Pentagon Releases September 11 Video

The Pentagon said today that it planned to release video images of American Airlines Flight 77 crashing into the US military headquarters on September 11 2001.

The images, recorded by a Pentagon security camera, were to be released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Judicial Watch, a public interest group.

The video has not been officially released before but it has been leaked and publicly circulated on the internet.

Tonight, Fox News was broadcasting images apparently from the film, while the Judicial Watch website was proving difficult to access, possibly due to the number of people trying to view it.

The hijacked American Airlines plane crashed into the US military headquarters, killing 184 people. The jet hit the south-west side of the Pentagon, shortly after two other hijacked aeroplanes were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York.

The attack set off fires in a portion of the Pentagon and killed 125 people inside, in addition to those on board the plane.

"We fought hard to obtain this video because we felt that it was very important to complete the public record with respect to the terrorist attacks of September 11," the president of Judicial Watch, Tom Fitton, said.

The Flight 77 crash has spawned numerous conspiracy theories, including one from the French journalist Thierry Meyssam who suggested that a truck bomb or missile caused the explosion, not the plane. Most journalists, scientists and military experts have dismissed the conspiracy theories, but a minority of experts support them.