Journalists Have Amazing Powers of Observation

which is why they were invariably able to see that this white smudge was a Boeing 757, and in some cases could even read the tail number so they knew it was flight 77:



Mike Adams has more on this phenomenon.

It is worth pointing out, that if you watch the CNN footage from the morning of 9/11, there was a great deal of confusion about what happened at the Pentagon. The story that an airplane hit the building wasn't reported for more than half an hour after when the Pentagon was officially to have been attacked. Interestingly, the first reports from the Pentagon were just of fire then there was a report of a helicopter crash.