. Columbo had investigated what happened at the Pentagon on 9/11. Imagine if the crime scene had been examined by someone who had the intelligence and the freedom to expose the truth. The whole thing would have been wrapped up in 90 minutes. And it might have gone something like this…

Tune in to Columbo, this Friday at 8 p.m. on NBC

This week’s episode starring:
Peter Falk as Columbo
Jack Cassidy as Donald Rumsfeld
Donald Pleasance as Dick Cheney
Scatman Crothers as Lloyde England
Ken Howard as General Myers
Jack Klugman as Officer Wilson
and, from the deleted scenes,
Mandy Patinkin as “David Chandler”
and Wayne Coste as “Debunker # 4”

This week’s episode written by Craig McKee

It’s late in the evening on Sept. 7, 2001. U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld enters his Pentagon office and closes the door behind him. He walks over to his desk, picks up his phone and says...

“Get me the vice-president.”

“Cheney,” a gruff voice answers.

Rumsfeld says: “Everything’s ready at my end. Everything set with the stand down? … Good. … And POTUS will be kept out of Washington? … Good …. Me? As we agreed, I’ll be in a budget meeting with Max Cleland. I’ll say I’ve left orders not to be disturbed and then that I wasn’t situationally aware until it was all over.”

Cheney interjects: “Even if the media question that, it’ll boost the incompetence explanation. I’ve been working on a catch phrase. What do you think about failure of imagination to explain why none of the planes were shot down? Yeah, I thought it was pretty good. We’ll have somebody say it. Maybe Condi. We’ll say our defense is set up to intercept airborne threats from outside the country, not inside, and that we couldn’t have anticipated this!” Cheney sneers with satisfaction.

“And the bin Laden thing?”

“We’ve got Ehud Barak in the UK and Paul Bremer over here who’ll start mentioning bin Laden right away. And we have enough media assets who will repeat it throughout the day and after. And journalists not on the CIA payroll won’t dare to question it. Anyone who does we’ll just dismiss as a “conspiracy kook.”

“Right. But back to the Pentagon,” Rumsfeld says.

“Yes, after the explosives go off, a good while after, you’ll head outside for a photo-op like we discussed. You’ll pretend to be helping with the wounded or something... Yes, the scene inside has been ready for weeks. Hollywood couldn’t have prepared a set any better — very convincing. We’ll also have a few pieces of crumpled up sheet aluminum painted to look like they came from an American Airlines plane. We’ll place them around the lawn.”

“What if someone sees them as they’re set down?” Rumsfeld asks.

“So what if they do? What would they tell people? Hello, New York Times? I saw a guy walking around with a piece of scrap metal at the Pentagon. No one would care. Same thing with the light poles. They’ll be in position the night before. No one will think twice if they see them ahead of time. And the one that’s supposed to have hit the cab will be on the side of Route 27, ready to be pulled into the road after the traffic has been rerouted.”

“You don’t think people will question all this?”

“A few will, but with the media just repeating the cover story over and over, no one will listen to them. Some people might notice the traffic is heavier than usual that morning. But they won’t know why. We’ll have operatives all over the place. Many will just happen to be driving near the Pentagon when the plane appears. Some are media assets. They’ll all describe seeing it hit the building. And we’ll have them calling into radio shows and making themselves available for TV interviews to keep reinforcing the story.”

“What if someone talks?”

“The people we’ve chosen know not to talk. They know what will happen if they do. Anyway, like I said, there won’t be anyone to listen to them. And we have a whole covert operation that will kick in after the event —agents infiltrating the conspiracy crowd, gaining their credibility with “solid” work on explosives at the towers. Then, once those people have established their credentials, we’ll have them start undercutting the Pentagon story, which is the one thing that ties the government to any of this. They’ll use our witnesses, photos of plane pieces, etc. They’ll just spin it and claim they don’t support the official story because they don’t think al-Qaeda was flying the plane. Over time, they’ll create doubt, and maybe even make the real story look crazy. And they’ll keep everyone fighting with each other. It’s all so predictable…”

“Of course, the ones who figure all this out will be the ones that end up looking crazy,” Rumsfeld shoots back.

“That’s usually how it works.”

The two laugh heartily.

***

The scene is one of chaos, confusion, and noise sometime after 10:30 a.m. on Sept. 11. Investigators, first responders, and unidentified men in white shirts and dress pants mill about on the lawn of the Pentagon, one of the world’s most secure buildings.

There are scraps of debris on the ground, small enough that they could be picked up in one hand. A section of the building appears to have collapsed. Flashing lights from emergency vehicles are visible and a helicopter can be heard circling over the scene. Thick, black smoke billows from the building and from a generator trailer outside. A firetruck is pumping jets of fire retardant foam at the building, making it almost impossible to get a good look at what happened.

An old, beaten-up grey Peugeot convertible approaches. It is a nice fall day, so the roof of the car is down. It makes a variety of unhealthy noises as it pulls up. A short and rather disheveled man in a rumpled beige trench coat struggles with the door as he exits the vehicle. He walks up to an officer on the scene and nods in greeting.

“Officer Wilson.”

“Lieutenant Columbo. I see you still have the … ah …. How’s she runnin’?”

“Oh, it still gets me around. The wife wants me to get something newer, maybe with a tape player so I can listen to Sinatra on the way to work. But I don’t need anything fancy like that. What do we have here?”

“Well, lieutenant, we understand that a commercial airliner crashed into the side of the Pentagon. That’s what those FBI suits over there are saying. Terrorists did it. But it looks to me like they aren’t very worried about preserving the crime scene. There are guys in white shirts walking all over the place, picking up and setting down pieces of I-don’t-know-what. It’s all very irregular.”

Columbo furrows his brow as he surveys the scene. He looks up and turns to Wilson and says, “I know this may seem like a silly question, but where is the plane?”

“They’re saying most of it went into the building. And what didn’t go in burst into little bits. The Secretary of Defense is around here somewhere. He even says the nose of the plane poked though the C ring wall; that’s the third ring from the outside.”

Wilson continues: “The exit hole in the C ring tells us the exact path the plane took. There are also some light poles down on Route 27, so we assume they were hit by the plane. Five of those.”

Columbo pulls out a notebook and makes some notes.

“So the plane destroyed this whole section of the wall?” he asks, waving his pen at the building.

“Actually, lieutenant, most of that happened about half an hour after the crash. We do have some photos coming. They show the damage earlier, before the outside wall collapsed.”

“Make sure I get those photos as soon as they’re ready, officer. And what about surveillance video? There must be a hundred cameras on this side of the building.”

“Yes, lieutenant, I’ll check into that. Oh, there’s one more thing. There is a taxi that was apparently hit by one of the flying light poles. He’s still there with his car.” Wilson points towards the bridge that takes Route 27 over Columbia Pike. “The driver says he and some guy pulled the pole out of the windshield. Quite a job — those things weigh about 250 pounds.”

Another frown from Columbo.

“I’m going to want to talk to him.”

***

“Excuse me, Mr. England?” Columbo says approaching an African-American man in his late sixties wearing a baseball cap and standing next to a taxi, a black Lincoln Town Car, which is parked across three lanes of the highway. “Hello, sir, could you tell me what happened to your car?”

“Well, I was drivin’ south on Route 27 when I saw a big plane flying real low over the road. I guess it must have hit a light pole because it came crashing through my windshield. If I’d been in the passenger seat it would have gone right through me.”

Columbo begins to examine the cab, paying particular attention to the hood, which doesn’t have a scratch on it.

“But there’s no damage to the hood,” England adds hastily.

“Yes, I see that.”

England points to the hole in the windshield: “The pole went right through and stopped in the backseat. You can see there’s a hole in the backseat.” He continues, explaining that the passenger seat was damaged and the pole made a hole between two and three inches across at the bottom of the upright section of the backseat on the passenger side of the car.

“How did you get the pole out, Mr. England?”

The taxi driver describes how he flagged down a stranger in a white van. The man, without saying a word, helped England to pull the pole out.

“He was so quiet. He didn’t make a sound.”

Columbo walks over to the pole, which sits on the road, perpendicular to the cab. He guesses that it looks about 30 feet long. He tries to lift one end and can barely budge it. He pauses to consider this. Then, he notices a scratch that goes from across the road to exactly where the edge of the pole’s metal base rests.

“Did someone drag this pole here from the side of the road?” he asks England.

“No, sir. It’s right where we put it down.”

“Hmm.”

England explains that he fell under the weight of the pole as the two men were removing it, but rather than help, the silent stranger just got back in his van and “went on down the road.”

***

The following day, Columbo arrives at the office of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, which is in a part of the building that is far from the impact area. He is told to wait in the outer office, which is decorated with a portrait of a smiling President George W. Bush.

A few minutes later the door opens and a familiar face emerges.

“Hello, I’m Don Rumsfeld. How can I help you, lieutenant?”

“Well, I just have a few questions, sir, about… what happened. I know you’re terribly busy; I don’t want to keep you.”

“Don’t be silly, I’m delighted to help in any way I can. Although I’m not sure how the local police have jurisdiction in a case of international terrorism. Haven’t the FBI got things well in hand?”

“Well, Mr. Secretary, this is a case of homicide, and homicide is my area.”

“I see,” Rumsfeld answers, the smile remaining but his eyes narrowing slightly.

Columbo spots something of interest on the desk.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Secretary, but is this an official White House fountain pen? I’ve never seen one. May I?”

“Be my guest.”

“Thank you, sir.” He turns it over, examining it with great care. “Will ya look at that. That’s a beauty. Boy, if my wife could see this she wouldn’t believe it.”

“Why don’t you keep that with my compliments?”

“Oh, I couldn’t, sir! That’s far too valuable.”

“Don’t be silly; I have others. Please, I insist.”

“Well, I don’t know what to say. Thank you very much, sir. That’s certainly a great honor.”

“You had some questions?” Rumsfeld said.

“Yes sir, just a couple. I understand you announced just yesterday that $2.3 trillion is unaccounted for by the military, and that the accounting people looking into this were in the very part of the building hit by the plane. That’s quite an unlucky coincidence, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Rumsfeld says with a forced smile. “I guess the terrorists didn’t want us finding that money.”

“Hmm. Funny the hijacker didn’t just crash into the roof, don’t you think? That would’ve been a much bigger target. Must have been a heck of a pilot to keep control after hitting all those poles…”

“Yes, I just wish we’d known the plane was coming,” Rumsfeld says. “We would have evacuated the building and saved some lives. Unfortunately, I was in a budget meeting with Senator Max Cleland, and I was not situationally aware until it was too late.”

“I see,” Columbo nods slowly, making another note.

“Oh, and you asked my assistant about video. I’ve had them make you a copy of the piece of video that shows the impact. You can just pick that up at the front desk on your way out.”

Donald Pleasance as Dick Cheney (left) and Jack Cassidy as Don Rumsfeld.

***

An hour later, Columbo is meeting with Vice-President Dick Cheney in a Pentagon conference room.

“Is that it, Columbo? I have to meet with the Joint Chiefs in five minutes” Cheney says curtly.

“Yes, sir, I’m almost done. I’m terribly sorry for the inconvenience. But I would appreciate it if you could go through a couple of things. You see, something in the story doesn’t make sense.”

Cheney is becoming increasingly impatient.

Columbo continues: “We’ve spoken to a number of witnesses, and I’m struck by how much their stories don’t match. I mean, they’re all over the map. One man said the plane somersaulted into the building. Some said the left wing dragged along the ground, but there’s not a mark on the ground.”

“Witnesses can be unreliable,” Cheney counters.

Columbo pauses before continuing. 

“Yes, that’s true. Although we did speak with several who described an almost identical flight path that was well to the north of the one needed for the plane to hit the poles and create the damage to the building. I thought that was odd since they seemed so sure. None of them had had contact with each other but they were all positive the plane had flown to the north of that gas station on the other side of Route 27. And they all described an almost identical right bank. Curious.”

“So?”

“Well, sir, it seems like a long shot that all of those people would be wrong in the exact same way.”

“They saw the plane hit, didn’t they?” Cheney asked.

“Hmm, yes, several of them do say that.”

“Lieutenant, I really have to go. The country’s business can’t stop for you.”

“Yes, Mr. Vice-President. I don’t want to hold you up. Thank you for your time, sir.”

Columbo walks toward the door to leave Cheney’s office, opens it, but then stops and turns back.

“Just one more thing, sir.”

Cheney glares at Columbo, his anger rising.

“If the order that still stood was a shoot down order, why wasn’t the plane shot down?”

Cheney pauses.

“Our fighters were sent out over the Atlantic by mistake.”

“That was an awfully costly mistake, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. And unfortunately, we had many fighter jets involved in war games. Some had been sent to Alaska, some to the southern U.S. Very unfortunate.”

“And the terrorists just happened to pick that day for their plan,” Columbo muses. “Well, I’ll let you get to your meeting. You’ve been very helpful, sir.”

***

It is September 16, and Cheney, Rumsfeld, General Richard Myers of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sit in silence in a comfortably furnished meeting room just off the Oval Office. Cheney looks at his watch impatiently. There is a knock on the door. Columbo tentatively opens the door and pokes his head in.

“Excuse me, gentlemen?” He enters the room and takes his notebook out of his trench coat pocket.

“Thank you so much for talking to me again. I promise I’ll be out of your hair in just a couple of minutes.”

“Lieutenant, I thought we’d finished with all this,” Cheney growls.

“Well, sir, I thought you might like to know that I’ve had a breakthrough in the case.”

Cheney glares across the room at Rumsfeld, who is no longer smiling.

“Oh? And how did you do that?”

“Well, I figured out by examining the evidence that it couldn’t have been terrorists who crashed a plane into the building. In fact, there couldn’t have been plane crash at all.”

“Lieutenant, you can’t be…” Rumsfeld fumbles with his words. Cheney glares.

“This is absurd,” the vice-president says. “You’ve seen dozens of plane parts inside and outside the Pentagon.”

“Well, sir, that’s true, but only a small fraction of what I should have seen for an entire 757. In fact, there were several things about this crime scene that looked wrong from the beginning. The hole wasn’t wide enough for the wings or tail to enter the building, but they weren’t found outside.  The right wing was supposed to have hit on the second floor but there is no hole there — only where the much weaker fuselage would have entered. I just kept asking myself, how could that happen? Where did that wing go? Where did the tail go? Windows in the path of the tail weren’t broken. And many Pentagon staff that we interviewed described hearing and seeing explosions inside the building. Some were certain they smelled cordite.”

He flips through the pages of his notebook.

“Ah, here it is. The thing that really tipped me off is the exit holes that weren’t there.”

“There was an exit hole in the C ring!” Rumsfeld protests.

“Yes, but just one. There should have been at least two.”

There was a stunned silence for several seconds. “There was just one plane; why would there be two exit holes? Cheney snarls.

“You see, gentlemen the two Rolls Royce engine cores weighed more than 7,000 pounds each. I looked it up. According to your people, that plane was traveling at well over 500 miles per hour. Once those engines penetrated the exterior wall, which they would have done very easily, there would have been nothing inside the building that could have stopped them before they got to the C ring. Nothing.”

Columbo puts his notebook back into his coat pocket.

“I asked some of your people to show me the engine cores, but they couldn’t. Did you know they’re virtually indestructible? Titanium. But there were no engine cores, at least not the cores we’d expect to see. Just very small parts that could have come from some engine but not a 757. And just one round hole in the C ring.”

“Well, then, are you ready to arrest someone?” Cheney asks mockingly. “Do you have any proof of who was involved?”

“No sir, I’m not quite there yet, but I have some ideas. There had to be a conspiracy to fake a plane crash to mislead the world about the real motive for this crime.”

Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Myers don’t move.

“There were several things that told me this was definitely a staged scene. The cab driver. A very nice gentleman but his story just didn’t add up. Actually, it was his cab that gave it away. You see the dashboard was crushed by the pole but the edge of the hood was higher than that. And it wasn’t even slightly dented. Or scratched. That got me thinking.”

Columbo slowly paces as he explains.

“Then I looked at the passenger seat. It was bent back at the top corner but without even a tear in the vinyl. I thought to myself, how can a pole traveling that fast bend the seat without tearing it? And finally, the tear in the back seat was completely behind the front seat. Unless the pole took a sudden downward turn it couldn’t bend the top of the front seat back and make a hole at the bottom of the back seat. Just not possible. It would have to be a magic pole. And the tear was much too small to be caused by any kind of pole, regardless of the size or angle.”

Columbo stops and pauses as if for dramatic effect.

“Then I went to look at the five poles. The one Mr. England was talking about would have been hit by the right wing as the plane crossed over the highway. But the cab was about 150 feet up the road on the complete other side of the plane. How could the pole be hit by the right wing and end up on the other side of the plane?”

A hint of a smile comes across Columbo’s face.

“Yes, gentlemen, there’s no doubt about it. We know the cab scene was set up, probably to reinforce the flight path and the downed poles. That clinched it for me. Anyway, I’ve taken enough of your time. I’ve got to get home; the missus is making chili for supper. My favorite.”

Columbo walks towards the door, opens it and just before he is about to enter the hallway, he turns, puts his hand up to his head as if he just had an unexpected thought and says, “Oh, just one more thing. Secretary Rumsfeld, you recall the video you provided of the crash?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Well, we have a guy who does some video analysis for the department from time to time. He’s very good. He took a look at your video, the one you say is of Flight 77, and he found something odd.”

“Spit it out, Columbo,” Cheney barks.

“Yes, sir. You see, sir, the plane in the video isn’t big enough to be a 757. Our guy is quite positive about that. In fact, he says he’s not even sure if it’s a genuine flying object at all. He thinks the object might be entirely fake. A special effect, you could call it. I’ll be getting his full report in a couple of days.”

The three glare at Columbo but say nothing.

“That means the video you gave me is fake, just like the plane crash. And it means that the culprits aren’t Muslim terrorists. And it means that insiders, high-level insiders, had to have staged the whole thing. I may not be ready to arrest anyone just yet, but don’t worry, gentlemen, it’s only a matter of time. The truth is always there, in the evidence. You just have to be willing to look. Anyway, I’ve taken enough of your time. I’ll let you all know just as soon as I have anything more.”

Columbo leaves the building and walks to where his car is parked. He stops and pulls a large cigar out of his pocket. He strikes a match and rolls the cigar in his fingers as he lights it. He takes a big puff and stares back at the White House, the wheels continuing to turn.