An honest question that has crossed my mind: Do you think the cameraman, who has been shooting video of LA skies for 11 years, deliberately did video tricks and THEN LIED in a TV interview about what he saw? At the end of one interview he describes exactly what I've seen at the end of a missile shot -- the thing disappears. With a contrail, it doesn't disapper, it just changes. Do you figure the cameraman outright lied? Maybe he did, you know. Even so, the footage doesn't look in any way like a condensation trail from an airliner, especially as captured in some still shots I saw somewhere in all these discussions.
Possible, but I doubt it. I think they just zoomed in to give people a better view by magnifying what was being seen. By zooming in so much, the top of the contrail was then necessarily disconnected from the bottom. The bottom of the contrail fell out of the shot. Once it's disconnected, you don't see that it is still close to the horizon. When the top of the contrail in the picture is near the top of the image, it gives the impression that it is overhead. I don't think there was intent to fool people.
Because of time constraints, the video was edited to just show was seemed most interesting. I haven't heard the audio of the cameraman, but I also doubt that he lied. I've heard people saying that there's a UFO moving around in the sky. It turns out it's just Jupiter. It's not really moving around in the sky, but they think they're seeing it move because the mind can play tricks on people. They're completely convinced that they've seen a UFO and it takes a bit for them to believe otherwise.
With a contrail, it doesn't disapper, it just changes.
They always stop appearing whenever the plane enters air conditions that aren't favorable for the production of contrails. If they didn't, you'd see a contrail trailing the plane all they way down to the ground where it lands.