5. HEAT AND UNUSUAL EMISSIONS AT GROUND ZERO
Two more features of the Ground Zero rubble pile pointed to the use of explosives: (1) long-lasting heat, produced by inextinguishable fires, and (2) periodic emissions of unexpected substances.
Long-Lasting Heat, Inextinguishable Fires
Engineer Roger Fulmer was at Ground Zero from the middle of October until the middle of November 2001, as part of the Sacramento Debris Removal Team of the US Army Corps of Engineers. He gave the following account of the temperature of the debris pile during the first two months after 9/11:
Temperatures in the pile were over 1,200°F [649°C]. Every time an area was opened, fire started in any buried combustible debris. Water trucks and fire engines were used continually. The high temperature debris and water created steam.... The dust and other hazardous materials from the debris required sprayers to be set up to wash all trucks exiting the site. These sprayers were also used to cool the high temperature debris before it left the site. Several trucks were returned to the site for additional cooling because the law enforcement officers would not let them through the tunnels leaving Manhattan until they stopped steaming. [82]
The fact that Ground Zero remained hot for several months after 9/11 was widely reported. A New Scientist article in December (2001) was titled "Ground Zero's Fires Still Burning." [83] Then in January (2002), Herb Trimpe, an Episcopal deacon who served as a chaplain at Ground Zero, wrote: "On the cold days, even in January, there was a noticeable difference between the temperature in the middle of the site [and that] two blocks over on Broadway. You could actually feel the heat." [84] According to Greg Fuchek -- who was mentioned above as the vice president of a company that supplied computer equipment to identify human remains at the site -- the working conditions were "hellish," partly because the ground temperature varied between 600° and 1,500°F (315° and 815°C) for six months. [85]
This heat existed because very hot fires continued to burn in the Ground Zero debris piles, even though heavy rains occurred, millions of additional gallons of water were sprayed onto the piles, and a chemical suppressant was pumped into them. [86] Why the fires could not be extinguished was a mystery.
Periodic Emissions of Unexpected Substances
The mystery of Ground Zero was increased by the fact that two separate projects to monitor the air after 9/11 discovered high levels of substances in the air that, given the official account of the destruction of the Twin Towers and WTC 7, should not have been there.
Thomas Cahill, a professor at the University of California at Davis, monitored the air about a mile from Ground Zero during the month of October 2001. Having discovered various coarse particles, Cahill declared: "These particles simply should not be there." [87] With regard to fine particles, he said: "We see very fine aerosols typical of combustion temperatures far higher than [expected in] the WTC collapse piles." [88] These very fine particles, some of which "were found at the highest levels ever recorded in air in the United States," [89] contained high levels of sulfur and extremely high levels of silicon. [90]
Cahill also found high concentrations of various metals, including iron, titanium, vanadium, nickel, copper, and zinc. [91]
The other project to monitor the air was carried out over several months by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It dealt extensively with a fact noted by Cahill: that the air contained high levels of rare organic compounds. By far the most prevalent of these was one that is called 1,3-diphenylpropane, abbreviated 1,3-DPP.The EPA had monitored countless building fires in which many toxic substances had been emitted. And yet, an EPA scientist stated, although the EPA had never previously reported finding 1,3-DPP in the air, this chemical was present in the air at Ground Zero during the first three weeks at levels that "dwarfed all others." The EPA's Erik Swartz said that "it was most likely produced by the plastic of tens of thousands of burning computers." [92] Experiments could surely be performed to see if that is an adequate explanation, but NIST did not report doing this.
Another fact that could be learned from the EPA monitoring was that violent fires occasionally flared up at Ground Zero long after all normal combustible materials would have been consumed. This fact was discovered from material released by the EPA in 2007 in response to a FOIA request instigated by chemist Kevin Ryan. This information was then made public in a paper published in the Environmentalist, on which the present section of this chapter is based, "Environmental Anomalies at the World Trade Center: Evidence for Energetic Materials," by Kevin Ryan, Steven Jones, and James Gourley (who is a chemical engineer as well as an attorney).
These scientists discovered, moreover, that the occasional flare-ups produced spikes in the release of several toxic substances classified as "volatile organic chemicals" (VOCs), including benzene, propylene, styrene, toluene, and ethyl benzene. Although the EPA's reports to the general public in 2002 mentioned these chemicals, it did not reveal the levels at which they had been detected, and they were, Ryan and his coauthors learned, "far above the levels published by EPA in their reports." Indeed, "these spikes in VOCs [were] at levels thousands of times higher than seen in other structure fires." [93] I repeat: thousands of times higher.
One of the most significant facts about the occasional spikes in the emissions of these volatile organic chemicals is that they continued long after the ordinary fuel sources at the site would have disappeared. Although most of the typical combustible materials were "largely burned off by mid to late October, ... the most striking spike in toxic air emissions ... occurred on 9 February, 2002," almost five months after 9/11. [94] There clearly had to be something in the debris that could remain volatile for several months.
Energetic Nanocomposites: A Possible Explanation
Accordingly, Ryan and his coauthors argued, these spikes "point not to other sources of typical combustible materials but to other forms of combustion," namely, to "chemical energetic materials, which provide their own fuel and oxidant and are not deterred by water, dust or chemical suppressants." [95] Fires fed by these energetic materials could not, therefore, be extinguished until these materials had exhausted their reactivity.
Ryan and his colleagues suggested that these materials were "energetic nanocomposites," such as "nanothermites," sometimes called "superthermites." An exploration of this suggestion requires a brief discussion of nanotechnology.
Nanotechnology is based on "nanoenergetics," which is research into ways to "manipulate the flow of energy ... between molecules." [96] The nanoworld, with which nanotechnology works, deals with things that are very small -- only slightly larger than ordinary molecules. This means that nanotechnology deals with particles between 10 and 100 nanometers in size, and a nanometer is only one millionth of a millimeter.
The significance of the tiny size of these particles follows from the fact that, the smaller something is, the larger is its surface area relative to its volume. (For example, a mouse has a much greater surface area relative to its volume than does an elephant.) This means that, compared to a larger particle, a nanoparticle has a larger percentage of its atoms on its surface, which in turn means that its atoms can react with other atoms much more rapidly. [97]
An essential part of nanotechnology is the creation of nanometals, such as ultra-fine-grain aluminum (nanoaluminum).
Nanometals can then be used to create nanocomposites, one type of which is nanothermite (superthermite), which is a collective name -- there are many forms of nanothermite. A nanothermite is a composite of a nanometal, which is usually nanoaluminum, with an ultra-fine-grain metal oxide, commonly iron oxide (rust). By contrast, ordinary thermite -- now sometimes called macrothermite -- combines a standard metal oxide with standard aluminum.
Because of the presence of aluminum in all (or at least virtually all) forms of thermite, they are often called "aluminothermic" mixtures.
Compared with ordinary thermite, nanothermite (superthermite) releases "greater amounts of energy much more rapidly." In fact, "Superthermites can increase the (chemical) reaction rime by a thousand times." An article in Technology Review, from which these quotations were taken, explained why this is the case, employing the previously mentioned point about the surface area:
Nanoaluminum is more chemically reactive because there are more atoms on the surface area than standard aluminum .... Standard aluminum covers just one-tenth of one percent of the surface area (with atoms), versus fifty percent for nanoaluminum. [98]
Because of the very high rate of energy release, which is made possible by the high surface area of the reactants, nanothermite explosives are classified as high explosives. [99] The difference has been explained by Jim Hoffman thus:
The reaction rate ... determines the destructive character of the material. Whereas a cup of conventional thermite will melt a hole clear through a car's engine block, the same quantity of nanothermite will blow the car apart. [100]
Whereas the enormous explosive power of nanothermites is one reason to suspect that they were used in the destruction of the Twin Towers and WTC 7, understanding how they could account for the chemical emissions at Ground Zero requires that we look at their chemical composition.
Although the most common type of nanothermite uses ultra-fine iron oxide (along with nanoaluminum), the oxidizer can be formed from many other metals, such as barium, copper, molybdenum, nickel, potassium, titanium, vanadium, or zinc. One type of nanothermite, for example, mixes nanoaluminum with copper oxide, another with molybdenum oxide, another with barium nitrate, still another with potassium permanganate. [101]
Two more essential factors about nanothermites involve the way in which the ingredients are mixed and how the resulting mixture is stored. Kevin Ryan, with reference to a 2000 article entitled "Nanoscale Chemistry Yields Better Explosives," [102] explained:
The mixing is accomplished by adding these reactants to a liquid solution where they form what are called "sols," and then adding a gelling agent that captures these tiny reactive combinations in their intimately mixed state. The resulting "sol-gel" is then dried to form a porous reactive material that can be ignited in a number of ways.
Silicon compounds, Ryan added, are often used to create the porous structural framework. [103]
With regard to the question of how sol-gel nanothermites could have been used to cur the steel columns of the World Trade Center buildings, Ryan quoted a 2002 article entitled "Energetic Nanocomposites with Sol-gel Chemistry," which says:
The sol-gel process is very amenable to ... spray-coating technologies to coat surfaces.... The energetic coating dries to give a nice adherent film. Preliminary experiments indicate that films of the hybrid material are self-propagating when ignited by thermal stimulus. [104]
One or more types of sol-gel nanothermite could, in other words, have been sprayed onto the steel.
Elsewhere, Ryan has suggested that "spray-on nano-thermite materials may have been applied to the steel components of the WTC buildings, underneath the upgraded fireproofing." [105] The fact that the steel was coated with explosive material would not, therefore, have been detectable by WTC employees.
Ryan supported this suggestion with the fact that there was "a remarkable correlation between the floors upgraded for fireproofing in the WTC towers, in the years preceding 9/11/01, and the floors of impact, fire and failure." This correlation is important, Ryan pointed out, because the "fireproofing upgrades would have allowed for shutdown of the affected floors, and the exposure of the floor assemblies and the columns for a significant period of time." [106] In this way, all the explosive material could have been added beyond the view of ordinary WTC employees.
I turn now to the ways in which Ryan, Gourley, and Jones suggested that their hypothesis -- that the buildings were brought down by the use of thermitic materials, involving both thermate and nanothermite -- can also explain the long-lasting fires and chemical emissions at Ground Zero.
Because nanothermites (superthermites) provide not only their own fuel but also their own oxidant, as stated earlier, they can burn underground and "are not deterred by water, dust or chemical suppressants." [107] They could, therefore, account for the long-lasting fires in the rubble.
The occasional spikes in the emissions of volatile organic chemicals (VOCs), usually lasting only "one day or less," can also be explained by the hypothesis that nanothermite was employed to bring the buildings down:
If energetic nanocomposite materials, buried within the pile at GZ [Ground Zero], were somehow ignited on specific dates ... , violent, short-lived and possibly explosive fires would result. Such fires would have quickly consumed all combustible materials nearby. The combustible materials available, after a month or two of smoldering fires in the pile, might have been more likely to be those that were less likely to have burned completely on earlier dates, like plastics. Later combustion of such plastic materials, in violent but short-lived fires, could explain the spikes in VOCs seen on those dates. [108]
The spikes in benzene, 1,3-DPP and other organic chemicals could perhaps have been produced in this way.
The extreme level of 1,3-DPP might also be partly explainable by the fact that" [t]he synthesis of novel nanostructured materials has involved the use of 1,3-DPP to functionalize mesoporous silicas through control of pore size." [109] Then, after the 1,3-DPP was released from the nanothermite's silica microstructure, it would in turn have broken down into some of the other chemicals found at unusually high levels, including styrene, toluene, and benzene. [110]
Some of the chemicals could also have come from the nanothermite materials. For example, high levels of silicon would follow from the use of silica in the liquid used to mix the nanoaluminum with an oxidant to create the "sol," and high levels of sulfur can be explained by the addition of sulfur to thermite mixtures to create thermates. [111]
Furthermore, the various metals found in the dust in surprisingly high concentrations can also be explained by this hypothesis. Take, for example, the extremely high percentage of iron-rich particles in the WTC dust, said by the 2003 RJ Lee report to constitute 5.87 percent of the dust -- which, as Jones and his coauthors emphasized, is "nearly 150 times" the amount found in ordinary office building dust. [112] This extremely high concentration of iron-rich particles can be explained by the aforementioned fact that iron oxide is the most commonly used oxidant in nanothermites. Also, the unusually high concentrations of barium, copper, molybdenum, nickel, titanium, vanadium, and zinc, which were found by the RJ Lee, Cahill, and/or USGS studies, can be explained by the fact that oxidants based on these metals are sometimes used in the production of nanothermites.
Finally, still another phenomenon supporting the hypothesis proposed by Ryan, Gourley, and Jones was the simultaneous spiking of emissions of chemicals commonly used in alumino thermic mixtures. For example, the EPA data showed that the top nine days for iron emissions were also the top nine days for aluminum emissions -- which is precisely what would be expected if nanothermite composed of aluminum and iron oxide had been used to demolish the buildings.
Eight of those same days, moreover, were also the top days for emissions of barium, another common ingredient in thermitic materials. [113]
The unusual amount of barium in the WTC dust, incidentally, might provide a clue as to the provider of at least some of the thermitic material. The film Zero has footage in which Steven Jones says:
arium nitrate and sulfur are part of the military patent on what is known as thermate. This is thermite with sulfur and barium nitrate added to make this material cut more rapidly through steel. Now barium is a very toxic metal, so one would not ordinarily expect this to be present in the large concentrations that we see. Well, the fact that we see it. .. in the dust is a very strong indication to me that the military form of thermite has been used. [114]
In any case, December 19, 2001, provided another example of simultaneous emissions, being the top day for both iron and vanadium emissions and the second highest day for aluminum and barium emissions. A spike in nickel emissions also occurred on that day. [115]
Nickel also spiked on March 7, which was the highest day for barium emissions. [116]
Still another correlation involved silicon. During October, which was the only month that Cahill monitored emissions, the top two days for silicon emissions were October 5 and 11, which were also this month's days with the highest emissions of benzene, ethylbenzene, propylene, styrene and toluene. [117]
In sum: The long-lasting fires at Ground Zero, along with the unusual emissions noted by Professor Cahill and the EPA, provide further evidence that WTC 7 and the Twin Towers were brought down with explosives. NIST could have contested this conclusion by providing an alternative explanation for the long-enduring heat at Ground Zero and for the emissions of chemicals and metals that should not have been present. Instead, NIST's WTC 7 report dealt with these phenomena in the same way it dealt with the reported pools of molten metal, the scientific reports of particles that could have been produced only by extremely high temperatures, and the pieces of steel that, according to the WPI professors, had undergone oxidation, sulfidation, intergranular melting, and perhaps even vaporization: by simply ignoring them. Once again NIST illustrated Whitehead's observation that if, when formulating a theory, scientists are "content to disregard half [the] evidence," any apparent success of their theory is merely illusory.
[b]6. RED/GRAY CHIPS: MORE EVIDENCE FOR THE USE OF NANOTHERMITE
Early in 2009, the Open Chemical Physics Journal published a paper, "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe," which provides additional, and still more definitive evidence that nanothermite was used to destroy WTC 7 as well as the Twin Towers. Written by Niels Harrit, who teaches in the University of Copenhagen's chemistry department, along with Steven Jones, Kevin Ryan, and six more coauthors, this paper reports results of experiments on very small but visible bi-layered chips, red on one side and gray on the other, that Jones had found while studying dust that had been recovered from the World Trade Center site. [118]
Initially suspecting that these red/gray chips might simply be dried paint chips, this team of scientists tested this possibility through two methods. First, paint chips and red/gray chips were soaked for 55 hours in methyl ethyl ketone, which is an organic solvent known to dissolve paint. Although the paint chips partially dissolved, the red/gray chips did not. [119] Second, both types of chips were subjected to a hot flame. Although the paint chips were "immediately reduced to fragile ashes," the red/gray chips were not. [120]
Having found two facts counting against the paint hypothesis, these scientists then employed a scanning electron microscope, an X-ray energy dispersive spectroscope, and a differential scanning calorimeter to determine the chemical composition of the red/gray chips. This composition provided further evidence against the paint hypothesis.
The gray sides were found to consist of "high iron and oxygen content including a smaller amount of carbon," [121] but what the scientists found to be most interesting was the composition of the red sides, because they were found to have various features suggestive of thermite.
Evidence of Thermite:
One such feature is that the red sides are composed primarily of "aluminum, iron, oxygen, silicon, and carbon." [122] The first three of these ingredients are suggestive of thermite because, as we saw in the previous section, thermite is commonly made by combining aluminum with iron oxide. The analysis showed, moreover, that "iron and oxygen are present in a ratio consistent with Fe203 [iron oxide]." [123]
The presence of iron was also suggested by the red color and the fact that the chips were subject to magnetic attraction. [124] However, Harrit and his colleagues realized, although the red layer has the same chemical signature as thermite, it might "not really be thermitic." The crucial test would be whether, when heated, it would "react vigorously." They performed this test in two ways. First, using the differential scanning calorimeter, they found that "the red/gray chips from different WTC samples all ignited in the range 415-435°C." They also produced "highly energetic reactions," the details of which produced "evidence for active, highly-energetic thermitic material in the WTC dust [that] is compelling." [125]
A second test occurred when they tested the paint hypothesis by applying a flame to the red/gray chips to determine their response to heat. The results of this test will be reported below.
Evidence of Nanothermite:
Several features of the thermitic material suggested to this team of scientists that it is nanothermite, rather than ordinary (macro) thermite.
For one thing, the primary ingredients in the red side are ultrafine grain, typically being "present in particles at the scale of tens to hundreds of nanometers." Commenting on this fact, Harrit -- an expert on nanochemistry -- and his colleagues wrote: "The small size of the iron oxide particles qualifies the material to be characterized as nano-thermite or super-thermite." [126]
A second piece of evidence supporting the presence of nanothermite in the WTC dust was that, when a flame was applied to a red/gray chip, as a further test of the paint hypothesis, the result was "the high-speed ejection of a hot particle," suggesting that the chip's red side consisted of "unreacted thermitic material, incorporating nanotechnology" -- in other words, nanothermite. This test rather dramatically, in conjunction with the other evidence, ruled out the paint hypothesis. [127]
A third reason to call it nanothermite, rather than ordinary (macro) thermite, is the temperature at which it reacted. As the test in the calorimeter revealed, it reacted at about 430°C, whereas ordinary thermite does not ignite until heated above 900°C (l,650°F). In a statement combining this third reason with the first, Harrit and his colleagues wrote: "The low temperature of ignition and the presence of iron-oxide grains less than 120 nm [nanometers] show that the material is not conventional thermite ... but very likely a form of super-thermite." [128]
Fourth, these scientists found that the ingredients of the red sides of the chips were intimately mixed. Pointing out that the intimate mixing of these ultra-fine ingredients belongs to the chemical signature of nanothermite, they wrote: "The red layer of the red/gray chips ... contains aluminum, iron and oxygen components which are intimately mixed at a scale of approximately 100 nanometers (nm) or less." [129]
A fifth sign of nanothermite is the red material's carbon content, which "indicates that an organic substance is present" -- which is what "would be expected for super-thermite formulations in order to produce high gas pressures upon ignition and thus make them explosive." [130]
Finally, this team of scientists observed, the hypothesis that the red material contains nanothermite is supported by the twofold fact that it is porous and that silicon was one of its main ingredients. [131] As we saw in the previous section, when nanothermite is mixed in a sol-gel, silicon compounds are often used so that, when the mixture dries, it forms a porous reactive material.
Various facts about the red sides of the red/gray chips, therefore, support the conclusion that they are unreacted nanothermite. The gray sides, composed primarily of iron and oxygen, required further study, Harrit and his colleagues said. But they speculated that the existence of the gray side may indicate "that the unreacted material was in close contact with something else, either its target, a container, or an adhesive." [132]
In any case, the conclusion that the red side of these chips is unreacted nanothermite suggests the further conclusion that someone had put nanothermite in the buildings. How else could the large quantity of this material be explained?
An innocent explanation would be possible, to be sure, if the WTC dust might have been contaminated with these ingredients during the clean-up operations at Ground Zero. This hypothesis was, however, excluded by the fact that the four dust samples were collected at times and places that ruled out such contamination. One sample was collected on 9/11 itself about ten minutes after the collapse of the North Tower. The other three samples were collected from nearby apartments into which dust had come through open windows. In two of these cases, moreover, the dust was collected the day after 9/11. [133]
Also, Steven Jones was not the only one to receive samples of WTC dust from those who had collected it. "I have two samples in Copenhagen which were sent to me directly from the collectors, and they contained the chips as well," Harrit reported. "There is a handful of other scientists who can bring the same testimony." [134]
Another question is whether the red/gray chips necessarily mean that nanothermite was used to bring down the WTC buildings. Could not red/gray chips with the ingredients of nanothermite have been produced by conventional explosives? Besides regarding this idea as a priori implausible, Harrit and his colleagues wrote:
No red/gray chips having the characteristics delineated here were found in dust generated by controlled demolition using conventional explosives and methods, for the Stardust Resort & Casino in Las Vegas (demolished 13 March 2007) and the Key Bank in Salt Lake City (demolished 18 August 2007). [135]
The red/gray chips, therefore, present compelling evidence that nanothermite was employed -- perhaps along with other thermitic and explosive materials -- in the demolition of WTC 7 as well as the Twin Towers. [136]
During a TV interview after his essay was published, Harrit made clear that he and his colleagues were not excluding the use of other materials as well: "We found nanothermite in the rubble. We are not saying only nanothermite was used." [137]
Harrit was saying, however, that he and his colleagues had found active thermitic material in the WTC dust. To the interviewer's question as to whether he had any doubt about this, he replied: "You cannot fudge this kind of science. We have found it. Unreacted thermite." [138] As to how much nanothermite was used to bring the three buildings down, given the amount of residue found in the WTC dust, Harrit estimated that it would have been over ten tons. [139]
Harrit also expressed no doubt about whether it was, in fact, used to bring down the buildings. When asked why he thought this substance, which he and his fellow scientists had found in the WTC dust, contributed to the collapse of the WTC buildings, he replied: "Well it's an explosive. Why else would it be there? .. This [unreacted thermite] is the 'loaded gun,' material that did not ignite for some reason." [140]
With regard to the question of how the nanothermite was used, Harrit replied:
I cannot say precisely, as this substance can serve [two] purposes. It can explode and break things apart, and it can melt things. Both effects were probably used, as I see ir. Molten metal pours out of the South Tower several minutes before the collapse. This indicates the whole structure was being weakened in advance. Then the regular explosives came into play. The actual collapse sequence had to be perfectly timed, all the way down.
Finally, making clear that the discovery of nanothermite in the dust is not the first strong evidence for the demolition of the WTC buildings, Harrit said:
[T]he article may not be as groundbreaking as you think. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world have long known that the three buildings were demolished. This has been crystal clear. Our research is just the last nail in the coffin. This is not the "smoking gun," it is the "loaded gun." [141]
7. DID NIST TEST FOR THERMITE RESIDUE?
As we have seen in the previous three sections, evidence found in the WTC dust is consistent with the hypothesis that forms of thermite, including thermate and nanothermite, had been employed to bring down WTC 7 as well as the Twin Towers. If NIST had carried out a scientific investigation, truly seeking the cause of the collapses, it would have tested the dust for residues of thermite reactions. By its own admission, however, it did not.
In NIST's 2006 document giving "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions" about its 2005 report on the Twin Towers, we find the following question: "Was the [WTC] steel tested for explosives or thermite residues? The combination of thermite and sulfur (called thermate) 'slices through steel like a hot knife through butter.'" NIST replied:
NIST did not test for the residue of these compounds in the steel.... Analysis of the WTC steel for the elements in thermite/thermate would not necessarily have been conclusive. The metal compounds also would have been present in the construction materials making up the WTC towers, and sulfur is present in the gypsum wallboard that was prevalent in the interior partitions. [142]
NIST's argument, in other words, was that even if they had found sulfur and thermite residue, this would not have proved that thermate had been used to bring the buildings down, because sulfur and the other elements in thermate might have come from the building materials.
Simultaneously with its release in August 2008 of the Draft version of its WTC 7 report, NIST put out a document entitled "Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation." One of the questions was: "Is it possible that thermite or thermate contributed to the collapse of WTC 7?" As part of its answer, NIST repeated almost verbatim its previous statement as to why it did not bother to check for thermate, saying:
Analysis of the WTC steel for the elements in thermite/rhermate would not necessarily have been conclusive. The metal compounds also would have been present in the construction materials making up the WTC buildings, and sulfur is present in the gypsum wallboard used for interior partitions. [143]
By repeating its earlier answer, NIST implied that it was a good explanation. But it was not.
One problem is that NIST's statement -- that such a test "would not necessarily have been conclusive" -- entails that it might possibly have been conclusive. This point was made in a "Request for Correction," which was submitted to NIST in 2007 by a group of scholars that included Steven Jones and Kevin Ryan. In their letter, they pointed out several problems in NIST's report on the Twin Towers. With regard to the question at hand, they wrote:
A chemical analysis for explosive residue on the steel or in the dust. .. could put to rest. .. the theory that explosives were responsible for the collapses of the Twin Towers. [144]
In other words, even if a positive result would not have been conclusive, a negative result, showing that there was not any residue from explosives in the Ground Zero dust, would have been conclusive. It would have conclusively disproved the theory that explosives had been used. As the group of scholars pointed out in a later "Appeal" to NIST, this would have required only "a very simple lab test." [145] Why would NIST's scientists not have performed this test? Was it because they knew that the test would not have provided this negative result?
A second problem with NIST's claim is that a positive result, showing the presence of thermite residue, might indeed have been conclusive. The group of scholars made this point in their "Request for Correction" by quoting a statement from Materials Engineering, Inc. (a company that "provides assistance in arson investigations"), [146] which says:
When thermite reaction compounds are used to ignite a fire, they produce a characteristic burn pattern, and leave behind evidence. These compounds are rather unique in their chemical composition, containing common elements such as copper, iron, calcium, silicon and aluminum, but also contain more unusual elements, such as vanadium, titanium, tin, fluorine and manganese. While some of these elements are consumed in the fire, many are also left behind in the residue .... The results [of Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy on minute traces of residue], coupled with visual evidence at the scene, provide absolute certainty that thermite reaction compounds were present, indicating the fire was deliberately set. [147]
Accordingly, these scholars said:
[I]t is difficult to imagine a scenario in which a test for explosive residues would not be conclusive .... Unless NIST can explain a plausible scenario that would produce inconclusive explosive residue test results, its stated reason for not conducting such tests is wholly unpersuasive. [148]
At the press briefing of August 21, 2008, on the occasion of NIST's release of its Draft Report on WTC 7, Shane Geiger of the 9/11 truth movement tried to confront NIST's lead investigator, Shyam Sunder, with evidence for the use of explosives provided by materials that have been found in the WTC dust. No sooner had he started his point than Sunder and Ben Stein (NIST's director of media relations) tried to silence him, saying that it was time to "move on" (to another question). Here is how the exchange went:
GEIGER: [Y]ou reiterated from your Twin Towers report that NIST has stated that it found no corroborating evidence to suggest that explosives were used to bring down the buildings. Now, in the very next sentence you ...
SUNDER: OK. Well, let's, let's ...
GEIGER: ... admit that NIST did not conduct tests for explosive residue. So of course it's very difficult to ... to find what you're not looking for. But in ...
STEIN: OK, we're going to move on.
GEIGER: ... iron spheres which are characteristic of the dust and can be seen on the United States Geological Survey website. These are found in every single sample of the dust to date, including all the samples that RJ Lee group took a look at. I actually have ...
STEIN: OK, we're gonna move on ...
GEIGER: I have a friend who's found these in his sample of dust. ...
STEIN: I think.. ..
GEIGER: ... and I think this is -- there's enough of these out there -- there's a billion pounds of World Trade Center dust in the landfill on Staten Island. I think it's pretty fair to say that NIST could, if NIST were interested in doing so, that NIST take a look at these spheres.
STEIN: Do you have a question, sir?
GEIGER: Inside these spheres, Dr. Steven Jones is claiming that there is evidence of a thermite reaction.
VOICE: OK, move on.
GEIGER: I certainly would like to hear about your research on this, other than bare assertions.
STEIN: Could you comment on what was said?
SUNDER: Yes, very quickly, there are a thousand pages of reports right there. It's on the website. I urge you to read it, understand it, and when you've understood it, we can have a discussion.
GEIGER: How may I go about discussing this with you in the future?
SUNDER: Well, you can submit your questions in writing and we will look at what you have to say. [149]
So, although Sunder had been happy to answer all the other questions raised at the briefing, Geiger's question did not deserve a reply until he had read the "thousands of pages of reports." Also Geiger's questions had to be submitted in writing. These two conditions meant that Sunder did not need to reply while reporters were listening and video cameras were running. They also meant, in fact, that Sunder would not need to answer the question at all. In any case, Sunder concluded his response to Geiger with these words:
But I will reassert what I've said all along, that the findings that we have got, we are very comfortable with. It's based on sound science, it is consistent with the observations. [150]
However, as we have seen and will continue to see in the following chapters, NIST's report, far from being consistent with the observations, is based on ignoring a wide range of relevant observations. For this and other reasons to be explored in the second part of this book, Sunder's claim that his report is based on "sound science" could hardly be further from the truth.
Sunder's systematically unscientific treatment of the question of thermitic materials in the dust was continued a week later during his "technical briefing" of August 28, 2008. A question submitted by Steven Jones asked: "Did NIST have available to it samples of dust from the WTC catastrophe? And if so, did NIST examine the dust for red or gray chips?" Sunder replied:
[W]e went through a pretty rigorous screening process to figure out which were the credible hypotheses that we would pursue and how we went about pursuing them, and we did not believe that the possible hypothesis that you just mentioned fell into the realm of a credible hypothesis. [151]
Jones, however, had not suggested a hypothesis. He had only asked whether NIST had checked WTC dust for the presence of red or gray chips. Sunder simply dodged that question by calling it a hypothesis that could not be deemed credible.
It is true, of course, that the question posed by Jones implied a hypothesis, namely, that nanothermite was used to bring down WTC 7. Sunder began the statement quoted above by saying, ''As I said just a moment ago, ... " In that earlier statement, he had said:
[W]hen we started the investigation we considered a whole range of possible hypotheses. And from that, based on our technical judgment, we decided what were credible hypotheses that we should pursue further. Among them, of course, was the... diesel fuel fire, the transfer girders,... and, of course, the most obvious, which is the normal building fires.... In addition to that, because of the concern expressed by several people about blasts and blast-oriented sounds, we decided to include that as a hypothetical scenario to also evaluate. We judged that other hypotheses that ... were suggested really... were not credible enough to justify a careful investigation. [152]
It was this statement that lay behind Sunder's answer to Jones, namely, that NIST did not believe that the hypothesis Jones was suggesting "fell into the realm of a credible hypothesis" -- the kind that would "justify a careful investigation."
So, although no steel-framed high-rise building had ever been brought down by diesel fuel fires, normal building fires, or girder failures, NIST thought that hypotheses about the collapse of WTC 7 based on these causes were credible enough to justify careful investigations. And although nanothermite could have helped bring the building down and could, moreover, explain the melted steel and the "blast-oriented sounds," NIST found the hypothesis that nanothermite was used to bring down WTC 7 so lacking in credibility that checking the WTC dust for unteacted nanothermite would not have been justified!
Sunder's reply shows that, besides refusing to begin, as we saw in the previous chapter, with the most likely hypothesis -- namely, that WTC 7 was brought down by explosives of some sort -- NIST even refused to do a simple test to confirm or disconfirm the most strongly supported version of that hypothesis. Whatever the NIST report was, it was not a scientific report.
Besides giving a completely inadequate rationale for not testing the dust to see if it contained the red/gray chips that Steven Jones and his colleagues had reported, NIST gave an equally lame excuse for not testing the dust for the presence of sulfur. NIST claimed, as we saw, that finding sulfur would not prove anything because the gypsum wallboard contained sulfur. But if that might provide an adequate explanation, why had the three professors from Worcester Polytechnic Institute been so puzzled by the fact that the piece of steel they studied from WTC 7 had been sulfidized? Are we to assume that these professors, all experts in the field, did not know that gypsum wallboard contains sulfur? If that fact might have provided a satisfactory answer, surely these "fire-wise professors" would not have stated at the end of their appendix to the FEMA report: "No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified." [153]
At least one likely reason why they would not have considered the gypsum a possible source has been explained in the previously discussed paper, "Extremely High Temperatures during the World Trade Center Destruction," by Steven Jones and other scientists. Gypsum is calcium sulfate, so if the only sulfur discovered were from gypsum wallboard, it would be matched by about the same percentage of calcium. Given the fact that the sulfur at Ground Zero was not matched by a corresponding amount of calcium, it could not have been from gypsum. [154]
Could NIST simply have been unaware of this fact? That would be possible only if its scientists were unfamiliar with the most common building materials. Also, Jones had made the point about calcium and sulfur in a 2007 paper entitled "Revisiting 9/11/2001," [155] and this paper was presented to NIST in December 2007 by architect Richard Gage and placed on NIST's own website. [156] We can be confident, therefore, that NIST, rather than being ignorant of this fact -- that the absence of a correspondingly high percentage of calcium in the Ground Zero dust shows that the sulfur did not come from gypsum -- simply ignored it.
A third problem is that NIST's answer about sulfur is a straw-man argument. The question NIST answers by referring to gypsum in the wallboard is: Why was there sulfur in the WTC dust? As we saw earlier, however, the real question is: How did sulfur enter into the intergranular structure of the steel? As Steven Jones indicated in a passage quoted earlier, if scientists at NIST "heat steel to about 1000°C in the presence of gypsum, ... they will find that sulfur does not enter steel under such circumstances." [157] NIST, however, ignored this issue.
A fourth problem with NIST's position is that it is circular. On the one hand, as we saw in the Introduction, NIST's lead investigator, Shyam Sunder, said at NIST's press briefing in August 2008: "We did not find any evidence that explosives were used to bring the building down." [158] That statement implies that NIST looked for possible evidence and found that it was absent. On the other hand, as we have also seen, NIST said in its ''Answers to Frequently Asked Questions," published in 2006: "NIST did not test for the residue of these [thermite] compounds." Although this admission was not repeated in NIST's 2008 documents about WTC 7, it was implied by its statement that finding such residues would not necessarily have been conclusive. NIST's statement that it "did not find any evidence that explosives were used" is, therefore, deceptive. As the group of scholars observed in their "Appeal" to NIST: "[I]t is extremely easy to 'find no evidence' when one is not looking for evidence." [159]
The circularity in NIST's position was pointed out by journalist Jennifer Abel of the Hartford Advocate in a story in which she discussed an interview she had with Michael Newman, spokesman for NIST's Department of Public and Business Affairs. Abel asked: "[W]hat about that letter where NIST said it didn't look for evidence of explosives?" Newman replied: "Right, because there was no evidence of that." In response to this strange answer, Abel asked the obvious question: "But how can you know there's no evidence if you don't look for it first?" Newman then responded with a still stranger statement: "If you're looking for something that isn't there, you're wasting your time ... and the taxpayers' money." [160]
Newman's obviously circular position illustrates in a humorous fashion -- or at least it would be humorous if so much were not at stake -- NIST's refusal to follow the scientific method's empirical dimension, which entails that a theory, to be truly scientific, must do justice to all of the evidence that might be relevant.
NIST's failure to test for signs that thermite had been used is even more inexcusable in light of the fact that the Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations, which is put out by the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), says that, in seeking to determine the cause of a fire, investigators should look for evidence of accelerants, which are any substances that could be used to ignite, and/or accelerate the progress of, a fire. (Dogs that are employed to detect such substances are known as "accelerant detection canines.") In its section on "undetermined fire cause," this NFPA Guide says:
In the instance in which the investigator fails to identify all of the components of the cause of the fire, it need not always be classified as undetermined. If the physical evidence establishes one factor, such as the presence of an accelerant, that may be sufficient to establish the cause even where other factors such as ignition source cannot be determined. [161]
Thermite mixtures constitute one of the most common types of accelerants. [162] By admitting that NIST had not checked for evidence of thermitic materials, therefore, Newman admitted that NIST had violated one of the basic principles of fire investigations. Also, as we have seen, nanothermites would be sufficient to account for at least many of the unusual ingredients in the WTC dust and also for at least some of the fires in WTC 7. (Although NIST treated it as self-evident that the fires in WTC 7 were caused by burning debris from the collapse of the North Tower, this explanation is not at all self-evident, as we will see in Chapter 8.)
There can be no doubt, therefore, that NIST should have performed tests to check for thermitic materials. In light of the fact that its purported reason for not doing so -- that such tests would not necessarily have been conclusive -- is unpersuasive, must we not suspect that NIST's real reason was its knowledge that such tests would have been conclusive, showing that such materials had indeed been used?
As we saw earlier, Alfred North Whitehead noted that the pursuit of truth requires an "unflinching determination to take the whole evidence into account." [163] In preparing its WTC 7 report, however, NIST appears to have been possessed of unflinching determination to ignore much of the relevant evidence.