The FBI visited the Citgo gas station southwest of the Pentagon within minutes of the attack to confiscate film that may have captured the attack. According to Jose Velasquez, who was working at the gas station at the time of the attack, the station's security cameras would have captured the attack.We know that videos of the Pentagon attack were taken by security cameras on the roof of a nearby Sheraton Hotel and a gas station, both of which had a clear sight-line to the side of the Pentagon that was hit. These tapes were confiscated by the FBI within minutes of the attack.
According to a Washington Times news report that has been removed from the Web (still available on the Wayback Machine search engine), hotel employees had time enough to watch the film in shock and horror several times before the FBI confiscated the video as part of its investigation.
As for the gas station, which is open only to Defense Department personnel, it is the last structure between the Pentagon and the hillside that, hours later, would become a wailing knoll. Its owner was interviewed by the Richmond Times-Dispatch in December 2001:
Velasquez says the gas stations security cameras are close enough to the Pentagon to have recorded the moment of impact. Ive never seen what the pictures looked like, he said. The FBI was here within minutes and took the film.
(Article archived at nationalgeographic.com)
The swift confiscations are suspicious; the agents were obviously dispatched to grab the videos immediately after the Pentagon was struck.
Bizarrely, the only purported live record of the attack ever released seems to support the No-Boeing hypothesis. An unknown source at the Pentagon provided CNN with five video stills said to be from a Pentagon parking-lot camera. The images show a blurry white object, impossible to define, moving in the background before the explosion; a video-timestamp of 9/12/01 indicates a second-generation copy and possible tampering.
When CNN first broadcast these frames in March 2002, its reporter once again noted the existence of the hotel video:
MCINTYRE: Well, the claim we have filed a freedom of information request for it. They claim that it might provide some intelligence to somebody else who might want to do harm to the United States. But officials I talked to here at the Pentagon say they dont see any national security or criminal value to that tape. The FBI tends to hold on to things.