Two security cameras at a Pentagon parking lot caught the moment that American Airlines Flight 77 slammed into the south west side of the military headquarters.

Although the two video clips last about two minutes, the nose of the jet is seen for only a fraction of a second in one film before the explosion.

A huge ball of flame rises from the building and black smoke starts gushing out.

The attack, which came shortly after Al-Qaeda hijackers flew two airliners into the World Trade Center in New York, killed 189 people on the jet and inside the Defense Department headquarters in the Washington suburbs.

The Pentagon handed the videos over to Judicial Watch, a watchdog group that sued for its release.

The lack of film evidence of the attack had fueled conspiracy theories suggesting that it had been faked or engineered by the Pentagon against itself.

French writer Thierry Meyssan advanced the theory that the attack was a hoax in a 2002 book called "LEffroyable Imposture", or "9/11: The Big Lie". The Pentagon vehemently denounced the book as an "appalling" myth concocted at the expense of the victims' families.

Other conspiracy theories presented as mini-documentaries have circulated since then on the Internet.

The Justice Department had previously blocked demands for the release of the videos on grounds that it was evidence in the prosecution of Al-Qaeda plotter Zacarias Moussaoui.

During the Moussaoui trial, prosecutors showed pictures of burning bodies amd human remains as well as images of the explosion triggered by the Pentagon crash.

But with Moussaoui convicted and sentenced to life in prison earlier this month for his role in the September 11 conspiracy, the Justice Department agreed to the videos release, officials said.

A Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, said the videos appeared to show the same scene as a sequence of still images previously shown on US television tracking the American Airlines jet's trajectory into the building.

"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," said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch.

"Finally, we hope that this video will put to rest the conspiracy theories involving American Airlines Flight 77," he said in a statement.

The group said it would post a copy of the video on its website, www.judicialwatch.org.

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