The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Fin

"Science," the Greek word for knowledge, when appended to the word "political," creates what seems like an oxymoron. For who could claim to know politics? More complicated than any game, most people who play it become addicts and die without understanding what they were addicted to. The rest of us suffer under their malpractice as our "leaders." A truer case of the blind leading the blind could not be found. Plumb the depths of confusion here.

Re: The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the

Postby admin » Fri Jul 13, 2018 2:14 am

Part 2 of 2

The Simulated versus the Real Roofline

NIST's explanation of the collapse of WTC 7, as we have seen, is based on its computer simulations of various occurrences: the initiation and spread of the fires, the resulting steel temperatures, the thermal expansion of steel beams, the failure of the girder connecting Columns 44 and 79, the failure of Column 79, and the failure of all the other columns. For most of these events, we have no visual information with which to confirm or disconfirm the simulations. With regard to a few matters, however, we do have visual (photographic and video) evidence against which to test NIST's simulations. For NIST's theory to have any plausibility, there must be a close correspondence between its simulations and all such empirical information.

One matter for which we have visual evidence is the initiation and spread of the fires. NIST's simulations, as we saw in Chapters 8 and 9, do not fare well when matched against some of this information, such as the fact that the 12th floor fire had burned out by 4:45 PM.

Another matter for which we have visual information is the appearance of the building in the first few seconds of its descent. There are videos, taken from more than one location, which can be closely studied. For NIST's analysis of the collapse of WTC 7 to be credible, therefore, NIST's simulation, on which its analysis is based, must closely correspond to what can be seen on these videos. NIST claims that it does, or at least that it corresponds "reasonably well" -- well enough to confirm the accuracy of the simulations. But this is not true.

Three features of the collapse, as revealed by these videos, especially stand out. One is the fact that, before the building as a whole began to collapse, the penthouse on the east side descended below the roofline. A second prominent feature was the development of a "kink" in the roofline of the north face. A third such feature is that, aside from that kink, the roofline remained virtually straight, as the building came down symmetrically.

With regard to the first of these features, NIST appears quite pleased with the results of its simulation, saying that "the calculated and observed times for the descent of the east penthouse below the roofline were quite similar." [47]

But as NIST prepares to discuss the second and third features -- the kink and the descent of the building -- it seeks to lower expectations, saying:

Once simulation of the global collapse of WTC 7 was underway, there was a great increase in the uncertainty in the progression of the collapse sequence, due to the random nature of the interaction .... [T]he details of the progression of the horizontal failure and final global collapse were increasingly less precise. [48]


Then, with regard to the kink and the building's "subsequent movement," NIST writes:

There was another observable feature that occurred after the global collapse was underway. After the exterior facade began to fall downward ... , the north face developed a line or "kink" near the end of the core at Column 76,. .. The kink ... occurred 2 s[econds] to 3 s[seconds] after the exterior facade had begun to move downward, as a result of the global collapse. The simulations do show the formation of the kink, but any subsequent movement of the building is beyond the reliability of the physics in the model. [49]


In spite of this caveat, NIST concludes on an upbeat note, saying in a section headed "Accuracy Analysis":

Given the complexity of the modeled behavior, the global collapse analyses matched the observed behavior reasonably well. ... The global collapse analysis confirmed the leading collapse hypothesis, which was based on the available evidence. [50]


Greening has expressed strong disagreement with NIST's self-evaluation here. After arguing that NIST's estimations of the available combustible materials and hence its simulated steel temperatures were unrealistic, he wrote:

However, assume for a moment that collapse initiation in WTC 7 did in fact occur as NIST states: by a thermally induced buckling failure of Column 79 on Floors 12/13. It would then be appropriate to ask: Is the collapse propagation mechanism proposed by NIST consistent with the observed collapse of WTC 7? If the answer to this question is "Yes," it would add credibility to NIST's account of what happened to Building 7 on 9/11 even if an inappropriate fuel loading was used to arrive at this conclusion. However, I would suggest that NIST's account of the last 1/2 minute of the life of WTC 7 ... is... at odds with what was observed in the collapse videos of WTC 7. [51]


Focusing on images showing what happened to the core of WTC 7 after the east penthouse collapsed, [52] according to NIST's simulations, Greening wrote:

What is most significant about these images is that around the time of global collapse initiation NIST's simulation shows that the eastern half of the core had completely collapsed while the western half of the core remained standing and relatively undamaged. This is quite remarkable since videos of the collapse of WTC 7 show that up to and well beyond the moment that the roofline of WTC 7 exhibited its first downward movement, the exterior of the building revealed absolutely no signs of NIST's proposed partial collapse of the core even though the core was connected to the exterior walls of Building 7 by dozens of horizontal beams on every floor.

NIST's proposed collapse of the eastern half of the core would have completely removed the lateral restraints normally acting on the eastern exterior columns of WTC 7. Indeed, NIST assert[s] that in the moments before global collapse initiation, "the exterior facade on the east quarter of the building was just a hollow shell." This would have caused the eastern facade to buckle well before global collapse ensued. This buckling would have been visible as a bowing of the northeast corner of the building. Needless to say, such pre-collapse buckling or bowing of WTC 7 was not observed. [53]


Greening's observations here highlight one of the fundamental problems with NIST's theory of "progressive collapse." As we saw in the first part of this book, a wealth of evidence shows that explosives were used to make WTC 7 implode. A key piece of this evidence is the fact that the building came straight down. This kind of symmetrical, straight-down collapse of a steel-framed building can occur only if all of its columns fail almost simultaneously. Getting them to do this is, indeed, at the heart of the science, or art, of engineering a controlled implosion. The explosives must be in the right places and go off in the right order.

Insofar as NIST's task was to show how the building could have come down without the aid of explosives, it had an impossible task. Being unable to mention explosives, NIST could not possibly argue that all of the columns failed simultaneously. The best it could do was to develop a theory of "progressive collapse," which it defines as "the spread of local damage, from an initiating event, from element to element, eventually resulting in the collapse of an entire structure." [54] As both the name and this definition make clear, this type of collapse -- assuming for the sake of argument that it would even be possible -- would take time, with some elements happening later than others.

NIST's impossible task was to try to show that such a collapse, although very different inside the building than a controlled implosion, could look the same from the outside. NIST's attempt to do this involves arguing that most of the collapse occurred inside, invisible to external eyes and cameras, before the exterior facade, which had become a "hollow shell," collapsed. What seemed from the outside to be the total collapse of the WTC 7 was really, NIST says, only the collapse's final phase, which began when "[t]he shell of exterior columns buckled." [55]

But does this makes sense? During NIST's technical briefing in August 2008, Mindy Kleinberg, one of the 9/11 widows, asked: "If Column 79 collapsed and then 80 and 81, all of which are on the same side, why wasn't the collapse asymmetrical?" Although Shyam Sunder gave a long, poorly constructed reply at that time, [56] NIST provided a more concise and precise response in its "Questions and Answers" document, in which it said:

WTC 7's collapse, viewed from the exterior (most videos were taken from the north), did appear to fall almost uniformly as a single unit. This occurred because the interior failures that took place did not cause the exterior framing to fail until the final stages of the building collapse. The interior floor framing and columns collapsed downward and pulled away from the exterior frame. There were clues that internal damage was taking place, prior to the downward movement of the exterior frame, such as when the east penthouse fell downward into the building and windows broke out on the north face at the ends of the building core. The symmetric appearance of the downward fall of the WTC 7 was primarily due to the greater stiffness and strength of its exterior frame relative to the interior framing. [57]


This strategy on NIST's part, however, could not be completely successful. The internal progression of column failures would necessarily have had noticeable effects on the building's exterior. fu Greening pointed out, if the core columns in the eastern half of the building had collapsed first, this failure would have removed the support for the eastern exterior columns, causing the eastern facade to collapse before the rest of the building did. But the videos show no such thing.

Moreover, Greening wrote, "the problems with NIST's simulations only get worse after global collapse initiation." Following his discussion of two such problems, Greening concluded with "a final blow to the credibility of NIST's collapse simulation," which he stated thus:

[NIST's computer-based images] reveal a collapsing core with its eastern side a full eight stories ... below its western side. This would indicate a roofline collapse that started at the eastern end of Building 7 and progressed over a period of about 4 seconds to the western end. [58]


Why was this a fatal problem? Because, Greening explained:

[I]f NIST's collapse simulations are supposed to accurately reflect what happened to Building 7 on 9/11, one is compelled to ask: [i]Why did WTC 7 undergo a strictly vertical collapse, with the roofline remaining essentially horizontal throughout the first 5 seconds of its downward motion, when NIST's simulations show the eastern side of the building starting to collapse 4 seconds before the western side? [59][/quote]

Having raised this question in comments on NIST's Draft Report, which were posted by NIST on its website, Greening later submitted a "revised and extended version" of his critique, which NIST did not post. In this revised critique, Greening, after pointing out that the available videos "present an unobstructed view of at least the upper third of Building 7 and permit the collapse to be followed for 4-5 seconds," wrote:

The videos show the upper section of WTC 7 descending very smoothly as an intact structure, with the roofline remaining essentially horizontal until it passes behind buildings in the foreground. The only significant distortion of the boxed-shaped Building 7 that is noticeable after the facade begins its downward motion is the formation of a kink on the eastern side of the north face. [60]


By contrast, he noted, three of NIST's computer-generated images "show very extensive buckling of the exterior columns over much of the building a few seconds into the collapse." Greening then pointed out that two of these images "use lateral and vertical displacement contours that span 2 meters, a level of building distortion that should have been visible in the WTC 7 collapse videos, but was in fact not seen." [61] Two other images, Greening added, "show a localized cave-in of the top ten floors of WTC 7 at its northeast corner about the time of global collapse initiation -- another behavior of Building 7 that was never observed." [62] Having pointed out these glaring discrepancies, Greening concluded:

It is simply astounding that, although NIST's computer generated images of a crumpled and severely distorted Building 7 look nothing like the video images of the real thing, NIST nevertheless concludes: ''the global collapse analyses matched the observed behavior reasonably well." [63]


Greening was not the only one to complain to NIST about this lack of correspondence. Philip Tompkins wrote:

I do not see how the pictured object in Figure 12- [70] at all resembles the actual collapse as shown in the videos. In the actual collapse the top of the building is not all crumpled as in Figure 12-[70]. [64]


However, in spite of the obvious truth of these statements by Greening and Tompkins, made in criticism of NIST's Draft Report, those same images are reprinted in its Final Report, along with NIST's "astounding" claim that the simulations of the collapse, on which these images were based, "matched the observed behavior reasonably well." NIST perhaps understood the phrase "reasonably well" broadly enough that it could encompass "hardly at all."

Be that as it may, the fact that the simulated collapse of WTC 7 looks nothing like the actual collapse provides additional reason to conclude that NIST's explanation of that collapse is false.

Did WTC 7 Enter into Free Fall?

One of the most common arguments for the controlled demolition of WTC 7 has been based on the observation that its downward acceleration approximated that of a free-falling object. This could have happened, critics of the official account have pointed out, only if explosives of some sort had removed all of the building's structural columns. Otherwise, even if the upper part of the building had started to come down, the lower part would have stopped or at least slowed down its descent.

NIST's Draft for Public Comment:

In its Draft for Public Comment, which was issued on August 21, 2008, NIST countered this argument by claiming that the time that it took WTC 7 to collapse shows that it was not falling freely. NIST wrote:

The time the roofline took to fall 18 stories was 5.4 s[econds].... Thus, the actual time for the upper 18 floors of the north face to collapse, based on video evidence, was approximately 40 percent longer than the computed free fall time and was consistent with physical principles. [65]


NIST repeated this claim in a Q & A document ("Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation"), which was issued the same day as the Draft Report. One of the questions was:

In videos, it appears that WTC 7 is descending in free fall, something that would not occur in the structural collapse that you describe. How can you ignore basic laws of physics?


NIST gave the following answer (in a document that has since been removed from its website):

WTC 7 did not enter free fall. According to NIST analysis of WTC 7 video, the building collapsed 18 stories in 5.3 seconds [sic: NIST usually said 5.4 seconds]. If the building exhibited free fall, this process would have taken just 3.9 seconds. The actual collapse time exceeded the free fall time by 40 percent. [66]


To say "the actual collapse time exceeded free fall time by 40 percent" was to say that the building's acceleration was only 51 percent of that of gravity. [67] Even that would have been an incredibly fast descent in a fire-induced collapse (if such were possible). But by saying that the building's acceleration was "only" 51 percent of that of a freefalling object, NIST was at least able to contradict the widespread claim that it had come down in free fall.

In his technical briefing on August 26, 2008, NIST's lead investigator, Shyam Sunder, explained why WTC 7 could not have come down in free fall:

[A] free fall time would be an object that has no structural components below it. ... What the ... collapse analysis shows, is that same time [sic] that it took for the structural model to come down from the roof line all the way -- for those 17 floors to disappear -- is 5.4 seconds. It's about 1.5 seconds, or roughly 40 percent, more time for that free fall to happen [sic]. And that is not at all unusual, because there was structural resistance that was provided in this particular case. And you had a sequence of structural failures that had to take place. Everything was not instantaneous. [68]


Sunder thereby summarized the two main reasons -- even if he did not clearly distinguish between them -- why NIST could not endorse the idea that WTC 7 had come down in free fall. (1) The upper floors could not have come down in free fall, because that could have happened only if nothing of the lower floors had remained to provide structural resistance. And (2) the collapse could not have been "instantaneous," meaning that all of the supporting columns had failed simultaneously, because NIST espoused a theory of "progressive collapse," in which the failures occurred sequentially over a period of time.

David Chandler's Response to NIST's Draft Report:

Sunder's statement at the technical briefing, quoted above, was made in response to the following question from high-school physics teacher David Chandler:

Any number of competent measurements using a variety of methods indicate the northwest corner of WTC 7 fell with an acceleration within a few percent of the acceleration of gravity. Yet your report contradicts this, claiming 40 percent slower than free fall.... How can such a publicly visible, easily measurable quantity be set aside? [69]


Chandler's question was based on an analysis that he had presented in a video, which he had made available on the internet. In this video, Chandler first explained how he measured the downward acceleration. He then pointed out that "for about two and a half seconds ... , the acceleration of the building is indistinguishable from freefall." [70] Finally, explaining the significance of this fact, he said:

Free fall can only be achieved if there is zero resistance to the motion. In other words, the gravitational potential energy of the building is not available to crush or deform anything. During free fall, all of the gravitational potential energy of the building is being converted into kinetic energy, and nothing else. Any breaking, bending, crushing, or pulverizing of the building components is occurring without the assistance of the free-falling portion of the building. Any force the top portion of the building might exert on the lower portion would be reflected in a reaction force that would produce an observable slowing of the rate of fall. [71]


In other words, the fact that the building was in free fall for over two seconds means that zero resistance, which Sunder had tried to rule out, is exactly what there had been. How, then, had NIST claimed that the building had not been in free fall?

NIST did this, Chandler explained, by arbitrarily choosing a starting time that was earlier than the time of the actual beginning of the collapse, and then by "computing only the average acceleration between that point and the disappearance of the roofline." By alleging that the collapse began at a time when the building, in fact, had still been motionless, NIST was able to claim that it took 5.4 seconds for the top 18 floors to collapse. By then computing merely the average acceleration -- thereby ignoring the fact that the building had been in free fall for over two seconds -- NIST could claim that the collapse took 40 percent longer than would a free-falling object.

Pointing out that "[t]his is high school physics we're talking about," Chandler concluded that NIST's approach constituted "either gross incompetence or an attempt to obfuscate the issue." Indicating which of those options he endorsed, he added: "[T]he guys at NIST are not incompetent." [72]

Next, explaining why the authors of NIST's WTC 7 report had tried to obfuscate the issue, he said:

The rate of fall of the building is an embarrassment to the official theory.. .. Buildings cannot fall at free fall through themselves, because even a weakened building requires energy to break up the pieces, crush the concrete, and push things around. When a falling building pushes things, the fall is not free, the "things" push back, and the reaction forces will measurably slow the descent of the building. This is why one would reasonably expect crumbling structures to come down in a tumbling, halting, irregular manner. In short, the evidence is clear: we are witnessing not the collapse of a building, but its demolition. [73]


In other words, for NIST to admit that the building entered free fall, even for two seconds, would be for it to admit, implicitly, that the building had been intentionally demolished through the use of explosives of some sort.

Finally, evaluating NIST's WTC 7 report in light of this fact, Chandler concluded: "[W]e have received not a report from an independent scientific investigation, but a cover-up by a government agency." [74]

After producing his video and releasing it on the internet on September 4, 2008, Chandler next confronted NIST directly, summarizing his findings in a "Comment" about its Draft for Public Comment, submitted September 13. Stating that his measurement "shows a period of approximately 2.5 seconds, with sudden onset, during which the acceleration was indistinguishable from free fall," Chandler pointed out that the explanation he had provided in his video could easily be repeated "by anyone with a background in elementary physics." Finally, stating that Sunder's answer to his (Chandler's) question at the technical briefing constituted an acknowledgment "that the NIST model is at variance with the observable fact that free fall actually occurred," Chandler concluded: "Acknowledgment of and accounting for an extended period of free fall in the collapse of WTC 7 must be a priority if the NIST is to be taken seriously." [75]

In its Final Report, issued in November 2008, NIST does, amazingly enough, acknowledge a period of free fall. But it does not account for it.

NIST's Final Report on WTC 7:

In its Final Report, NIST still uses the early start time, thereby claiming that the upper 18 floors took 5.4 seconds to collapse. It also continues to use the average descent rate. NIST can thereby continue saying that the building took 40 percent longer than free-fall time to collapse. All of these elements are contained in the following summary statement:

The time that the roofline took to fall 18 stories... was approximately 5.4 s[econds]. The theoretical time for free fall was approximately 3.9 s[econds]. Thus, the average time for the upper 18 stories to collapse, based on video evidence,... was approximately 40 percent longer than the computed free fall time. [76]


Within this unchanged framework, however, NIST goes beyond its former approach by dividing this 5.4-second period into three stages, in which it acknowledges the point on which Chandler had been insisting. After repeating the claim that the descent time of the upper 18 stories "was 40 percent greater than the computed free fall time," NIST says on page 607 of the long version of its Final Report:

A more detailed analysis of the descent of the north face found three stages: (1) a slow descent with acceleration less than that of gravity that corresponded to the buckling of the exterior columns at the lower floors, (2) a freefall descent over approximately eight stories at gravitational acceleration for approximately 2.25 s[econds], and (3) a decreasing acceleration as the north face encountered resistance from the structure below. [77]


Although this is stated matter-of-factly, as if nothing extraordinary were being said, NIST's three-phase analysis includes, in Chandler's words, "a whopping 2.25 seconds of absolute free fall." [78]

NIST has thereby contradicted its claim, made in its Q & A document of August 2008, that "WTC 7 did not enter free fall." It now acknowledges that WTC 7 not only entered free fall but remained in it for 2.25 seconds -- which means that, for over two seconds, the lower floors of the building were offering zero resistance.

NIST also admits this point in an updated version of its Q & A document, issued in December 2008. This document's description of the three stages of collapse says: "During Stage 2, the north face descended essentially in free fall, indicating negligible support from the structure below." [79] This is, of course, exactly what Sunder in his technical briefing of August 2008 had said could not have occurred. NIST has clearly reversed itself -- a point that Chandler emphasized with the title of his next video: "WTC 7: NIST Finally Admits Freefall."

NIST does not, to be sure, admit that the 2.25 seconds of zero resistance implies that explosives had been used to remove all the steel and concrete that would have offered resistance. But neither has NIST continued to insist that its non-demolition collapse analysis, now that it explicitly includes a free-fall stage, is consistent with physical principles.

In its Draft for Public Comment, as we saw earlier, NIST had made that claim, saying:

[T]he actual time for the upper 18 floors of the north face to collapse ... was approximately 40 percent longer than the computed free fall time and was consistent with physical principles.


This claim was reiterated in the next paragraph, which said:

The actual collapse time of the upper 18 floors of the north face of WTC 7 ... was 40 percent greater than the computed free fall time. This was consistent with physical principles. [80]


In the list of "Principal Findings" at the end of the Draft Report, NIST again made this claim, saying:

The collapse time of the upper 18 floors of the north face of WTC 7 ... was 40 percent greater than the computed free fall time. This is consistent with physical principles. [81]


In NIST's Final Report, however, this claim, so prominent in the Draft for Public Comment, is missing. The claim that NIST's analysis is consistent with physical principles is replaced by NIST's new three-stage analysis. For example, the just-quoted statement from the list of "Principal Findings" has been modified to read:

The observed descent time of the upper 18 stories of the north face of WTC 7 ... was 40 percent greater than the computed free fall time. A more detailed analysis of the descent of the north face found three stages: (1) a slow descent with acceleration less than that of gravity that corresponded to the buckling of the exterior columns at the lower floors, (2) a freefall descent over approximately eight stories at gravitational acceleration for approximately 2.25 s[econds], and (3) a decreasing acceleration as the north face encountered resistance from the structure below. [82]


No claim that this three-stage analysis is "consistent with physical principles" is made here or anywhere else in NIST's Final Report on WTC7.

NIST's Final Report does include a "consistent with" statement, but this statement says nothing about physical principles. Instead, after giving its three-stage analysis, NIST says: "The three stages of collapse progression described above are consistent with the results of the global collapse analyses discussed earlier in this chapter." [83] What NIST asserts, in other words, is that its three-stage analysis on this page is consistent with its three-stage analyses on earlier pages! This tautological statement is a far cry from NIST's earlier claim that its collapse analysis was consistent with physical principles.

In omitting every instance of this earlier claim, NIST has implicitly conceded that its collapse analysis is not consistent with physical principles. NIST tries, nevertheless, to disguise this fact by continuing to claim that WTC 7's descent time was 40 percent longer than free fall. In his new video, "WTC7: NIST Finally Admits Freefall," Chandler has explained, more fully than he had before, why this claim is fraudulent.

Chandler on NIST's "40 Percent Greater than Free Fall" Claim:

Before looking at Chandler's critique of NIST's claim that the descent of the top 18 floors took 5.4 seconds, it will be helpful to look at the summary of NIST's three-stage analysis of this 5.4-second period, which is provided in its updated Q & A document:

-- Stage 1 (0 to 1.75 seconds): acceleration less than that of gravity (i.e., slower than free fall)

-- Stage 2 (1.75 to 4.0 seconds): gravitational acceleration (freefall)

-- Stage 3 (4.0 to 5.4 seconds): decreased acceleration, again less than that of gravity [84]


Chandler fully agrees with Stages 2 and 3. Stage 2 is, of course, the 2.25 seconds of free fall on which he has insisted. (Although he originally timed it at 2.5 seconds, he has not quibbled about its reduction to 2.25 seconds.) He also agrees that, after this stage of absolute free fall, the descent started to slow. As he said in his critique of NIST's Draft Report:

[A]bout two and a half seconds after the building drops, the acceleration ceases to be uniform. This indicates that the falling building is scarring to offer more resistance. Any measurement of the average acceleration that continues for more than the first two and a half seconds of fall will show a lower average acceleration, masking the fact that for a significant two and a half seconds the building was in literal free fall. [85]


Chandler agrees, therefore, that the stage of absolute free fall was followed by a stage in which the acceleration decreased. He also agrees that it is important to distinguish clearly between these two stages.

Chandler's point of disagreement with NIST's three-stage analysis involves the period lasting 1.75 seconds, which NIST calls Stage 1 of the collapse. It is this so-called first stage that allows NIST to claim that the collapse of the upper 18 floors required 5.4 seconds and hence took 40 percent longer than free fall. NIST itself even points out this fact in its new Q & A document, saying that "the 40 percent longer descent time -- compared to the 3.9 second free fall time -- was due primarily to Stage 1." [86] NIST also makes this point in its Final Report, saying that the "increase in time is due primarily to Stage 1, in which column buckling was just beginning and gradual progression in displacement and velocity were observed." [87] Chandler challenged the second half of that statement, pointing out that no significant movement was observed during almost all of this so-called first stage.

Chandler demonstrated this fact by slowing down the video footage, so that the collapse of the upper 18 floors could be analyzed frame by frame. He used a video in which there are 30 frames per second, so that it takes 162 frames to show the 5.4 seconds that, according to NIST, it took WTC 7's roofline to descend to the level where the 29th floor had been (after which the building disappeared from view behind other buildings).

Although NIST said that WTC 7's collapse started exactly 5.4 seconds before the roofline reached that level, Chandler pointed out that there is not "the slightest hint of any collapse until Frame 40." [88] That frame, moreover, merely shows a tiny motion in the corner of the west penthouse, after which the penthouse begins to collapse into the roof. WTC 7's roofline itself remains motionless until about Frame 46. "Even then," Chandler pointed out, "there isn't any progressive, ongoing movement of the roofline until about Frame 60," [89] which shows the building 1.5 seconds later than the time at which NIST claimed the collapse had begun.

So why did NIST claim that the collapse began 1.5 seconds prior to the time at which this ongoing movement of the roofline occurred? Chandler said:

The only rationale I can see ... is to make the measurement come out to exactly 5.4 seconds, w agree with the prediction of NIST's collapse model. ... t's pretty clear that the whole idea there's any kind of real 5.4 second collapse interval is a fiction. It's a crude fabrication, and the 3-stage collapse sequence is pseudo-science in the service of an ongoing coverup. [90]


The purpose, in other words, was to obscure the fact that WTC 7, after being motionless, suddenly began to come down in free fall.

Did Chandler's use of the word "fabrication" mean that he was accusing NIST of scientific fraud? Yes. He even used the term "dry labbing," [91] which, as mentioned in Chapter 2, is often used as a synonym for fabrication.

Chandler on the Significance of WTC 7's Free-Fall Descent:

After exposing the fraudulent nature of NIST's claim that the descent of the upper 18 floors took 40 percen t longer than free fall, Chandler discussed the significance of NIST's belated admission that WTC 7 came down in free fall for over two seconds. Explaining the basic physical principles involved, Chandler said:

Anything at an elevated height has gravitational potential energy. If it falls, and none of the energy is used for other things along the way, all of that energy is converted into kinetic energy -- the energy of motion, and we call it "free fall." If any of the energy is used for other purposes, there will be less kinetic energy, so the fall will be slower. In the case of a falling building, the only way it can go into free fall is if an external force removes the supporting structure. None of the gravitational potential energy of the building is available for this purpose, or it would slow the fall of the building. The fact of free fall by itself is strong evidence of explosive demolition. [92]


However, Chandler continued, the [i]way in which WTC 7 came down provides even stronger evidence of its explosive demolition:

What is particularly striking is the suddenness of onset of free fall. Acceleration doesn't build up gradually The building went from full support to zero support, instantly. One moment, the building is holding; the next moment it lets go and is in complete free fall. [93]


Still further evidence is provided, Chandler said, by another fact about WTC 7's descent:

The onset of free fall was not only sudden; it extended across the whole width of the building ... .The fact that the roof stayed level shows the building was in free fall across the entire width. The collapse we see cannot be due to a column failure, or a few column failures, or a sequence of column failures. All 24 interior columns and 58 perimeter columns had to have been removed ... simultaneously, within a small fraction of a second. [94]


Having made that point -- which is surely the clearest proof that explosives of some sort were used to remove the columns -- Chandler emphasized the importance of recognizing the deceptiveness of NIST's three-stage analysis:

We saw [earlier] that the 5.4 seconds depends on an artificially early start time which has no valid observational basis. Without the 5.4 second fig-leaf, we're left with freefall and nothing more. [95]


Finally, pointing out the contradiction between NIST's collapse model and the empirical fact that WTC 7 was in free fall for over two seconds -- which NIST has reluctantly admitted -- Chandler concluded:

One fact we do know about NIST's model is: it does not allow for free fall. ... There is nothing in the models we have been shown that even resembles a 3-stage collapse with a free-fall component. After all, as Shyam Sunder put it himself, "Free fall happens only when there are no structural components below the falling section of the building." Any natural scenario is going to involve a progression of failures, and these don't happen instantaneously. [96]


In other words, by admitting "a free-fall component," NIST has ended up with a self-contradictory position. On the one hand, its Final Report offers the same theory of WTC 7's collapse that was contained in its Draft Report, which was a theory of progressive collapse, in which the building's supports failed sequentially. On the other hand, NIST's Final Report concedes that the building came down part of the time in free fall, which means that all of the supports had to have failed simultaneously.

Given this contradiction at the very heart of the final version of NIST's theory, Shyam Sunder should be asked by the press whether he still stands by his confident assertion at the August 2008 press briefing that, thanks to NIST's analysis, "the reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery." [97] Far from solving the mystery of WTC 7's collapse, NIST has -- by continuing to provide a non-demolition theory of this collapse while admitting that it involved over two seconds of complete free fall -- built an absolute mystery into the official explanation.

Sunder also needs to be asked whether he still stands by his statement, made on that same occasion, that "science is really behind what we have said." [98] If he still believes this, why are all of NIST's previous claims that its analysis is "consistent with physical principles" missing in the final version of its report?

These claims had to be removed, of course, because Sunder and his fellow scientists at NIST know that the 2.25-second period of free fall they have admitted is not consistent with physical principles. Outdoing the cartoon mentioned in Chapter 2, these NIST scientists presented 606 pages of descriptions, testimonies, photographs, graphs, analyses, mathematical formulae, and explanations, after which they in effect said on page 607: "Then a miracle happens."

The Compact Debris Pile

Having shown that NIST's theory of progressive collapse cannot do justice to the actual collapse of WTC 7, as observed on videos, I will conclude this chapter by showing that this theory also cannot explain the result: a very compact debris pile, no more than two stories high, that was almost entirely within the building's footprint. (Photos showing this very tidy pile of rubble, situated cleanly between the neighboring buildings, are available on the internet. [99])

Phillip Tompkins, whose comment to NIST about its picture of the collapse was quoted above, also drew attention to this problem, writing: "I do not see how [NIST] explains the contents of the pile at the end of the collapse. Where and in what condition were all the long core columns?" [100]

I myself had raised this problem -- about all of the columns, not only the core columns -- in an earlier book. Having quoted the statement by New York Times writer James Glanz that, if the collapse of WTC 7 had not been overshadowed by that of the Twin Towers, it would have been "a mystery that ... would probably have captured the attention of the city and the world," [101] I wrote:

One of the biggest elements of this mystery is how this 47-story building's 81 columns -- 24 core and 57 perimeter columns -- could have collapsed into a very compact pile of rubble without being sliced by explosives. [102]


My statement contained two errors: First, although there were indeed 24 interior columns, only 21 of them were core columns (the other three -- Columns 79, 80, and 81 -- were in the eastern region of the building); second, there were 58 perimeter (exterior) columns, not 57, hence a total of 82 columns. [103] Correcting these two errors does not, however, affect the problem raised by my statement: Given the existence of all those columns, how could virtually all of the debris from the collapse have ended up in the building's footprint?

Here is the problem: WTC 7 was 610 feet high, so each column was 610 feet long. According to NIST's theory, the columns all buckled between the 7th and 14th floors, [104] after which "the entire building above the buckled-column region moved downward as a single unit." [105] Even if all of the columns buckled exactly at the 14th floor, the unbroken sections from the upper 33 floors would have been 429 feet long (each floor was 13 feet high).

Could these 429-foot-long columns have all come down into WTC 7's footprint? The building, which had a trapezoidal shape, was 247 feet long on the south side, 329 feet long on the north side, and about 150 feet on the east and west sides. [106] So even if all the columns had been placed in the middle of the footprint with their ends pointing east and west, they would not have fit within the footprint.

The columns, moreover, would not have come down so neatly. Many would have fallen outside the footprint in various directions, blocking the streets and destroying numerous nearby buildings, especially the Federal Building and the New York Telephone Building, which were very close to WTC 7. [107] That, however, did not happen -- which means that the columns must have been broken into smaller segments before they came down.

The compact pile of debris that resulted from the collapse of WTC 7 is what would be expected from the kind of controlled demolition known as "implosion," in which explosives are used to cut the steel columns in the right places and in the right order to make the building fold in on itself. During an interview in 1996, Stacey Loizeaux -- daughter of Mark Loizeaux, the president of Controlled Demolition, Inc. -- explained how it is done:

Depending on the height of the structure, we'll work on a couple different floors -- usually anywhere from two to six. The taller the building, the higher we work. We only really need to work on the first two floors, because you can make the building come down that way. But we work on several upper floors to help fragment debris for the contractor, so all the debris ends up in small, manageable pieces. [108]


There is, accordingly, an obvious explanation for the fact that WTC 7 collapsed into a relatively small pile of debris, with "small, manageable pieces" of steel. This is the same explanation that would account for the melted and sulfidized steel, the thermite residue in the dust, the reports of explosions in the building, and the rapid, straight-down collapse of the building, with over two seconds of absolute free fall. This is, in other words, the explanation that scientists guided by Occam's razor would have chosen.

NIST, however, refused to entertain this obvious explanation. As a result, it could not explain why the area surrounding the site of WTC 7 was not littered with 82 columns that were each at least 429 feet long. It simply ignores the problem, evidently hoping that no one -- at least no one who matters, such as the press or the next administration's Department of Justice -- would notice.

* * *

Every aspect of NIST's theory of a fire-induced global collapse of WTC 7, we have seen, depends on implausible claims and outright fabrications. Its theory of weakened floor beams depends on implausible steel temperatures, which in turn depend on implausible fire temperatures and durations. Its theory of thermally induced girder failure depends on two cases of fraud: denying the existence of shear studs and fabricating a "differential thermal expansion" in its computer simulation by heating the steel beams but not the floor slabs. Its theory of how thermally expanded beams wreaked havoc presupposes an implausible amount of elongation.

And yet, even with all of these fabrications and implausibilities, NIST ends up with a theory that cannot explain several obvious features of WTC 7's collapse: that the building's roofline remained essentially horizontal, that its upper floors came down in free fall for over two seconds, and that its debris ended up in a tidy pile, with most of it contained within the building's footprint.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the

Postby admin » Sat Jul 14, 2018 4:16 am

CONCLUSION: NIST'S WTC 7 REPORT AS UNSCIENTIFIC AND FALSE

NIST's lead investigator, Shyam Sunder, announced with great bravado at his August 2008 press briefing that, although the reason for the collapse of WTC 7 had been a mystery, NIST had solved this mystery. Science, he added, was solidly behind NIST's explanation. We have seen, however, that there are abundant reasons to consider NIST's explanation both unscientific and false.

In this conclusion, I first summarize the major ways in which NIST's report on WTC 7 is unscientific. Next, pointing out that much of the evidence showing NIST's report to be unscientific also shows it to be false, I reflect on the importance of this fact.

1. NIST'S WTC 7 REPORT AS UNSCIENTIFIC: A SUMMARY

NIST's report on WTC 7 is not, as we have seen, merely "unscientific" in a loose sense of that term. Rather, its authors have committed scientific faud in the strict sense by ignoring, falsifying, and fabricating evidence.

Ignoring Evidence

The amount of relevant evidence ignored by NIST is impressive. In Chapter 4, we saw, NIST ignores various kinds of physical evidence, including:

-- Evidence of squibs in videos of the collapse;

-- Video evidence that a vertical row of windows was blown out just as the building began to collapse;

-- Various reports of molten steel or iron in the debris;

-- The report by three professors from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), contained in an appendix to the FEMA report, that a piece of steel recovered from WTC 7 had been sulfidized, vaporized, and oxidized;

-- Professor Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl's report that a steel I-beam from WTC 7 had been partially vaporized;

-- Evidence from inextinguishable and long-lasting fires that materials in the rubble pile were providing their own fuel and oxidant;

-- Reports by Professor Thomas Cahill and the EPA of particles in the air that should not have been there (assuming the official account of the destruction of the WTC);

-- Reports by three groups of scientists revealing particles in the WTC dust that could have been produced only by extremely high temperatures, including the temperatures needed to melt molybdenum (2,623°C [4,753°F]) and to vaporize steel (2,861°C [5,182°F]);

-- Evidence in particular for thermitic material, including nanothermite, in uncontaminated samples of WTC dust.

In Chapter 5, moreover, we saw that NIST ignored still more evidence, including:

-- Testimonial evidence of explosions going off before and during the collapse;

-- Testimonial evidence from two city officials -- Michael Hess and Barry Jennings -- of a huge explosion in WTC 7 after the South Tower was struck but before it collapsed;

-- Testimonial evidence from Michael Hess, Matthys Levy, and Barry Jennings that fires started burning in WTC 7 about 9:30AM;

-- Testimonial evidence from Barry Jennings that people had been killed in WTC 7 before he was rescued;

-- Testimonial evidence of people reporting foreknowledge of WTC 7's collapse.

This is an enormous amount of relevant evidence. That NIST ignored it deliberately, not inadvertently, is shown by the fact that each ignored item has a common characteristic: It provides evidence that explosives were used to bring down WTC 7.

Fabricating and Falsifying Evidence

As mentioned in Chapter 2, it is difficult in relation to NIST's WTC 7 report to draw a clear line between fabrication and falsification. In reports that are based on physical expetiments, by contrast, a clear distinction can be made. As Richard Lewontin was quoted there as saying:

Fabrication is the creation of claimed observations and facts out of whole cloth .... Falsification is the trimming and adjustment of the results of genuine expetiments so that they come to be in agreement with a desired conclusion. [1]


As we have seen, however, NIST did not do any physical expetiments (eschewing any study of the WTC dust, for example, and also denying that it had any recovered steel to work with -- in spite of the pieces reported by Professor Astaneh-Asl and the WPI professors). Insofar as it performed "expetiments," these were carried out on its computers.

For this reason, combined with the fact that NIST has not made its data available to other researchers, making a clear distinction between falsification and outright fabrication is difficult. Also, the distinction is not really important, as these two kinds of fraud, insofar as they can be distinguished, are equally serious. They are, therefore, treated together here.

The previous chapters provided reasons to believe that many of the claims made in NIST's WTC 7 report involve the fabrication or falsification of evidence, including:

-- The claim that all of the fires in WTC 7 began at 10:28, when the North Tower fell (as distinct from starting either earlier or later);

-- The claim that fires on several floors lasted for seven hours;

-- The claim that fires began to appear "shortly after" the North Tower collapsed (eventhough the first visual evidence for fire appeared over an hour and a half later);

-- The claim that a WTC security officer spotted a fire on the 7th floor at 10:30AM;

-- The claim that eyewitnesses reported an 8th floor fire sometime between 12: 15 and 2:30 PM;

-- The claim that Floors 11, 12, and 13 had far more combustibles than other floors;
-- The claim that Floor 12 had a raging fire in its northeast corner at 5:00 PM (eventhough its 2004 Interim Report on WTC 7showed that fire had left that corner by 3:00 and had completely burned out on the entire floor by 4:45);

-- The claim that NIST could reasonably model the 13th floor fire on that of the 12th floor because NIST had little information about the layout of the 13th floor (eventhough a schematic of Floor 13 provided by NIST itself shows that it had information indicating that the floor would have had relatively few combustibles);

-- The claim that it was justifiable for NIST to use the Case B variables for its simulations, rather than the variables that, according to its own simulator, were the most accurate;

-- The claim that fires caused the air temperatures on some floors to reach 1,000 to 1,100°C (1,832 to 2,012°F);

-- The claim that some of the steel beams reached 600 to 675°C (1,100 to 1,250°F);

-- The claim, made at least implicitly, that structural steel's thermal conductivity is zero;

-- The claim that, although each cubicle or office would have provided only enough fuel for 20 to 30 minutes of burning, the steel in some areas would have been subjected to four hours of heating;

-- The claim that the girders in WTC 7 were not connected to the floors by shear studs (eventhough NIST's 2004 Interim Report on WTC 7 said otherwise);

-- The claim that some steel beams, when heated to temperatures approaching 400°C (75rF), expanded (elongated) enough to cause their 28 shear studs to fail and also to force a girder off of its support;

-- The claim that "differential thermal heating" would have caused the shear studs anchoring the floor beams to the floor slabs to fail (even though this happened in the computer simulation only because NIST did not heat the simulated floor slab);

-- The claim that the top portion of Column 79 would have begun a rapid descent 0.2 seconds after it buckled at a lower floor (eventhough it would have still had its lateral supports from the upper floors);

-- The claim that NIST's simulation-based graphic of WTC 7's collapse matches the video images of the collapse "reasonably well" (even though the contorted roofline in the graphic looks nothing like the essentially horizontal roofline seen in the videos);

-- The claim that the collapse of WTC 7 began 5.4 seconds before the roofline reached the level of the 29th floor (eventhough the roofline was immobile during the first 1.5 seconds of this period);

-- The claim in NIST's Draft Report, and hence at its August 2008 press briefing, that WTC 7 had not entered into free fall (eventhough simple measurements, using the video evidence, showed that it had);

-- The implicit claim of NIST's Final Report that the now-acknowledged 2.25 seconds of free fall does not contradict its theory of a "fire-induced progressive collapse" (eventhough Shyam Sunder had explained in his August technical briefing why this theory would not allow for free fall);

-- The implicit claim that the collapse of WTC 7 almost entirely into its own footprint, with no several-hundred-foot-long columns falling on other buildings and into the streets, is consistent with NIST's non-demolition theory of the collapse, according to which explosives did not cut the columns into short segments.

Whether we classify these claims as fabrications or falsifications, they add up to an enormous amount of fraud. The hypothesis that they might instead be due simply to incompetence can be ruled out by the fact that all of these claims share one obvious characteristic: They all support NIST's attempt to provide a non-demolition explanation of WTC 7's collapse.

Other Violations of Scientific Principles

The starting point of NIST's investigation, in which it refused to begin with the most likely hypothesis, was also the starting point for all of its other violations. Although there were many reasons to assume that WTC 7 was brought down by controlled demolition, NIST's lead investigator, Shyam Sunder, claimed that this hypothesis was "not credible enough to justify a careful investigation." [2] Instead, NIST declared: "The challenge was to determine if a fire-induced floor system failure could occur in WTC 7 under an ordinary building contents fire." [3] So although every collapse of steel-framed high-rise buildings that had occurred before or after September 11, 2001, had been brought about by explosives, which means that none of them had been induced by fire, NIST determined that, in this case, the fire hypothesis was the most credible one.

The claim that this is what NIST really determined is, of course, simply not believable. The only plausible explanation for NIST's behavior is that, as an agency of the Bush-Cheney administration's Commerce Department, it had to exclude, and eventry to discredit, the view that WTC 7 was brought down by explosives. This means that NIST, in restricting itself to the fire hypothesis, was violating the most general formal principle of scientific work: Extra-scientific considerations should not be allowed to determine conclusions.

By rejecting the controlled demolition hypothesis, NIST was also violating Occam's razor, according to which, if there are two explanations that are equally adequate, the simplest one should be chosen. In this case, of course, the two competing hypotheses were not even close to being equally adequate, because NIST, to advocate its fire hypothesis, had to ignore much of the relevant evidence. But even if NIST had come up with explanations for all of the ignored evidence, it would have needed one explanation for the melted steel, another for the inextinguishable fires, another for the unusual particles in the air, another for the particles in the dust that appear to have required extremely high temperatures, another for the apparent nanothermite residue in the dust, and still others for the testimonial evidence about explosions. The result would have been an extremely complex hypothesis. But all of these phenomena can be explained by one and the same hypothesis, namely, that explosives, including nanothermite, were used to demolish WTC 7.

By rejecting and seeking to discredit this hypothesis, NIST was also led to violate the prohibition against straw-man arguments. The most obvious example is NIST's argument that, if explosive material had been used, it would have been RDX. But NIST also created a straw-man version of the argument that the sulfidized steel found at the site provides evidence of a sulfur-containing incendiary or explosive.

NIST's report also, especially in its claims about fire and steel temperatures, violates the principle that prima facie implausible claims should not be made without good reasons. Part of offering a good reason, we saw in Chapter 2, would be providing extraordinarily good evidence to back up such claims. The evidence presented by NIST for its prima facie implausible claims, however, is extraordinarily weak.

NIST's refusal of the demolition explanation also led it to an even more serious problem: its violation of the principle that scientists should not affirm an unprecedented cause for a familiar occurrence without good reasons. Sunder's vague claim that NIST did not find the demolition hypothesis credible does not constitute a "good reason."

NIST's refusal to begin with the most likely hypothesis led it, still more seriously, down a path that forced it, at the end, to make a claim implying that fundamental laws of physics had been violated. This is the claim that, although WTC 7's columns had not been simultaneously removed by explosives, the building came down vertically in free fall for over two seconds. After over 600 pages of explanations, simulations, and graphics, NIST resorted to saying, in effect, that a miracle had occurred.

Peer Review

Chapter 2 articulated one more principle: scientific work should be reviewed by peers before it is published. Because this principle is different in kind from the others -- it concerns not the content of a report but the process of preparing one for publication -- it is here discussed separately.

NIST's WTC team did not submit its report to peers in the scientific community to be reviewed before publication. In not doing this, NIST ignored the recommendation of Dr. James Quintiere, someone it should have taken seriously. A professor of Fire Protection Engineering at the University of Maryland, Quintiere was a member of the advisory committee for NIST's WTC project. This was a natural assignment, as he had previously been employed in NIST's fire program for nineteen years, the final years of which he served as Chief of the Fire Science Division.

In a lecture on the WTC investigations at the 2007 World Fire Safety Conference, Quintiere said:

I wish that there would be a peer review of this.... I think all the records that NIST has assembled should be archived. I would really like to see someone else take a look at what they've done; both structurally and from a fire point of view. [4]


In an interview later that same year, Quintiere repeated his call, saying:

I think there should be a full airing of the NIST analyses and results with questions raised by the public before an impartial panel judging the completeness and accuracy of their results. In other words, peer review with accountability to a national body. That should determine whether further investigation is needed. [5]


But NIST did not take the advice of the former head of its Fire Science Division. There was no peer-review process, and NIST certainly did not submit its results to an impartial panel empowered to judge their "completeness and accuracy" and to decide, on the basis of that judgment, whether "further investigation [was] needed."

The authors of the NIST report on WTC 7 were evidently not responsible to anyone -- except to the agencies mentioned by the former NIST employee quoted above in Chapter 1: the Department of Commerce, the National Security Agency, and President Bush's Office of Management and Budget.

NIST did, to be sure, meet from time to time with an advisory committee. But it evidently did not take any advice from its members or even answer their questions. Speaking directly to a NIST representative, Quintiere said:

I found that throughout your whole investigation it was very difficult to get a clear answer. And when anyone went to your advisory panel meetings or hearings, where they were given five minutes to make a statement; they could never ask any questions. And with all the commentary that I put in, and I spent many hours writing things ... , I never received one formal reply. [6]


There was, finally, one other way in which NIST, without having a formal review process, might have had a process that could have prevented the publication of a report replete with scientific fraud. As we have seen, NIST first published a Draft for Public Comment, inviting anyone from the general public -- thereby any scientists -- who wished to send in comments to do so.

There were three signs, however, that NIST did not take this process seriously as an opportunity to improve its report. First, after spending several years to compile an over 700-page report, plus a briefer version, it gave people only three weeks to send in their comments. [7] Second, NIST evidently did not reply to any of the people who sent in comments. [8]

The third and most important sign that NIST did not take this process seriously is that it simply ignored most of the comments, even if they pointed out contradictions -- such as the observation by James Gourley that NIST's graphic showing a raging fire on Floor 12 at 5:00 PM is contradicted by the statement, made in NIST's 2004 Interim Report on WTC 7, that the fire on this floor had burned out by 4:45 PM. As far as I know, the only major change made by NIST in response to a comment was its acceptance of David Chandler's insistence that WTC 7 did enter into free fall, and this was a special case: Chandler had put a very effective video presentation on the internet and he also made an impressive statement at NIST's technical briefing, which was broadcast live.

In short, besides not having a formal peer-review process, NIST showed contempt for those who offered advice (with the exception of David Chandler), including people such as James Quintiere and Frank Greening, who, not believing that NIST was engaged in a cover-up operation, really wanted to help it produce a better report.

2. NIST'S WTC 7 REPORT AS FALSE

This book's subtitle makes two claims: NIST's WTC 7 report is unscientific, and it is false. Although the focus of the book has been on the former claim, the latter one is more important.

To explain this point, it is first necessary to make clear that the two claims really are distinct. Some readers might think that to show a report to be unscientific is ipso facto to prove it to be false. But a report might be based on a very unscientific approach and yet just happen to reach conclusions that are close to the truth of the matter. Likewise, a report might be based on excellent scientific work and nevertheless reach a false conclusion, perhaps because of information unknowable to the researchers at the time. Answering the question of whether a report is scientific or unscientific does not, therefore, necessarily settle the question of whether its conclusions are basically true or false.

Although in some cases the former question is more important, the latter question -- the question of truth -- is far more important in relation to NIST's WTC 7 report. If this report were terribly unscientific and yet basically true -- if WTC 7 did, in fact, come down because of a fire-induced collapse -- not much would follow, except that NIST should hire better scientists. But if NIST's conclusion is false, because WTC 7 was demolished with explosives of some sort, this fact is of overwhelming importance, regardless of how good or bad NIST's scientific work was.

Why NIST's Conclusion about WTC 7 Can Be Called False

Postponing for a moment the question of why it would be so important, let us ask whether the conclusion of NIST's WTC 7 report -- that WTC 7 was brought down by fire -- might conceivably be true even though NIST's report is, from a scientific point of view, a travesty. The answer is that this is not conceivable, because much of the evidence used to demonstrate the unscientific nature of NIST's report serves equally well to show the falsity of any fire-theory of WTC 7's collapse.

This is the case, for example, with Chapter 4's evidence of particles in the air, the rubble, and the dust that cannot be explained apart from the use of explosives. It was surely because NIST's scientists knew this that they had to ignore all of this evidence.

The same is true of Chapter 5's testimonial evidence about explosions in WTC 7, especially the explosions in the morning reported by Barry Jennings. There is simply no conceivable explanation of those explosions that would be consistent with the official line, according to which WTC 7 came down as a result of the North Tower's collapse at 10:28. This would explain why NIST and then the BBC went to such lengths to distort the timeline of Jennings' testimony.

A complete list of further reasons to call NIST's WTC 7 report false -- as well as unscientific -- would include:

-- Evidence that, instead of all starting at 10:28, some fires in WTC 7 started before, and others started after, that time;

-- Evidence that neither fires nor steel beams became nearly as hot as NIST claims;

-- Evidence for the falsity of both of NIST's claims about shear stud failure -- that the shear studs connecting beams to the floor slabs failed because of differential thermal heating, and that the girder shear studs simply failed to exist;

-- The fact that a fire-based collapse, which if even possible would necessarily be a "progressive collapse," could not possibly mimic the collapse of WTC 7 as seen on videos, in which the building comes straight down with its roofline remaining essentially horizontal;

-- The fact that, even if otherwise possible, the collapse of a steel-framed building that was not produced by using explosives could not possibly enter free fall, even for a second or two;

-- The fact that, even if otherwise possible, the collapse of a steel-framed high-rise building, assuming that it did not result from the use of explosives to cut the steel columns into relatively short segments, could not possibly result in a short, compact debris pile essentially within the building's footprint;

-- The fact that the demolition theory of WTC 7's collapse, which NIST rejects, can explain all of the phenomena that NIST either ignored or inadequately explained.

In the case of NIST's WTC 7 report, in other words, to show it to be unscientific is also to show it to be false. I turn next to the question of why this conclusion is of great importance.

Why the Falsity of NIST's WTC 7 Report Is Important

The fact that NIST's report on WTC 7 is false implies, in the first place, that Muslim terrorists were not responsible for the collapse of this building (by flying an airliner into the North Tower, the collapse of which started fires in WTC 7). Instead, WTC 7 must have been brought down by domestic terrorists with the ability to plant explosives in it and then to orchestrate a cover-up.

If WTC 7 was demolished by such well-connected domestic terrorists, moreover, then the Twin Towers, which -- after the initial explosions at the top -- also came straight down in virtual free fall, must also have been brought down by explosives planted by these same terrorists. Indeed, the evidence in the dust and rubble that WTC 7 was demolished by explosives is equally evidence that the same is true of the Twin Towers.

Furthermore, once we see that the Twin Towers came down because of explosives, not because of the airplane impacts and the resulting fires, we can also see that the whole story about the airliners is irrelevant to the destruction of the World Trade Center: This destruction could have been carried out equally well without the airplane impacts. The only difference would be that it would have been more obvious that the buildings were victims of controlled demolition.

Finally, once people see that Muslim hijackers played no essential role in the destruction of the World Trade Center, they are likely to become open to evidence that the entire official account of 9/11, according to which America was attacked by al-Qaeda terrorists, is false. And once people become open to examining such evidence, they will find that it shows every part of the official story to be false.

To support this claim, I am here reprinting most of a little article of mine entitled "21 Reasons to Question the Official Story about 9/11" (I have included only 15 of them, because the final 6 deal with points already made in the present book). Although the points are stated very briefly, they include the pages in my previous 9/11 book, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited (NPHR), [9] where the issues are discussed much more extensively.

(1) Although the official account of 9/11 claims that Osama bin Laden ordered the attacks, the FBI does not list 9/11 as one of the terrorist acts for which he is wanted and has admitted that it "has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11" (NPHR 206-11).

(2) Although the official story holds that the four airliners were hijacked by devout Muslims ready to die as martyrs to earn a heavenly reward, Mohamed Atta and the other alleged hijackers regularly drank heavily, went to strip clubs, and paid for sex (NPHR 153-55).

(3) Many people reported having received cell phone calls from loved ones or flight attendants on the airliners, during which they were told that Middle Eastern hijackers had taken over the planes. One recipient, Deena Burnett, was certain that her husband had called her several times on his cell phone because she had recognized his number on her Caller ID. But the calls to Burnett and most of the other reported calls were made when the planes were above 30,000 feet, and evidence presented by the 9/11 truth movement showed that, given the technology of the time, cell phone calls from high-altitude airliners had been impossible. By the time the FBI presented a report on phone calls from the planes at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui in 2006, it had changed its story, saying that there were only two cell phone calls from the flights, both from United 93 after it had descended to 5,000 feet (NPHR 111-17).

(4) US Solicitor General Ted Olson's claim that his wife, Barbara Olson, phoned him twice from AA 77, reporting that hijackers had taken it over, was also contradicted by this FBI report, which says that the only call attempted by her was "unconnected" and hence lasted "0 seconds" (NPRH 60-62).

(5) Although decisive evidence that al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks was reportedly found in Mohamed Atta's luggage -- which allegedly failed to get loaded onto Flight 11 from a commuter flight that Atta took to Boston from Portland, Maine, that morning -- this story was made up after the FBI's previous story had collapsed. According to that story, the evidence had been found in a Mitsubishi that Atta had left in [Boston's] Logan Airport parking lot and the trip to Portland was taken by Adnan and Ameer Bukhari. After the FBI learned that neither of the Bukharis had died on September 11, it simply declared that the trip to Portland was made by Atta and another al-Qaeda operative (NPHR 155-62).

(6) The other types of reputed evidence for Muslim hijackers -- such as videos of al-Qaeda operatives at airports, passports discovered at the crash sites, and a headband discovered at the crash site of United 93 -- also show clear signs of having been fabricated (NPHR 170-73).

(7) In addition to the absence of evidence for hijackers on the planes, there is also evidence of their absence: If hijackers had broken into the cockpits, the pilots would have "squawked" the universal hijack code, an act that takes only a couple of seconds. But not one of the eight pilots on the four airliners did this (NPHR 175-79).

(8) Given standard operating procedures between the FAA and the military, according to which planes showing signs of an in-flight emergency are normally intercepted within about 10 minutes, the military's failure to intercept any of the flights implies that something, such as a stand-down order, prevented standard procedures from being carried out (NPHR 1-10, 81-84).

(9) Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta reported an episode in which Vice President Cheney, while in the bunker under the White House, apparently confirmed a stand-down order at about 9:25AM, which was prior to the strike on the Pentagon. Another man has reported hearing members of LAX Security learn that a stand-down order had come from the "highest level of the White House" (NPHR 94-96).

(10) The 9/11 Commission did not mention Mineta's report, removed it from the Commission's video record of its hearings, and claimed that Cheney did not enter the shelter conference room until almost 10:00, which was at least 40 minutes later than he was really there, according to Mineta and several other witnesses, including Cheney's photographer (NPHR 91-94).

(11) The 9/11 Commission's timeline for Cheney that morning even contradicted what Cheney himself had told Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" September 16, just five days after 9/11 ( PHR 93).

(12) Hani Hanjour, known as a terrible pilot who could not safely fly even a single-engine airplane, could not possibly have executed the amazing trajectory reportedly taken by American Flight 77 in order to hit Wedge 1 of the Pentagon (NPHR 78-80).

(13) Wedge 1 would have been the least likely part of the Pentagon to be targeted by foreign terrorists, for several reasons: It was as far as possible from the offices of Rumsfeld and the top brass, whom Muslim terrorists presumably would have wanted to kill; it was the only part of the Pentagon that had been reinforced; the reconstruction was not finished, so there were relatively few people there; and it was the only part of the Pentagon that would have presented obstacles to a plane's flight path (NPHR 76-78).

(14) Contrary to the claim of Pentagon officials that they did not have the Pentagon evacuated because they had no way of knowing that an aircraft was approaching, a military E-4B -- the Air Force's most advanced communications, command, and control airplane -- was flying over the White House at the time. Also, although there can be no doubt about the identity of the plane, which was captured on video by CNN and others, the military has denied that it belonged to them (NPHR 96-98).

(15) The Secret Service, after learning that a second World Trade Center building had been attacked -- which would have meant that terrorists were going after high-value targets -- and that still other planes had apparently been hijacked, allowed President Bush to remain at the school in Sarasota, Florida, for another 30 minutes. It thereby revealed its foreknowledge that Bush would not be a target: If these had really been surprise attacks, the agents, fearing that a hijacked airliner was bearing down on the school, would have hustled Bush away. On the first anniversary of 9/11, the White House started telling a new story, according to which Bush, rather than remaining in the classroom several minutes after Andrew Card whispered in his ear that a second WTC building had been hit, immediately got up and left the room. This lie was told in major newspapers and on MSNBC and ABC television (NPHR 129-31). [19]

If the truth about WTC 7 opens large numbers of people up to such evidence about 9/11, the whole "war on terror" will come to be widely seen as a sham. The Obama administration has dropped this language, but as this book was being readied for publication, it was still arguing that we had to continue the war in Afghanistan "to make sure that al-Qaeda cannot attack us again." The implication of the truth about WTC 7, however, is that al-Qaeda never attacked us in the first place. If we want to find those who did attack us on 9/11, we will need to look much closer to home.

If the truth about WTC 7, made evident by the many flaws in NIST's report, does lead to a much more widespread realization of the complete falsity of the official account of 9/11, then the 9/11 truth movement's prediction about WTC 7's collapse -- that it would prove to be the Achilles' heel of the official account -- will be borne out.

This widespread realization, however, will not produce changes in policy unless it leads to political action. An organization called Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth has been formed precisely for the purpose of trying to bring about such action. It has a petition that "ask[s] President Barack Obama to authorize a new, truly independent, investigation to determine what happened on 9/11." [11] The emergence of this organization represents a further evolution of the 9/11 truth movement.

At one time, this movement was ridiculed for having few scientists and other professionals in the relevant fields. In recent years, however, many organizations of such professionals have emerged, including Firefighters for 9/11 Truth, Intelligence Officers for 9/11 Truth, Pilots for 9/11 Truth, Scholars for 9/11 Truth, Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice, Scientific Partel Investigating Nine-Eleven, Veterans for 9/11 Truth, and Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (the membership of which now includes over 700 licensed architects and engineers). [12] These organizations have been formed to spread the truth about 9/11, with "the truth" understood primarily as simply the fact that the official account of 9/11 is false.

More recently, however, professional organizations have emerged that, persuaded that this truth has now been established beyond any reasonable doubt (among people who have studied the evidence), are seeking to bring about public policy changes. These organizations include, in addition to Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth, also Lawyers for 9/11 Truth, Medical Professionals for 9/11 Truth, Religious Leaders for 9/11 Truth, and, most recently, Actors and Artists for 9/11 Truth. [13]

The obvious falsity of the official account of WTC 7 has already played a major role in the growth of this worldwide movement. It is my hope that the present book, by demonstrating beyond any doubt that the official account could not possibly be true, will help strengthen this movement to the point where it can bring about a new, truly independent investigation, which will publicly reveal the big lie that is the official account of 9/11, and thereby bring about a change of all the policies that have been based on this lie.

Might the National Science Foundation Expose NIST's Scientific Fraud?

In Chapter 2, while discussing the seriousness of scientific fraud, I pointed out that the National Science Foundation (NSF) has urged anyone aware of scientific fraud to contact its inspector general. Does this mean that there is a good chance that NSF would expose the massive fraud perpetrated by NIST? It might, except for a set of facts reported in Chapter 6: The director of NIST from 2001 until 2004 -- during which time the approach to be taken by NIST in its reports on the Twin Towers and WTC 7 was established -- was Arden Bement. Then in 2004, President Bush, who had appointed Bement to the NIST post, made him the director of the NSF, a position he still held as this book went to press. It seems likely that President Obama, if he is to fulfil his pledge to "restore science to its rightful place," will need to appoint a new NSF director.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the

Postby admin » Sat Jul 14, 2018 4:32 am

APPENDIX A: WHY DID EXPLOSIONS IN WTC 7 BEGIN BY 9:30 AM?

As we have seen, there is strong evidence not only for the proposition that WTC 7 was brought down by explosives but also for the conclusion that explosions began going off in this building by 9:30 in the morning. Barry Jennings consistently testified to this effect. On 9/11, Michael Hess spoke of an early morning explosion, and his later retraction is not credible. The attempts by NIST and the BBC to undermine these men's reports are too riddled with problems to be convincing. And even engineer Matthys Levy, who supports the view that fire brought WTC 7 down, said that fires had begun in this building at about 9:30.

But why, in light of the fact that WTC 7 was not brought down until 5:21 PM, would explosives have started going off by 9:30 AM?

It is true, of course, that demolitions oflarge buildings with many support columns normally begin with the use of explosives to take out some of the core columns, so that they do not need to be removed all at once just before the collapse. Having preliminary removals would be especially important in a surreptitious operation, in which the perpetrators hoped to disguise the fact that the building was brought down with explosives.

A preliminary removal of some of the core columns evidently occurred in the North Tower. According to North Tower janitor William Rodriguez, as we saw in Chapter 5, a massive explosion occurred in the basement of the North Tower at 8:46AM, shortly before this building was hit by a plane. [1] (Rodriguez's account has been corroborated by other North Tower employees. [2]) The time of this explosion, 8:46, was almost an hour and 45 minutes before the North Tower came down (at 10:28).

These facts provide a possible answer as to why there were explosions in WTC 7 long before it came down. They do not, however, provide a possible explanation for why they occurred so long -- over eight hours -- before the collapse.

An answer to this question lies beyond the scope of the main body of this book, which is limited to a critique of NIST's report on WTC 7, showing it to be unscientific and false.

But one of the reasons for calling this report unscientific and false is the fact that it ignored much of the relevant evidence, and the ignored evidence to which the most space was devoted was Jennings' testimony about explosions that evidently began by 9:30 AM. The evidence for such explosions, especially the big explosion reported by Hess as well as Jennings, is very strong. But unless we have a possible explanation as to why explosions began so early, their occurrence will remain an anomaly -- a brute fact that plays no intelligible role in any conceivable narrative of what happened that day. Indeed, if the occurrence of these reported early morning explosions cannot be made intelligible, many people will likely suspect that, in spite of the strong evidence for them, they did not really happen.

These explosions would be intelligible, however, if those who brought down WTC 7 had originally intended to bring it down in the morning.

Doing so would have certainly been more sensible than bringing it down late in the day, especially if the perpetrators had brought it down shortly after one of the Twin Towers had collapsed, when WTC 7 was still hidden from view by the resulting dust cloud. As we saw in Chapter 8, the dust cloud resulting from the North Tower's 10:28 collapse did not dissipate sufficiently to allow videographers to begin capturing images again until about 11:00 AM. Accordingly, if WTC 7 had come down at, say, 10:45, we would probably have no videos showing that the collapse of this building started suddenly and then came straight down in virtual free fall, with over two seconds of the collapse being in absolute free fall. The collapse of this building could have been dismissed as a mystery -- as having resulted from the collapse of the Twin Towers for some unknown reason. WTC 7 would not have become the official account's Achilles' heel. This would have been, therefore, the sensible plan. There are, moreover, some pieces of evidence suggesting that this was, in fact, the original plan.

One such piece of evidence is the fact that a CNN correspondent, Alan Dodds Frank, filed the following report from Lower Manhattan at 11:07AM:

[A]t a quarter to II, there was another collapse or explosion following the 10:30 collapse of the second tower. And a firefighter who rushed by us estimated that 50 stories went down. The street filled with smoke. It was like a forest fire roaring down a canyon. [3]


Note that, although Frank first said "collapse or explosion," his later statement -- that a firefighter "estimated that 50 stories went down" -- shows that he did believe that a collapse had occurred.

Matthew Everett, who in 2008 discovered this report by Frank, wrote:

What could have led Frank to make his incorrect report? Surely, even in the chaos of that morning, it would have been quite difficult for a mistaken report of another massive skyscraper coming down to have emerged out of nothing. Could the reason be that WTC 7 had originally been scheduled to be brought down (with explosives) at 10:45 am? The incorrect information Frank reported had therefore been put out, by persons unknown, on the assumption that this would be the case. However, something -- as yet unknown to us -- happened that meant the demolition had to be delayed, and so Building 7 was not ready to be brought down until late that afternoon.  [4]


Everett's suggestion, as this statement shows, is that Frank falsely reported that WTC 7 came down at 10:45 because someone, perhaps a firefighter, had been told that it would come down at this time.

Another piece of information discovered in 2008 led another student of 9/11, Jeremy Baker, to offer another explanation. Prior to 2008, Baker had already decided on the basis of a consideration mentioned above -- namely, that it would have made more sense for the perpetrators to have brought the building down shortly after the collapse of the North Tower -- that this was indeed what they had intended, but that the explosives failed to go off WTC 7 was, Baker suggested in 2005, "a dud." [5] In 2007, alluding to "Murphy's law" (that "whatever can go wrong, will go wrong"), Baker wrote:

Murphy was working overtime that day. Incredibly, the demolition system in WTC 7 simply did not respond as intended and the building defiantly remained intact. [6]


In 2008, besides learning of the report by Alan Dodds Frank, Baker discovered a short ABC News video clip, which had been taken some time between the collapse of the Twin Towers and that of WTC 7 and which showed "an enormous gash that extends down the center of WTC Ts facade from its roofline all the way to the ground." [7] (This video is available on the internet. [8]) Pointing out the significance of this discovery, Baker wrote:

The force required to gouge the straight, clean, cavernous gash in WTC 7 represents a source of destructive power far greater than anything that was [supposedly] present that day and simply could not have been caused by falling debris. [9]


Then, connecting this discovery with his previous hypothesis, Baker asked:

Could the straight, clean gouge in WTC 7's south face be an indication that a line of explosives running up the center of the building detonated but then stalled? Buildings typically have their centers blown our first when they are being demolished and this kind of failure is certainly not without precedent. Though this theory is surely speculative, is it unreasonable to ask the question: What else could have caused such a bizarre wound in the south face of WTC 7?


An alternative cause was suggested, Baker pointed out, by Larry Silverstein. In the course of offering his own explanation of what caused WTC 7 to collapse, Silverstein said:

[One cause was] the falling antenna from the roof of the North Tower. That antenna came crashing down and sliced through the facade in the front of 7. As it did so, it ruptured fuel lines in the building ... [which] caught fire. That fire started to burn and burned intensively the rest of the day. [10]


Baker was unimpressed by this explanation for the gash, saying: "[T]his ridiculous claim ... is easily refuted by video evidence." Another problem with Silverstein's explanation is that his claim about fires in WTC 7 being fed by ruptured fuel lines was not even supported by NIST's final report.

Silverstein's statement was, nevertheless, of utmost importance, because the existence of the vertical gash down the front of WTC 7 had not previously been publicly acknowledged. Silverstein's statement provided confirmation, by one of the central supporters of the official story, of the existence of this gash.

The existence of this gash, visible on an ABC video and confirmed by Silverstein, led Baker to offer a new possible explanation of the report by CNN reporter Allan Dodds Frank, who had said, to recall:

[A]t a quarter to 11, there was another collapse or explosion following the 10:30 collapse of the second tower. And a firefighter who rushed by us estimated that 50 stories went down. The street filled with smoke.


Baker wrote:

Could this uncanny description from a firefighter be a hasry reference to the botched attempt to demolish Building 7? The time frame is perfect. The few explosives that did detonate would certainly have sounded like a "collapse or explosion" .... A vertical column of explosives blasting out the full height of the building could very well have given someone the impression that "fifry stories" were going down. [11]


If, as Everett and Baker have suggested, WTC 7 was intended to go down at 10:45 that morning, this would have been about an hour and a quarter to an hour and a half after the first explosion reported by Hess and Jennings. The interval would, therefore, have been roughly the same as that between the collapse of the North Tower (at 10:28) and the explosion in the basement of that building reported by William Rodriguez and others (at 8:46).

The idea that there was a good-sized explosion in WTC 7 at 10:45 is also consistent with the testimony of Barry Jennings. As we saw in Chapter 5, the big explosion that knocked the landing out from under him when he was on the sixth floor is not the only explosion he reported. While describing his experience of waiting to be rescued after the firefighters had run away a second time (after the 10:28 collapse of the North Tower), he said: ''All this time, I'm hearing all type of explosions. All this time, I'm hearing explosions." [12]

If WTC 7 remained standing at 10:45 because explosives that were supposed to bring it down at that time failed to do so, can we form a reasonable hypothesis about what happened next? Baker suggested that the building could be brought down only after "the conspirators ... scrambled to bring the demolition system in WTC 7 back online." [13] This is a reasonable suggestion.

But it surely would have taken considerable time to discover the problem with the demolition system and then repair it. And that would have created a problem as to how the subsequent collapse of WTC 7 could be explained. Besides not having been hit by a plane, this building apparently, according to the available photographs and videos (as we saw in Chapter 8), did not even have any fires in it prior to 12:08 PM (except for fires on lower floors, started by the explosion reported by Hess and Jennings, that had evidently burned out quickly).

Therefore, perhaps the perpetrators, having decided that the building needed to have more fires to provide a plausible explanation for its collapse, sent agents into the building to set fires (as well as agents to repair the demolition system). This hypothesis could explain the tension between NIST's claim, according to which all the fires started at 10:28, and the empirical evidence, which suggests that fires were started on various floors at various times throughout the afternoon.

The complex hypothesis presented in this appendix is just that, a hypothesis, which could only be verified, if at all, by an independent investigation employing subpoena power. But this hypothesis can certainly do what a hypothesis is supposed to do, namely, account for the various types of relevant facts. Besides explaining several things already mentioned -- why WTC 7 did not come down until late in the afternoon (eventhough this allowed for videos showing that it must have been brought down with explosives), why explosions nevertheless began by about 9:30 in the morning, why there was a gash down the middle of the south side of the building, and why fires apparently started on various floors at various times in the afternoon -- this hypothesis can also explain why Barry Jennings, calling from WTC 7 shortly after 9:03 to ask what he and Michael Hess should do, was told that they should leave the building immediately. This is a hypothesis that, accordingly, should be investigated.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the

Postby admin » Sat Jul 14, 2018 4:36 am

APPENDIX B: ANOTHER TOWERING INFERNO THAT DID NOT COLLAPSE

In Chapter 10, we saw that NIST acknowledged the fact that fires in previous high-rise steel-framed buildings -- such as the 1988 fire in the First Interstate Bank building in Los Angeles, which burned for 3.5 hours, and the 1991 fire in One Meridian Plaza in Philadelphia, which burned for 18 hours -- did not cause them to collapse. [1] (NIST could have also mentioned the 2004 fire in Caracas, Venezuela, which raged for 17 hours in a 50-story building, completely gutting its top 20 floors. [2])

NIST sought to rationalize this fact, as we saw in Chapter 10, in terms of differences in design. One of the crucial differences, NIST claimed in its Draft Report, was the fact that, in all of those other buildings, shear studs had secured the girders to the floor slabs, whereas in WTC 7 the girders were not secured with shear studs.

In its Final Report, however, NIST admitted that its former claim was not true: There were no girder shear studs in one of the buildings that had remained standing. NIST's attempt to blame WTC 7's collapse on the absence of girder shear studs was thereby significantly undermined.

This attempt was then completely destroyed by the discovery, reported in Chapter 10, that NIST's claim about WTC 7 was also not true: Its 2004 report on WTC 7 showed that shear studs had connected its girders to the floors.

Accordingly, although NIST tried to mitigate the evident absurdity of its claim that WTC 7 was brought down by fire -- in spite of the fact that fires in steel-framed high-rise buildings prior to 9/11 had never caused any of them to collapse, eventhough some of those fires had been much larger and longer-lasting than the fires in WTC 7 -- the NIST report served only to show that the absurdity of this claim could not be mitigated.

On February 9, 2009 -- less than three months after NIST had issued its Final Report -- the absurdity of this claim was made dramatically evident by a fire in Beijing's Television Cultural Center (TVCC), a 500-foot-high steel-framed structure. This building consisted of a main tower plus rwo wings. The main rower was to be occupied by a luxury hotel, the Mandarin Oriental, so some news reports about the fire referred to the building by that name. The headline for the Associated Press story, for example, was: "Fire Rages at Beijing Mandarin Hotel." [3]

The fire, which was started by fireworks, evidently began about 7:30 PM, quickly spread throughout the entire structure, and was not put out until early the next morning. [4] "The entire hotel building was engulfed in flames," said the Associated Press. "Flames were visible from the ground floor to the top floor of the large building," reported another story. [5] "Flames 20-30 feet high shot out of the building," reported Reuters, adding that the fire did not begin to abate until about midnight. [6] The all-engulfing nature of this fire is shown in videos available on the internet. [7]

The building's structure, however, was unaffected. "For all the ferocity of the fire that reached the top of the brand new cultural centre and hotel complex," the Guardian observed, "the structure of the building looked to be remarkably unscathed." This newspaper even highlighted this fact with its headline: "Beijing's Newest Skyscraper Survives Blaze." [8] A report on the aftermath, which accompanies a video showing the surviving structure, states: "Local sources say the structure of the building remains sound." [9]

The fires in the TVCC tower and WTC 7 were alike in one respect, namely, that the buildings in which they occurred were similar, being steel-framed structures of roughly the same height (the TVCC tower was approximately 500 feet high, WTC 7 approximately 600 feet), in which no sprinkler system was working on the floors on which fires occurred (in WTC 7, these were the lower floors; in the TVCC tower, these were all the floors, as the system had not yet been installed).

Otherwise, however, the fires were completely different. Whereas the TVCC fire engulfed the entire building, from top to bottom, WTC 7 had what NIST called "sustained fires" on only six of its 47 floors, and eventhese six floors were never entirely engulfed by fire. Also, whereas the TVCC fire endured for a long time -- at least eight hours; one report says fifteen [10] -- the fires on the six floors of WTC 7 evidently lasted, as we saw in Chapter 8, for periods ranging from 40 minutes to slightly over three hours. As a result, the thermal expansion and weakening of steel in WTC 7 would have been insignificant compared with the expansion and weakening in the TVCC tower. This would be true even if we accepted NIST's unsubstantiated claim that the fires on these floors lasted for seven hours.

And yet, NIST would have us believe that the fires on those six floors of WTC 7 brought it down, whereas the all-engulfing fire in the Beijing building left it structurally unaffected. One might be forgiven for suspecting that this fire in Beijing, coming so soon after the appearance of NIST's Final Report on WTC 7, was arranged by the gods in order to drive home the absurdity of this report.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the

Postby admin » Sat Jul 14, 2018 4:37 am

NOTES

Introduction


1 See David Ray Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited· 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Expose (Northampton: Olive Branch Press, 2008), esp. Ch. 6, "Continuing Obstructions and New Doubts about Hijackers," and Ch. 8, "9/11 Commission Falsehoods about Bin Laden, al-Qaeda, Pakistanis, and Saudis."

2 See ibid., Ch. 7, "Motives of US Officials: The Silence of the 9/11 Commission."

3 See David Ray Griffin, "Was America Attacked by Muslims on 9/11?" OpEdNews, September 9, 2008 (www.opednews.com/articles/Was-America-A ... in-080909- 536.html).

4 See, for example, Paul Joseph Watson, "BBC's 9/11 Yellow Journalism Backfires: Building 7 Becomes the Achilles Heel of the Official Conspiracy Theory," Prison Planet, March 5, 2007 (infowars.wordpress.com/2007 /03/05/bbcs-911-yellow-journalism-backfires), and "WTC 7: The Smoking Gun of9/11" (www.youtube.com/ watch?v=M wSc7NPn80k).

5 See Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (www.ae911truth.org) and journal of9/11 Studies (www.journalof911studies.com).

6 James Glanz, "Engineers Suspect Diesel Fuel in Collapse of 7 World Trade Center," New York Times, November 29,2001 (query.nytimes.com/ gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02E3D E143DF93AA15 752C lA9679C8B63&scp= 1 &sq =%20%22Engineers% 20Suspect%20 Diesel%20Fuel%22 &st=cse).

7 As Australian scientist Frank Legge has written: "As no reports have come to light of any steel framed buildings collapsing due to fire, and as all steel framed buildings which had collapsed had done so due to explosive demolition, the logical way to have started the investigation of this surprising event would have been to question whether explosives had been used. This apparently did not occur. The organizations carrying out the investigations clearly selectively collected data and contrived arguments to support the fire theory and ignored contradictory evidence. This is in defiance of the scientific method." Frank Legge, "9/11: Proof of Explosive Demolition without Calculations," Journal of 9/11 Studies 15 (September 2007) (journalof911 studies.com/volume/2007/LeggeVerticalCollapse WTC7 _6.pdf).

8 After the collapse of WTC 7, CBS anchor Dan Rather said: "Amazing .... For the third time today, it's reminiscent of those pictures we've all seen too much on television before, where a building was deliberately destroyed by well-placed dynamite to knock it down" (www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Nvx904dAwOo). Likewise, Al Jones, a reporter for WINS NYC News Radio, said: "I turned in time to see what looked like a skyscraper implosion -- looked like it had been done by a demolition crew .... So that's number one, number two, and now number seventhat have come down from this explosion" (see 911 Eyewitness [video.google.com/videoplay?docid= 654607577 34339444] at 28:25). Referring only to the Twin Towers, CNN's Lou Dobbs said: "[T]his was the result of something that was planned .... [I]t's not accidental that the first tower just happened to collapse and then the second tower just happened to collapse in exactly the same way. How they accomplished this, we don't know," CNN, September 11, 2001 (forum.nashuatelegraph.com/viewtopic.php?t=164&sid=afe 1027c2c958e2ee72 2310cc126ddc1).

9 Glanz, "Engineers Suspect Diesel Fuel."

10 See ''A Word about Our Poll of American Thinking Toward the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks," Zogby International, May 24, 2006 (www.zogby.com/ features/features.dbm?ID=231).

11 Daniel Hofnung, Patriots Question 9/11 (patriotsquestion911.com/ engineers.html#Dhofnung).

12 Chester W. Geathatt, Patriots Question 9/11 (patriotsquestion911.com/ engineers.html#Geathatt).

13 "Danish Scientist Niels Harrit, on Nanothermite in the WTC Dust (English subtitles)," YouTube, April 6, 2009 (www.youtube.com/ watch?v=8_tf25Ix_30).

14 This interview is in "Controlled Demolition Expert and WTC?" (www.youtube.com/watch?v=877gr6xtQIc).This video clip is an excerpt from a 2006 Dutch television program entitled "Zembla Investigates 9/11 Theories" (cgi.omroep.nllcgi-bin/streams?/tv/vara/zembla/bb.20060911.asf). A portion of it is contained in Loose Change Final Cut.

15 Patriots Question 9/11 (patriotsquestion911.com/ engineers.html#Jowenko).

16 Australian scientist Frank Legge, providing a graph showing that "from the moment [the corner of the roofline nearest the viewer] starts to move the collapse of this corner is uniform and close to vertical free fall," added: "There is no sign of the slow start that would be expected if collapse was caused by the gradual softening of the steel." See "9/11: Acceleration Study Proves Explosive Demolition," Journal of 9/11 Studies 5 (November 2006) (journalof91 1studies.com/volume/200611 /911-Acceleration-Study-Proves-Explosive-Demolition. pdf).

17 "This is .In Orange," a video by Anthony Lawson (www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Zv7BimVyEyk). The point is that if viewers would not accept the claim, even if made by federal officials, that an orange is an apple, they should not accept the claim that WTC 7 was brought down by fire.

18 See FEMA, World Trade Center Building Performance Study (www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_ch5.pdf).Ch. 5, Sect. 6.2, "Probable Collapse Sequence."

19 "Progress Report on the NIST Building and Fire Investigation into the World Trade Center Disaster," National Institute of Standards and Technology (henceforth NIST), December 9, 2002 (www.fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/build03/PDF/b03040.pdf); "Progress Report on the Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster," NIST, May 2003 (wtc.nist.gov/pubs/Media Update%20 _FINAL_ProgressReport051303.pdf).

20 Interim Report on WTC 7, NIST, June 2004 (wtc.nist.gov/progress_report_june04/appendixl. pdf).

21 "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions," NIST, August 30, 2006 (wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm), Question 14.

22 "WTC 7 Collapse," NIST, April 5, 2005 (wtc.nisy.gov/pubs/ WTC%20 Part%2011C%20-%20 WTC%207%20Collapse%20 Final.pdf).

23 Ibid., 6.

24 "9/11: Debunking the Myths," Popular Mechanics, March 2005.

25 Ibid.

26 David Dunbar and Brad Reagan, eds., Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts: An In-Depth Investigation by Popular Mechanics, (New York: Hearst Books, 2006), 53, 56.

27 Ibid., 53-54.

28 Ibid., 29.

29 Ibid., 53.

30 Ibid., 56.

31 Ibid., 58, quoting NIST, "WTC 7 Collapse" (the preliminary report of April 5, 2005).

32 Marc Jacobsen, "The Ground Zero Grassy Knoll," New York Magazine, March 20, 2006 (nymag.com/news/features/16464 or infowars.net/articles/september2007/110907Knoll.htm).

33 As this sentence illustrates, the lowercase title "final report" is used to differentiate NIST's final report on WTC 7, which was issued in 2008, from its preliminary reports, which were issued in earlier years. The uppercase title "Final Report" is used to designate the final version of the 2008 final report, which was released in November 2008, in distinction from the first draft of this final report, which is referred to variously as the "Draft for Public Comment," the "Draft Report," or the "Draft version" of the final report.

34 NIST NCSTAR 1A, Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 (brief report), November 2008 (wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201A.pdf), xxxii. This document is henceforth cited simply as NIST NCSTAR 1A, which will always refer, unless otherwise designated, to the final (November 2008) version (as distinct from the Draft for Public Comment, which was issued in August 2008).

35 Ibid., xxxvii.

36 "The Conspiracy Files: 9/11," BBC, February 18, 2007. It can be viewed on 9/11 Blogger (www.911blogger.com) or YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=v R3aNMLkahc).

37 Shyam Sunder, "Opening Statement," NIST Press Briefing, August 21, 2008 (wtc.nist.gov/media/opening_remarks_082108.html); henceforth cited simply as Sunder, "Opening Statement." For a C-SPAN video of this opening statement and the ensuing discussion, see "NIST WTC 7 Report-Press Briefing 8/21/08 pt 1" (www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSnjyZNYIW8); there are five more parts.

38 Ibid.

39 Quoted in "Report: Fire, Not Bombs, Leveled WTC 7 Building," USA Today, August 21, 2008 (www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-08-21-wtc-nist_N.htm).

40 Ordinary thermite, which is classified as an incendiary, is to be distinguished from nanothermite (sometimes called "superthermite"), which is qualitatively different, being classified as a "high explosive" (as well as an incendiary).

41 Military Dictionary, quoted at Answers.com (www.answers.com/topic/shaped-charge).
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the

Postby admin » Sat Jul 14, 2018 4:37 am

PART I

Chapter One


1 "A Word about Our Poll of American Thinking toward the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks," Zogby International, May 24, 2006 (www.zogby.com/features/features.dbm?ID=231).

2 Thomas Hargrove and Guido H. Stempel III, "Anti-Government Anger Spurs 9/11 Conspiracy Belief," NewsPolls.org, Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University, August 2, 2006 (newspolls.org/story.php?story_id=55). The title of the story, incidentally, is the pollster's inference, not a conclusion supported by the answers.

3 Lev Grossman, "Why the 9/11 Conspiracies Won't Go Away," Time, September 3, 2006 (www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/ 0,8816,1531304,00.html).

4 WorldPublicOpinion.org, "International Poll: No Consensus On Who Was Behind 9/11," September 10, 2008 (www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/sep08/WPO _911_Sep08_pr.pdf).

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (www.ae911truth.org).

8 Firefighters for 9.11 Truth (firefightersfor911 truth.org).

9 Lawyers for 9/11 Truth (1911t.com).

10 Intelligence Officers for 9/11 Truth (10911 Truth.org).

11 Medical Professionals for 9/11 Truth (mp911truth.org).

12 Pilots for 9/11 Truth (pilotsfor911 truth.org).

13 Political Leaders for 9/11 Truth (p1911truth.com).

14 Religious Leaders for 9/11 Truth (r1911truth.org).

15 Scholars for 9/11 Truth (911scholars.org).

16 Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice (stj911.org).

17 Veterans for 9/11 Truth (v911t.org).

18 Scientific Partel Investigating Nine-Eleven: Physics 911 (physics911.net).

19 Patriots Question 9/11 (patriotsquestion911.com).

20 The official report on the Pentagon attack, which was issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers in January 2003, is titled Pentagon Building Performance Report (fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/build03/PDF/b03017.pdf_. Although I do not discuss it here, the point at hand -- that none of the 9/11 investigations were independent from the Bush-Cheney administration -- applies equally to it. For a good critique, see Sami Yli-Karjanmaa, "The ASCE's Pentagon Building Performance Report: Arrogant Deception -- Or an Attempt to Expose a Cover-up?" (www.kolumbus.fi/sy-k/pentagon/asce_en.htm). I have discussed problems with the official view of the Pentagon, which is supported by the ASCE's building performance report, in Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory (Northampton: Olive Branch Press, 2007), 261-88, and The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Expose (Northampton: Olive Branch Press, 2008), 59-109.

21 See "Learning from 9/l1: Understanding the Collapse of the World Trade Center," House of Representatives' Committee on Science, Hearing, March 6, 2002, under "Background" (web.archive.org/web/20021128021952/ http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/sc ... 77747.00of hsy77747_0.htm).

22 Bill Manning, "Selling Out the Investigation," Fire Engineering, January 2002 (www.globalresearch.ca/articies/MAN309A.html).

23 Philip Shenon, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation (New York: Twelve, 2008), 69, 83.

24 Ibid., 389-90.

25 James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet (New York: Viking, 2004), 316, 331.

26 I have called this a doctrine of "preemptive-preventive war" in "The Bush Doctrine & The 9/11 Commission Report. Both Authored by Philip Zelikow," Information Clearing House, October 4, 2008 (www.informationclearinghouse. infof article20947.htm).

27 Shenon, The Commission, 170.

28 Ibid., 106-07, 175-76.

29 Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton (with Benjamin Rhodes), Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 269-70.

30 Ibid., 116.

31 Shenon, The Commission, 388-89.

32 Ibid.

33 See Margie Burns, "Secrecy Surrounds a Bush Brother's Role in 9/11 Security," American Reporter 9/2021 (January 20, 2003), which reported that the company's present CEO, Barry McDaniel, said that the company had had an ongoing contract to provide security at the World Trade Center "up to the day the buildings fell down." Marvin Bush's role in the company is mentioned in Craig Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties (New York: Scribner, 2004), 249.

34 Politics and Science in the Bush Administration, US House of Representatives Committee on Government Reform-Minority Staff, Special Investigation Division, prepared for Henry A. Waxman, August 2003, updated November 13, 2003 (www.democrats. reform. house. gov/features/politics_and_science/pdfs/pdf_politics_and_science_rep.pdf), Executive Summary, 3.

35 In July 2004, the Union of Concerned Scientists published an updated version of this document, with a slightly different title, Scientific Integrity in Policy Making: Further Investigation of the Bush Administration's Misuse of Science (www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/scienti ... egrity_in_ policy_making_july _2004_l.pdf). For a review of the original version of this document by one of our leading scientists, see the first half of Richard C. Lewontin, "Dishonesty in Science," New York Review of Books, November 18, 2004 (www.nybooks.com/articles/17563).

36 Originally called "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: Scientists Sign-on Statement," this document by the Union of Concerned Scientists is now titled "2004 Scientist Statement on Restoring Scientific Integrity to Federal Policy Making" (www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_ of_science/scientists-sign-on-statement.html).

37 Gareth Cook and Tatsha Robertson, "Another Worry: Asbestos Dust Poses Threat to Rescue Crews," Boston Globe, September 14, 2001 (www.boston.com/news/packages/underattac ... sbestos_du st_poses_ threat to_rescue_ crews+.shtml).

38 EPA, Press Release, September 18, 2001 (www.epa.gov/wtclstories/headline_091801.htm) .

39 "Insider: EPA Lied About WTC Air," CBS News, September 8, 2006 (www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/08/earl ... 5804.shtml).

40 John Heilprin, Associated Press, "White House Edited EPA's 9/11 Reports," Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 23, 2003 (seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/136350_epa23.html), citing "EPA's Response to the World Trade Center Collapse," EPA Office of Inspector General, August 21, 2003, Executive Summary and Chapter 2 (www.mindfully.org/Air/2003/EPA-WTC-OIG- ... 1aug03.htm).

41 The figure of 60 percent was given in "Dusr and Disease," News Hour with Jim Lehrer, PBS, November 21, 2006; the discussion is available as "60 Percent of Ground Zero Workers Sick" (www.youtube.com/watch?v= qdS4X4r28Og). The 70 percent figure was given in Anthony DePalma, "Illness Persisting in 9/11 Workers, Big Study Finds," New York Times, September 6, 2006 (www.nytimes.com/2006/09/06/nyregion/06health.html?ex= 1315195200&en=aaf1bba2e01bc497&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss), which said: "Roughly 70 percent of nearly 10,000 workers tested at Mount Sinai from 2002 to 2004 reported that they had new or substantially worsened respiratory problems while or after working at ground zero."

42 "Dust and Disease."

43 Kristen Lombardi, "Death by Dust: The Frightening Link between the 9-11 Toxic Cloud and Cancer," Village Voice, November 28, 2006 (villagevoice.com/news/0648%2Clombardi%2C75156%2C2.html; also at www.911yruth.org/article.php?story=20061204132809573); "Dust and Disease" (see note 41); Dust to Dust. The Health Effects of 9/11, a documentary film (www.informationliberation.com/index.php?id=21627; also at video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9137295628446919478&ei=ll7 pSMnmDYz-qAO54OGYCw&q=%22dust +to+dust%22).

44 Jerry Mazza, "9/11's Second Round of Slaughter," Online Journal, January 16, 2008 (onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_2845.shtml), a review of the documentary film, Dust to Dust (see previous note).

45 "NIST Whisdeblower," October 1, 2007 (georgewashington. blogspot.com/2007/1of former-nist-employee-blows-whistle.html).

46 Email letter from Steven Jones, December 3, 2007.

47 "NIST Whistleblower."

48 Ibid.

49 Shenon, The Commission, 15, 19, 29, 175-76. I discuss this issue in The New Pearl Harbor Revisited, 249-51.

50 Sunder, "Opening Statement."

51 See especially my Debunking 9/11 Debunking, Chs. 3 and 4.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the

Postby admin » Sat Jul 14, 2018 4:38 am

Chapter Two

1 "Barack Obama's Inaugural Address," New York Times, January 20,2009 (www.nytimes.com/2009/01/2of us/politics/20text-obama.html).

2 Richard Jones, "Obama Signs Presidential Memorandum on Scientific Integrity," AIP Bulletin of Science Policy News, American Institute of Physics, March 9, 2009 (www.aip.org/fyi/2009/028.html).

3 Saswato R. Das, "Scientific Fraud: There's More of It Than You Think," International Herald Tribune, June 30, 2008 (www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/3of opinion/eddas. php?page=1).

4 William Broad and Nicholas Wade, Betrayers of the Truth: Fraud and Deceit in the Hails of Science (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985).

5 Horace Freeland Judson, The Great Betrayal: Fraud in Science (New York: Harcourt, 2004).

6 "What is Research Misconduct?" National Science Foundation, Office of Inspector General, New Research Misconduct Policies (www.nsf.gov/oig/session.pdf). Although this document is undated, internal evidence suggests that it was published in 2001.

7 Ibid.

8 Richard C. Lewontin, "Dishonesty in Science," New York Review of Books, November 18, 2004 (www.nybooks.com/articles/17563).

9 Ibid.

10 Eric Douglass, "The NIST WTC Investigation: How Real Was The Simulation?" Journal of 9/11 Studies 6 (December 2006) (www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2006 ... gation.pdf): 1-28, at 8.

11 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Structural Fire Response and Probable Collapse Sequence of World Trade Center Building 7, November 2008: 378. (This is the long version of NIST's Final Report on WTC 7 and consists of two volumes. For the URLs, see under Frequently Cited Works.) Henceforth cited simply as NIST NCSTAR 1-9.

12 "What is Research Misconduct?"

13 Judson, The Great Betrayal, 172.

14 See Peter Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2004).

15 Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (1925; New York: Free Press, 1967), 187.

16 Quoted in "Report: Fire, Not Bombs, Leveled WTC 7 Building," USA Today, August 21, 2008.

17 Former NIST employee, letter to Steven Jones, November 30, 2007.

18 Quoted in William Kneale and Martha Kneale, The Development of Logic (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 243.

19 "Occam's Razor," Principia Cybernetica Web (pespmcl.vub.ac.be/occamraz.html).

20 See David Ray Griffin, Religion and Scientific Naturalism: Overcoming the Conflicts (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), and Two Great Truths: A New Synthesis of Scientific Naturalism and Christian Faith (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004).

21 This cartoon can be seen on the internet at www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/pages/gallery.php.

22 I refer to philosopher Daniel E. Dennett's discussion in his Consciousness Explained (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1991), which I examine in my Unsnarling the World-Knot: Consciousness, Freedom, and the Mind-Body Problem (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998; reprint, Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2008), 69-70.

23 See Judson, The Great Betrayal, and also Lawrence K. Alrman, M.D., "For Science's Gatekeepers, a Credibility Gap," New York Times, May 2,2006 (www.nytimes.com/2006/05/02/health/02docs.htm).
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the

Postby admin » Sat Jul 14, 2018 4:39 am

Chapter Three

1 Sunder, "Opening Statement."

2 Most of these features are brought out in a video entitled "This is an Orange" (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv7BimVvEyk).

3 National Fire Protection Association, 921 Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations, 2001 edition, Section 18.3.2.

4 NIST NCSTAR 1A: xxxi.

5 NCSTAR 1-9: 330.

6 Email from Steven Jones, October 10, 2005.

7 Obeid made this starement on a BBC program entitled The Conspiracy Files: 9/11-The Third Tower, BBC News, July 6, 2008 (www.911blogger.com/node/16541).

8 John D. Wyndham, Letter to NIST, September 7, 2008 (wtc.nist.gov/comments08/johnWyndhamwtc7comments.pdf).

9 Ibid.

10 Sunder, "Opening Statement."

11 Eric Lipton, "Fire, Not Explosives, Felled 3rd Tower on 9/11, Report Says," New York Times, August 22, 2008 (www.nytimes.com/2008/08/22/nyregion/22w ... ei=5070&em c=etal &oref=slogin).
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the

Postby admin » Sat Jul 14, 2018 4:40 am

Chapter Four

1 See "WTC 7 Collapse" (www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD06SAf0p9A); "9/11: Dan Rather Says WTC Collapses Look like Demolitions" (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvx904dAwOo&feature=Play List&p=3D30132C 75A35683&index=0&playnext=l); and "Footage of Buildings Getting Demolished" (www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrHI3c7E9RY).

2 "Second Tallest Building Ever Imploded" (www.youtube.com/ watch?v=8U4erFzhC-U); "Wachovia Building Implosion" (www.youtube.com/watch?v=txl UiFZ6rWY).

3 Kevin Ryan, "High Velocity Bursts of Debris From Point-Like Sources in the WTC Towers," Journal of 9/11 Studies 13 (July 2007) (www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2007/Ryan_HVBD.pdf).1.

4 Jones referred to "the three photos at the top of http://911 research.wtc7.net/talks/wtc/videos.html"; he also mentioned "a video close-up of the southwest corner of WTC 7 as this corner begins its steady drop to the ground: http:/ /st12.startlogic.com/-xenon pup/ Flashes/squibs_along_southwest_corner.htm," but this second URL no longer works. For similar footage, see "WTC-7 Collapse Footage Shows Unmistakable Demolition Charges" (www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EadoxWXpgY).

5 Steven E. Jones, "Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?" David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott, eds., 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out (Northampton: Olive Branch Press, 2006), 33-62. For visual evidence of his points, Jones referred readers to the online version of his paper, which had been posted on his BYU website. But Jones was later forced to remove the paper from that site. The online version can now be read -- under the title "Why Indeed Did the World Trade Center Buildings Completely Collapse?" -- in the Journal of 9/11 Studies 3 (September 2006) (www.journalof911studies.com/volume/200609 /WhyIndeedDidtheWorldTradeCenterBuildingsCompletelyCollapse.pdf): 1-48. The quotation is from page 43 of the original article.

6 "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions," NIST, August 2006 (wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm), Question 4.

7 9/11 oral history of James Curran, December 30, 2001 (graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_ GRAPHIC/ 9110412.PDF), 10-11.

8 Ryan, "High Velocity Bursts of Debris," 6.

9 Jones, "Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?"

10 For a video showing squibs moving up near the top of WTC 7, see www.911hardfacts.com/videof video_10_wtc_7 _squibs.mov.

11 NIST's document entitled "Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation" (www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/ wtc_qa_O82108.html) first appeared in August 200S; an updated version appeared December 18, 200S; then another updated version appeared April 21, 2009 (www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/w ... 82108.html).

12 This video can be seen at YouTube (www.youtube.com/ watch?v=G5UM9q7cj7I), at VodPod (vodpod.com/watch/1134985-new-911- building-7-collapse-clearly-shows-demolition), and at Disclose.tv (www.disclose.tv/action/viewvideof 11576/New_911_Building_7 _Collapse_Cl early_Shows_Demoliti). It is also available as "New Building 7 Collapse Video Clearly Shows Demolition" (justgetthere.us/blog/archives/New-Building-7-Collapse-Video-Clearly-Shows-Demolition.html).

13 James Williams, "WTC a Structural Success," SEAU News: The Newsletter of the Structural Engineers Association of Utah, October 2001 (www.seau.org/SEAUNews-2001-10.pdf).

14 The quotations from Loizeaux and Tully are in "Molten Steel Flowed Under Ground Zero for Months after 9/11," George Washington's Blog, April 28, 2008 (www.nogw.com/download2/%5E8_molten_steel. pdf).

15 Lou Lumenick, "Unflinching Look Among the Ruins," New York Post, March 3, 2004.

16 Ruvolo is quoted in the DVD "Collateral Damages" (www.allhands-fire. com/page/AHF/PROD/ISIS-COLL). For just this segment plus discussion, see Steve Watson, "Firefighter Describes 'Molten Metal' at Ground Zero, Like a 'Foundry,'" Infowars.net, November 17, 2006 (www.infowars.com/ articles/sept11 /firefighter_describes_molten_metal_ground_zero_like_foundry. htm). Most helpful is a seven-minute clip from Loose Change rinal Cut, entitled "911 stealth Bush's Legacy: Meteorites From Molten Iron. NIST Denial" (www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9nE372Ymc4).

17 Jennifer Lin, "Recovery Worker Reflects on Months Spent at Ground Zero," Knight Ridder, May 29,2002 (www.whatreallyhappened.com/ ground_zero_fires. html).

18 Trudy Walsh, "Handheld APP Eased Recovery Tasks," Government Computer News 21.27a, September 11, 2002 (www.gcn.com/21_27a/ news/19930-1.html).

19 Tom Arterburn, "D-Day: NY Sanitation Workers' Challenge of a Lifetime," Waste Age, April 1, 2002 (wasteage.com/mag/waste_dday_ny_sanitation).

20 Quoted in Francesca Lyman, "Messages in the Dust: What Are the Lessons of the Environmental Health Response to the Terrorist Attacks of September 11?" National Environmental Health Association, September 2003 (www.neha.org/9-11%20report/index-The.html).

21 "Mobilizing Public Health: Turning Terror's Tide with Science," Magazine of johns Hopkins Public Health, Late Fall 2001 (www.jhsph.edu/Publications/Special/Welch.htm).

22 The melting point of iron is 1,538°C (2,800°F). Steel, as an alloy, comes in different grades, with a range of melting points, depending on the percent of carbon (which lowers the melting point), from 1,371 °C (2,500°F) to 1,482°C (2,700° F); see "Melting Points of Metals" (www.uniweld.com/catalog/alloys/alloys_melting.htm).

23 NIST NCSTAR 1-9: 395.

24 Thomas Eagar, "The Collapse: An Engineer's Perspective," which is part of "Why the Towers Fell," NOVA, April 30, 2002 (eagar.mit.edu/EagarPapers/ Eagar185supplement1.pdf).

25 NIST NCSTAR 1, Final Report of the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers, September 2005 (wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%20l.pdf), 90.

26 "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions," NIST, August 30, 2006 (wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm), Question 13.

27 Jones, "Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?" 37.

28 "NIST Engineer, John Gross, Denies the Existance [sic] of Molten Steel" (video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7180303712325092501&hl=en). For a more extensive treatment, complete with evidence, see a clip from Loose Change Final Cut entitled "911stea!th Bush's Legacy: Meteorites From Molten Iron. NIST Denial" (www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9nE372Ymc4).

29 Answers to Frequently Asked Questions," NIST, August 30, 2006 (wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm), Question 13.

30 Jones, "Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?"39.

31 "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions," NIST, August 30, 2006.

32 James Fetzer, "Why NIST Hasn't Answered Its Own Questions," Scholars for 9/11 Truth, October 5, 2006 (www.scholarsfor911truth.org/Why-NIST- hasn%27t-Answered-its-own-Questions.html).

33 RJ Lee Gtoup, "WTC Dust Signature," Expert Report, May 2004 (www.nyenvirolaw.org/WTC/130%20Liberry%20Street/Mike%20 Davis%20L MDC%20 130%20Liberty%20Documents/Signature%200f%20WTC%20du st/WTCDustSignature_ExpertReport.051304.1646.mp.pdf), 5.

34 RJ Lee Group, "WTC Dust Signature Study: Composition and Morphology," December 2003 (www.nyenvirolaw.org/ WTC/130%20Liberty%20Street/Mike%20Davis%20LMDC%20 130%20Liberty%20Documents/Signature%200f%20WTC%20dust/WTC%20 Dust%20 Signature.Composition%20and%20Morphology.Final.pdf).

35 RJ Lee Group, "WTC Dust Signature" (2004), 2, 4.

36 Ibid., 11.

37 RJ Lee Group, "WTC Dust Signature Study" (2003), 5. This report suggested that these particles were common in the WTC dust "because of the fire that accompanied the WTC Event." It did not discuss the issue, however, of how the fire could have melted iron.

38 Ibid., 24, 17.

39 RJ Lee Group, "WTC Dust Signature" (2004), 11.

40 RJ Lee Group, "WTC Dust Signature Study" (2003), 5.

41 WebElements: The Periodic Table on the Web (www.webelements.com/iron/physics.html).

42 RJ Lee Group, "WTC Dust Signature" (2004), 12.

43 RJ Lee Group, "WTC Dust Signature Study" (2003), 21.

44 WebElements: The Periodic Table on the Web (www.webelements.com/lead/physics.html).

45 This is one respect in which the final RJ Lee report made a stronger statement than the 2003 version: The earlier report had not spoken of extremely high temperatures.

46 Heather A. Lowers and Gregory P. Meeker, US Geological Survey, US Department of the Interior, "Particle Atlas of World Trade Center Dust," 2005 (pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1165/508OF05-1165.html).

47 To see enlarged photos of the iron-rich particles, go to pubs.usgs.gov/ of/2005/1165/table_1.html, then click on "Yes" at the far right of the lines for "Iron-03" and "Iron-04."

48 Steven E. Jones et al., "Extremely High Temperatures during the World Trade Center Destruction," Journal of 9/11 Studies 19 (January 2008) (journalof911studies.com/articles/WTCHighTemp2.pdf), 8.

49 The question was sent to NIST by Shane Geiger. NIST's email reply, dated August 29, 2008, was sent by Gail Porter. My thanks to Geiger for sharing this email exchange.

50 Jones et al., 1-2.

51 WebElements: The Periodic Table on the Web (www.webelements.com/molybdenum/physics.html).

52 Jones et al., "Extremely High Temperatures," 4.

53 James Glanz and Eric Lipton, ''A Search for Clues in Towers' Collapse," New York Times, February 2, 2002 (query.nytimes.com/gst/ fullpage.html?res=9C04E0DEI53DF931A35751C0A9649C8B63).

54 Steven E. Jones, "Revisiting 9/11/2001: Applying the Scientific Method," Journal of 9/11 Studies 11, May 2007 (www.journalof911 studies.com/volume/200704/Jones WTC911SciMethod.pdf), 73.

55 They provided a brief analysis of a section of a steel beam from WTC 7 in "An Initial Microstructural Analysis of A36 Steel from WTC Building 7," JOM: Journal of the Minerals, Metals, and Materials 53.12 (2001), 18 (www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Bied ... -0112.html).

56 Joan Killough-Miller, "The 'Deep Mystery' of Melted Steel," WPI Transformations, Spring 2002 (www.wpi.edu/News/Transformations/2002Spring/steeI.html).

57 NIST NCSTAR 1-9: 324.

58 Killough-Miller, "The 'Deep Mystery' of Melted Steel."

59 James Glanz, "Engineers Suspect Diesel Fuel in Collapse of 7 World Trade Center," New York Times, November 29, 2001 (www.nytimes.com/ 2001/11/29/nyregion/29TOWE.html). I have here quoted Glanz's paraphrase of Barnett's statement.

60 See Kenneth Change, "Scarred Steel Holds Clues, and Remedies," New York Times, October 2, 2001 (query.nytimes.com/gst/ fullpage.html?res=9B05E6DC123DF931A35753CIA9679C8B63).

61 Jonathan Barnerr, Ronald R. Biederman, and Richard D. Sisson, Jr., "Limited Metallurgical Examination," FEMA, World Trade Center Building Performance Study, May 2002, Appendix C (wtc.nist.gov/media/AppendixC-fema403_ apc.pdf).

62 Ibid.

63 Email letter from Kevin Ryan, October 16, 2008.

64 Email letter from Steven Jones, October 17, 2008.

65 Personal communication from Niels Harrit, May 8, 2009.

66 "Eutectic" is a word of Greek origin meaning "easily melted." A eutectic mixture is one in which the proportions are such that "the melting point is as low as possible" and in which, at the melting point, "all the constituents crystallize simultaneously." This "simultaneous crystallization of a eutectic mixture" is called a eutectic reaction ("Eutectic Point," Wikipedia [en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Eutectic]).

67 Jones, "Revisiting 9/11/2001," 81.

68 Ibid.

69 Barnett, Biederman, and Sisson, "Limited Metallurgical Examination," C-13.

70 Dr. Arden L. Bement, Jr., Testimony before the House Science Committee Hearing on "The Investigation of the World Trade Center Collapse," May 1, 2002 (911research.wtc7.net/cache/wtc/official/nist/ bement.htm). In the quoted statement, the name "FEMA" replaces "BPAT," which is the abbreviation for "Building Performance Assessment Team," the name of the ASCE team that prepared this report for FEMA.

71 NIST, "WTC 7 Collapse," April 5, 2005 (wtc.nist.gov/pubs/WTC%20 Part%20IIC%20-%20WTC%207%20Collapse%20Final.pdf),6.

72 NIST NCSTAR 1-9: 324.

73 NIST NCSTAR 1A: xxxii.

74 See Kenneth Change, "Scarred Steel Holds Clues, and Remedies."

75 Kevin R. Ryan, "The NIST WTC 7 Report: Bush Science Reaches Its Peak," 911 Truth.org, September 11, 2008 (www.911truth.org/article.php?story=200S0911073516447). Ryan referred to Steven E. Jones et al., "Extremely High Temperatures during the World Trade Center Destruction."

76 "Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation," updated April 21,2009 (www.nist.gov/public_affairs/ factsheet/wtc_qa_O82108.html).

77 NIST NCSTAR 1-3, "Mechanical and Metallurgical Analysis of Structural Steel," by Frank W. Gayle, et al., September 2005 (fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/fire05/PDF/f05130.pdf), iii.

7S Skeptosis (pseudonym), Letter to NIST, September 15, 2008 (wtc.nist.gov/comments08/skeptosiswtc7comments.pdf). This comment can also be read in "Two Comments re: NIST's draft of NCSTAR 1A," which is posted at a blog by Skeptosis, "Missing Steel" (missingsteel.blogspot.com). The quoted passage is from NIST NCSTAR 1-3 (2005): 113.

79 Sunder here referred to The Conspiracy Files: 9/11-The Third Tower, July 6, 200S (available at www.911blogger.com/node/16541). which is discussed in the following chapter in relation to the testimony of Michael Hess and Barry Jennings.

80 "WTC 7 Technical Briefing," NIST, August 26, 2008 (event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=lobby.jsp&event id= 118145), at 2:09:15. Henceforth cited as "WTC 7 Technical Briefing."

81 "Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation," NIST, updated April 21, 2009 (www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/ wtc_qa_O82108.html).

82 Roger K. Fulmer, "New York City World Trade Center Disaster Deployment," The Prospector (US Army Corps of Engineers, Sacramento District), January 2002 (web.archive.org/web/20040405130825/ www.911research.wtc7.net/cache/wtcl groundzerof usace_deployment.html).

83 Jonathan Beard, "Ground Zero's Fires Still Burning," New Scientist, December 3, 2001 (www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1634).

84 Trimpe's account, titled "The Chaplain's Tale," was originally published in 2002 in the Times-Herald Record, it is now cited in "Molten Metal Workers Reported Molten Metal in Ground Zero Rubble" (911 research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/moltensteel.html#ref5).

85 Trudy Walsh, "Handheld APP Eased Recovery Tasks," Government Computer News 21.27a, September 11, 2002 (911 research.wtc7.net/cache/wtc/evidence/gcn_handheldapp.html).

86 Beard, "Ground Zero's Fires Still Burning"; Eric Lipton and Andrew C. Revkin, "The Firefighters: With Water and Sweat, Fighting the Most Stubborn Fire," New York Times, November 19, 2001 (911 research.wtc7. net/cache/wtc/evidence/gcn_handheldapp.html).

87 Quoted in Sylvia Wright, "Air Quality Scientists Release WTC Study," Dateline UC Davis, February 15, 2002 (www-dateline.ucdavis.edu/ 021502/DL_wtc.html).

88 Thomas A. Cahill et a;., "Very Fine Aerosols from the World Trade Center Collapse Piles: Anaerobic Incineration?" September 12, 2003 (209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:aWx4Gz8EkzIJ:delta.ucdavis.edu/WTC%25 20aersols%2520ACS%25202003.ppt +%E2%80% 9CWe+see+very+fine+aeros ols+typical+of+combustion+temperatures+far+higher%22%22&cd=1&hl=en &ct=clnk&gl=ca). I am indebted to Ryan et al., "Environmental Anomalies" (see note 93 below), for these references to Cahill's work.

89 Sylvia Wright, "Air Quality Scientists Release WTC Study"; the wording is her paraphrase.

90 Thomas A. Cahill et al., "Analysis of Aerosols from the World Trade Center Collapse Site, New York, October 2 to October 30, 2001," Aerosol Science and Technology 38/2 (February 2004): 165-83 (www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?conte ... text=71324 0928).

91 Wright, "Air Quality Scientists Release WTC Study."

92 Laurie Garren, "Full Effects of WTC Pollution May Never Be Known," Newsday, September 14, 2003 (www.newsday.com/news/health/nyhsair0911,0,471193. story?coll=ny-homepageright-Area).

93 Kevin R. Ryan, James R. Gourley, and Steven E. Jones, "Environmental Anomalies at the World Trade Center: Evidence for Energetic Materials," Environmentalist 29 (2009): 56-63, at 57. (This paper had been published online [www.springerlink.com/content/f67q6272583h86n4/fulltext.html] by the Environmentalist on August 4, 2008.)

94 Ibid., 58.

95 Ibid., 58, 56; emphasis added.

96 John Gartner, "Military Reloads with Nanotech," Technology Review, January 21,2005 (www.technologyreview.com/nanotech/14105).

97 For an explanation for laypeople, see "A Basic Chemistry Lesson with Dr. Niels Harrit: Transcript from Visibility 9-11," April 15, 2009 (www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20090415231352441).

98 Gartner, "Military Reloads with Nanotech."

99 Kevin Ryan, "The Top Ten Connections between NIST and Nano-Thermites," Journal of 9/11 Studies 22 (July 2008) (www.journalof911srudies.com/volume/2008/Ryan_NIST _and_Nano-l.pdf), citing T. M. Tillotson, R. L. Simpson, and L.W. Hrubesh, "Nanostructure High Explosives Using Sol-gel Chemistry," Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 1999 (https://e-reports-ext.llnl.gov/pdf/238334.pdf).

100 Jim Hoffman, "Explosives Found in World Trade Center Dust: Scientists Discover Both Residues and Un ignited Fragments of Nano-Engineered Thermitic Pyrotechnics in Debris from the Twin Towers" (911 research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html).

101 Ryan, Gourley, and Jones, "Environmental Anomalies," 62; Steven Jones, "Revisiting 9/11/2001," 73; Ryan, "The Top Ten Connections."

102 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, "Nanoscale Chemistry Yields Better Explosives," Science and Technology Review, October 2000 (www.llnl.gov/str/RSimpson.html).

103 Ryan, "The Top Ten Connections."

104 A. E. Gash et al., "Energetic Nanocomposites with Sol-gel Chemistry: Synthesis, Safety, and Characterization," Proceedings of the 29th International Pyrotechnics Seminar, Westminster, CO, July 14-19,2002: 227-28. Although this paper is not online, the quoted statement is in "US Patent 6818081-Inorganic metal oxide/organic polymer nanocomposites and method thereof," November 16, 2004 (www.patentstorm.us/patents/6818081/fulltext.html).

105 Ryan, "The Top Ten Connections."

106 Kevin Ryan, "Another Amazing Coincidence Related to the WTC," 911Blogger.com, January 6, 2008 (www.911blogger.com/node/13272). Some of the evidence for this correlation is laid out by Ryan in this article.

107 Ryan, Gourley, and Jones, "Environmental Anomalies," 56.

108 Ibid., 61.

109 Ibid., 60, referring to M. Kidder et al., "Pore Size Effects in the Pyrolysis of 1,3-Diphenylpropane Confined in Mesoporous Silicas," Chemical Communications (Cambridge), November 21, 2003: 2804-05.

110 Ibid., 61.

111 Ibid., 59.

112 Jones et al., "Extremely High Temperatures during the World Trade Center Destruction," 4-5.

113 Ryan, Gourley, and Jones, "Environmental Anomalies," 62.

114 See "Zero: An Investigation Into 9/11-Part 3 of 10" (www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZLeDb9dJs0&feature=related), at 3:30.

115 Ryan, Gourley, and Jones, "Environmental Anomalies," 62.

116 Ibid.

117 Ibid., 58-59.

118 Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, Kevin R. Ryan, Frank M. Legge, Daniel Farnsworth, Gregg Roberts, James R. Gourley, and Bradley R. Larsen, "Active Thermitic Material Observed in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe," Open Chemical Physics Journal 2 (2009): 7-31 (www.bentham.org/open/tocpj/openaccess2.htm). Immediately after the publication of this article, incidentally, the journal's editor-in-chief, Professor Marie-Paule Pileni of France, resigned. In response to critics who suggested that this resignation cast doubt on the scientific soundness of the paper, Professor Harrit prepared a statement explaining why it did not. It is posted as "Professor Pileni's Resignation" on a Danish website (videnskab.dk/content/dk/debat?personguid=8C55E167-347B-4AD1-8BF7-F50BA5754FAC&link=ShowProfile) and as "Niels Harrit: Professor Pileni's Resignation as Editor-in-Chief of the Open Chemical Physics Journal" on 9/11 Blogger, July 12, 2009 (911blogger.com/node/20614).

119 Harrit et al., ''Active Thermitic Material," 17.

120 Ibid., 22.

121 Ibid., 12.

122 Ibid., 26, 29.

123 Ibid., 29.

124 Ibid., 10.

125 Ibid., 19.

126 Ibid., 29.

127 Ibid., 22, 29. Some critics, nevertheless, have claimed that the red side of the chips might simply be primer paint -- even though this hypothesis has been ruled out still more decisively in the meantime by the discovery that, according to NIST, the primer paint used in the buildings contained a high percentage of zinc (NIST NCSTAR 1-3C (2005), Appendix D (wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201-3C%20Appxs.pdf), which is not present in the red/gray chips. In response to these ongoing claims, Niels Harrit wrote a paper, "Why the Red/Gray Chips Are Not Ptimer Paint," posted at "Norwegian State Radio Initiates Public Debate on 9/11 Truth," From the Top of the World at the End of Time Blog, updated June 20, 2009 (zelikow.wordpress.com/2009 /05/22/ norwegian-state-radio-initiates-public-debate-on-911-truth/), scroll halfway down (Harrit's paper is also posted at Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice Blog, June 20, 2009 [stj911.org/blog/?p=325].) This Norwegian site also contains a response from Steven Jones to Professor Ola Nilsen of the University of Oslo, who had suggested the paint hypothesis. Jones's reply includes the following four points: "(1) We have learned the composition of the 'corrosion inhibition' or ptimer paint actually used on the WTC rowers from a NIST document; see attached paper by Prof Niels Harrit. ... We find that zinc, chromium and magnesium are significant components of the paint used -- yet these elements are absent from the red material, as demonstrated in Figure 7 of our paper. Thus, the red chips cannot be the primer paint used. (2) On the other hand, the elements which are present in the red chips -- namely aluminum, iron, oxygen, silicon, and carbon (Fig. 7) -- are precisely those expected in formulations of nanothermite as described in the literature and delineated in the paper. (3) Furthermore, iron oxide is found in grains approximately 100 nm across and aluminum in plate-like structures about 40 nm thick -- and these particles appear quite uniform and intimately mixed across the four separate samples. It is this ultra-fine, nano-scale structure of the Al and iron oxide in the red material that is emphasized in the paper, which we expect for nanothermite .... (4) The composition of any other paint used in the WTC must address the absence of common paint ingredients as well as the presence of those elements observed, and the nano-scale structure of the ingredients observed."

128 Harrit et al., "Active Thermitic Material," 29.

129 Ibid., 25.

130 Ibid., 29.

131 Ibid., 19.

132 Ibid., 26.

133 Ibid., 9.

134 "Interview with Dr. Harrit: Questions to Niels Harrit concerning the Study 'Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe,''' gulli.news, May 24, 2009 (www.gulli.com/news/world-trade-center-d ... 2009-05-24).

135 Harrit et al., ''Active Thermitic Material Observed," 29.

136 For an excellent explanation and analysis of the paper by Harrit and his colleagues, see Jim Hoffman, "Explosives Found in World Trade Center Dust: Scientists Discover Both Residues and Unignited Fragments of Nano-Engineered Thermitic Pyrotechnics in Debris from the Twin Towers" (911research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosive_residues.html). Intelligible to readers who are neither physicists nor chemists, it begins with a section entitled ''AIuminothermics 101."

137 "Danish Scientist Niels Harrit, on Nanothermite in the WTC Dust (English Subtitles)," April 6, 2009 (www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_tf251x_3o).

138 Ibid.

139 "Interview with Dr. Harrit."

140 "Danish Scientist Niels Harrit."

141 Ibid.

142 "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions," NIST, Question 12.

143 "Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation," NIST (www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/w ... 82108.html).

144 "Request for Correction Submitted to NIST," Journal of 9/11 Studies 12 (June 2007) (www.journalof911srudies.com/volume/2007 ... yanGageSTJ. pdf), 23. This letter was signed by Bob McIlvaine, Bill Doyle, Steven Jones, Kevin Ryan, Richard Gage, and Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice.

145 "Appeal Filed with NIST, Pursuant to Earlier Request for Correction," by James Gourley, Bob McIlvaine, Bill Doyle, Sreven Jones, Kevin Ryan, Richard Gage, and Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice, Journal of 9/11 Studies 17 (November 2007) (www.journalof911studies.com/volume/ 2007/Appeal-LetterToNISTGourleyEtAl.pdf), 17.

146 Newsletter, Materials Engineering, Inc., Spring 1996 (www.materials-engr.com/ns96.html).

147 Ibid., quoted in "Appeal Filed with NIST," emphasis added by Gourley et al.

148 Ibid.

149 A C-SPAN video of this press briefing is available on YouTube in 6 pans, the first of which is "NIST WTC 7 Report-Press Briefing 8/21/08 pt 1" (www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSnjyZNYIW8). The exchange between Geiger and Sunder is in Part 6 (www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgmAMr1NGak&NR=1). A transcription of most of this exchange (with slightly different wording) is available in Jim Hoffman's helpful essay, "Wake Up and Smell the Aluminothermic Nanocomposite Explosives: As Documentation of Thermitic Materials in the WTC Twin Towers Grows, Official Story Backers Ignore, Deny, Evade, and Dissemble," April 3, 2009 (Version 1.0), 9-11 Research (911 research.wtc7.net/essays/thermite/explosives_evidence_timeline.html#wtc 7_press_conference).

150 "NIST WTC 7 Report-Press Briefing 8/21/08 pt. 1"

151 "WTC 7 Technical Briefing," at 2:10:35.

152 Ibid., at 2:08.

153 Barneyy, Biederman, and Sisson, "Limited Metallurgical Examination."

154 Jones et al., "Extremely High Temperatures during the World Trade Center Destruction," 3.

155 Jones wrote: "Note that the iron-aluminum-sulfur spheres from MacKinlay's apartment contained very low calcium, so the sulfur is evidently not from gypsum" ("Revisiting 9/11/2001," 79).

156 See wtc.nist.gov/media/JonesWTC911SciMerhod.pdf.

157 Email letter from Steven Jones, October 17, 2008.

158 Sunder, "Opening Statement."

159 "Appeal Filed with NIST," 14.

160 Jennifer Abel, "Theories of 9/11," Hartford Advocate, January 29, 2008 (www.hanfordadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid= 5546).

161 National Fire Protection Association, 921 Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations, 1998 edition, Section 12-2.4. To read this online, see Section 12- 2.4 of "NFPA 921, Sections 12-2.1 through 12-6" (www. interfire.org/res_file/92112m.asp).

162 See ibid., Section 19.2.4, "Exotic Accelerants" and "Thermite Mixtures." Niels Harrit, explaining in an interview why the authorities should have looked for residue of thermitic material, said: "[W]hen there is a fire in the United States, which is suspicious or which is violent or which is unexpected, according to [an NPFA] regulation you should look for thermite -- because you can use it for arson, and if you want to burn your house, this is the way to do it: You put in a thermitic reaction and you go on vacation and you can trigger it with your cell phone from long distance, if you wish. So this is routine for [the] FBI to look for remains of thermite. They do this very frequently, actually, but they didn't do it this time." This interview is available as "Nano-thermite Took Down the WTC?" posted at YouTube on July 9, 2009 (www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RNyaoYR3y0). The quoted statement is at 10:14-10:50.

163 Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (1925; New York: Free Press, 1967), 187.
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

Re: The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the

Postby admin » Sat Jul 14, 2018 4:41 am

Chapter Five

1 NIST NCSTAR 1-9: 324.

2 NIST NCSTAR 1, Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers, September 2005 (wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201.pdf), xxxviii, 146, 176.

3 These oral testimonies are available at a New York Times website (graphics8. nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/met_ WTC_histories_full_01.html).

4 David Ray Griffin, "Explosive Testimony: Revelations about the Twin Towers in the 9/11 Oral Histories," 911 Truth.org, January 18, 2006 (www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20060118104223192); reprinted as Chap. 2 of Griffin, Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2006).

5 "We Will Not Forget: A Day of Terror," Chief Engineer, August 1, 2002 (www.chiefengineer.org/article.cfm?seqnuml=1029).

6 Quoted in Susan Hagen and Mary Carouba, Women at Ground Zero: Stories of Courage and Compassion (Indianapolis: Alpha Books, 2002), 65-66, 68.

7 John Bussey, "Eye of the Storm: One Journey Through Desperation and Chaos," Wall Street Journal, September 12, 2001 (online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/040802pulitzer5.htm).
8 Quoted in Alicia Shepard, Cathy Trost, and Newseum, Running Toward Danger: Stories Behind the Breaking News of 9/11, foreword by Tom Brokaw (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 87.

9 Graeme MacQueen, "118 Witnesses: The Firefighters' Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers," Journal of 9/11 Studies 2 (August 2006) (www.journalof911studies.com/articles/Ar ... Cebter.pdf): 49-123.

10 Oral History: Chief Frank Cruthers (graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/ 9110179.PDF), 4.

11 Oral History: Firefighter Richard Banaciski (graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/ 9110253.PDF), 3.

12 NIST NCSTAR 1, Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers (2005), 163.

13 NIST, "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions," 2006 (wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm), Q. 2.

14 NIST NCSTAR 1, Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers (2005), 179.

15 Oral History: Firefighter Timothy Burke, 8-9.

16 Oral History: Firefighter Edward Cachia (graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/ 9110251.PDF), 5.

17 Oral History: Assistant Fire Commissioner Stephen Gregory (graphics8. nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/91100 08.PDF), 14-16.

18 Oral History: Firefighter Kenneth Rogers (graphics8.nytimes.com/ packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110290.PDF), 3-4.

19 Oral History: Firefighter Howie Scott (graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/ 9110365.PDF), 6.

20 "Request for Correction Submitted to NIST," Journal of 9/11 Studies 12 (June 2007) (www.journalof911studies.com/volume/ 200704/RFCtoNISTbyMcIlvaineDoyle] JonesRyanGageSTJ.pdf), 23. This letter was signed by Bob McIlvaine, Bill Doyle, Steven Jones, Kevin Ryan, Richard Gage, and Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice.

21 NIST, "Letter of Response to Request," September 27, 2007; published in Journal of 9/11 Studies 17 (November 2007) (www.journalof911studies.com/volume/2007 ... urleyEtal2. pdf).

22 "William Rodriguez: 9/11 Survivor to Speak in London" (www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/11/356684.htm).

23 Greg Szymanski, "WTC Basement Blast and Injured Burn Victim Blows 'Official 9/11 Story' Sky High; Eye Witness Testimony Is Conclusive that North Tower Collapsed from Controlled Demolition," June 24, 2005 (web.archive.org/web/20060518021614/www.whale.tof b/szy6.html).

24 See "Uncut BBC News Report of 9-11 Explosion of the 1st Tower," YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=66PR0z1n9HA).This video also contains footage of the BBC's Stephen Evans reporting that, about an hour after the plane hit the North Tower, a huge explosion occurred "much, much lower."

25 Szymanski, "WTC Basement Blast and Injured Burn Victim Blows 'Official 9/11 Story' Sky High."

26 Ibid.

27 Demarco's statement is quoted in Chris Bull and Sam Erman, eds., At Ground Zero: Young Reporters Who were There Tell Their Stories (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2002), 97.

28 Bartmer's statement is quoted in Paul Joseph Watson, "NYPD Officer Heard Building 7 Bombs," Prison Planet, February 10, 2007 (www.prisonplanet. com/articles/february2007 1100207heardbombs.htm). Part of Bartmer's statement can be seen in the documentary Loose Change Final Cut.

29 This unnamed medical student can be seen making this statement in the film 911 Eyewitness, number 2 of 3 (video.google.com/videosearch?q=911 +eyewitness&emb=0&aq=0&oq=911+eyew#q=911+eyewitness+ 2+of+3&emb=0), at 31 :30.

30 NIST NCSTAR 1-9: 324.

31 David Firestone, "Mayor Picks Ex-Prosecutor To Take Job of Top Lawyer," New York Times, November 21,1997 (www.nytimes.com/1997/ 11/21/nyregion/mayor-picks-ex-prosecutor-to-take-job-of-top-lawyer.html).

32 Rudolph W. Giuliani with Ken Kurson, Leadership (New York: Hyperion, 2002), 20.

33 See David Ray Griffin, "The 9/11 Interview with Michael Hess: Evidence that NIST Lied about When He and Barry Jennings Were Rescued," WantToKnow.Info (www.wanttoknow.infof008/hessjenningswtc ... vbroadcast). According to writing on a DVD containing UPN 9 programs from that morning, the video began at 10:37AM.The Hess interview begins at the 57-minute mark. At one time, accordingly, it was believed that the Hess interview began at 11:34. Further research, however, showed that the video actually started at 11:00 (see web.archive.org/web/20050111201245/ http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/ ... bn.25.html). The crucial evidence is that, at the 111-minute mark, the UPN 9 program switched to live CNN coverage of a Taliban news conference, which began at 12:50 (see findarticles. com/p/articles/mi_m0DIZ/is_/ai_78963666; for further evidence, see Michael Ventura, "9/11: American Ungoverned" [www.austinchronicle.com/ gyrobase/Issue/column?oid=oid%3A83213]).

34 "Michael Hess, WTC7 Explosion Witness," YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUfiLbXMa64). Hess should have said "down to the sixth floor." As we will see later, Jennings also once said that the explosion occurred on the eighth floor, but he quickly corrected this, clarifying that, after experiencing the explosion when they got down to the sixth floor, they walked back up to the eighth floor, where they waited to be rescued.

35 Giuliani, Leadership, 20.

36 There were two videos -- "Barry Jennings," YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=NttM3oUrNmE). and Paul Joseph Watson, "Emergency Official Witnessed Dead Bodies In WTC 7," Prison Planet, June 23, 2008 (www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2008/ 062308_dead_bodies.htm) -- plus a transcript in "NIST Exploring 9/11 Conspiracy Theory for WTC-7: New Witness Confirms Scholars Previous Findings," Scholars for 9/11 Truth, July 1, 2007 (twilightpines.com/ / index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id= 113&Itemid=67).

37 The Conspiracy Files: 9/11-The Third Tower, BBC, July 6, 2008 (available at www.911blogger.com/node/16541).

38 "Barry Jennings Uncut" is now available on YouTube in two parts as "Barry Jennings -- 9/11 WTC7 Full Uncut Interview," Part 1 (www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQY-ksiuwKU) and Part 2 (www.youtube.com/ watch?v=kxUj6UgPODo). Both parts are also available at Hidden History (hidhist.wordpress.com/2008/07/12/barry-jennings-uncut). These two parts are henceforth referred to as "Barry Jennings Uncut, Part 1," and "Barry Jennings Uncut, Part 2." The times cited refer to this version of the interview (which are different from the times given on the original version, which can be found at 9/11 Blogger [www.911blogger.com/node/16573] and other places on the internet).

39 In explaining why he put the entire interview online, Avery gave three reasons: "(1) To see the difference between the interview he gave us, and the interview he gave the BBC. (2) To establish Barry's timeline in his own words. (3) To preserve his testimony, in his own words, for the historical record." This statement, which was originally posted at the Loose Change website, is now more readily available at 911] Blogger (www.911blogger.com/node/16573). Jennings also claimed in his BBC interview that it was because he was upset by this (alleged) distortion that he asked for his interview not to be included in Avery's film. According to Avery, however, the only reason Jennings had given at the time was his fear that, if his interview was included in the film, he would lose his job. (I learned this in my capacity as the script consultant for Loose Change Final Cut.)

40 Jennings himself was uncertain whether he had spoken to NIST or the 9/11 Commission, and evidently thought that it was probably the latter ("Barry Jennings Uncut," Part 2, at 2:36-3:36). However, NIST's documents show that it interviewed Jennings. Interviews of both Michael Hess and Barry Jennings, which are stated as having taken place during "spring 2004," are cited in NIST NCSTAR 1-8, The Emergency Response Operations, September 2005 (wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201-8.pdf), 109n380. This document was written by J. Randall Lawson and Robert L. Vettori. Although the interviews are referred to with numbers ("WTC 7 Interviews 2041604 and 1041704"), not with the names of Hess and Jennings, the content of the text clearly shows that it is their experiences that are being described.

41 "Barry Jennings Uncut," Part 2, at 3:00-3:10 and 7:35-7:44.

42 Hess stated this in an interview with the BBC that was recorded for the second version of its program on WTC 7, which will be discussed later. To view the Hess interview, see Mike Rudin, "Caught Up in a Conspiracy Theory," BBC, October 21, 2008 (www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/ 2008/1of caught_up_in_a_conspiracy _theo.html).

43 "Barry Jennings Uncut," Part 2, at 5:34-5:40.

44 Ibid., at 0:20-0:32.

45 Paul Vallely, "Terror in America: The Survivors-Inside the Towers, They Scrambled," Independent, September 13, 2001 (www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americ ... 51928.html).

46 "Barry Jennings Uncut," Part 1, at 1:18-1:48.

47 The Conspiracy Files:9/11-The Third Tower, BBC, July 6, 2008 (available at www.911blogger.com/node/16541). at12:06-12:26.

48 "Barry Jennings Uncut," Part 1, at 2:04-2:15.

49 Ibid., at 6:18-6:29.

50 Ibid., at 6:49-6:51.

51 BBC interview with Michael Hess, in Rudin, "Caught Up in a Conspiracy Theory."

52 ABC 7 News interview of Barry Jennings (www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L05V2CJpzI).This was a brief on-the-street interview conducted on 9/11 by a reporter from ABC 7 News, a portion of which was placed at the beginning of the original version of "Barry Jennings Uncut." During the interview with Avery, however, Jennings started to say "the eighth floor" but then corrected himself and said "the sixth floor" ("Barry Jennings Uncut," Part 1, at 2:00-2:02). Then, under questioning from Avery, Jennings clarified that the explosion occurred when he and Hess were on the sixth floor, after which they went back up to the eighth floor (Part 1, at 5:56-6:18).

53 "Barry Jennings Uncut," Part 2, at 4:52-5:17.

54 ABC 7 News Interview of Barry Jennings (www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LO5V2CJpzI).

55 "Barry Jennings Uncut," Part 1, at 2:49-3:44.

56 "Barry Jennings Uncut," Part 2, at 5:08-5:33.

57 "Barry Jennings Uncut," Part 1, at 3:57-4:05.

58 Ibid., at 4: 19-4:45.

59 "Barry Jennings Uncut," Part 2, at 2: 15-2:30.

60 NIST NCSTAR 1-9 (2008 on WTC 7), Vol. 1 (wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201-9%20Vol%201.pdf): 78. The BBC, as we will see larer in the text, repeated this claim.

61 "Barry Jennings Uncut," Part 1, at 4:45-4:56.

62 Vallely, "Terror in America: The Survivors: Inside the Towers, They Scrambled."

63 "Barry Jennings Uncut," Part 1, at 4:57-5:26.

64 NIST-SP 1000-5: June 2004: Progress Report on the Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center (wtc.nist.gov/progress_report_june04/progress_report_june04.htm).

65 Interim Report on WTC 7, which is Appendix L of the June 2004 progress report mentioned in the previous nore (wtc.nist.gov/ progress_report_june04/appendixl.pdf). When a NIST spokesman, Benjamin Stein, was asked who wrote this interim report, he replied that he did not know, but he did supply the names of all the people who worked on the 2004 progress report as a whole, the first named of whom was Therese McAllister. Stein also added: "The work presented in Appendix L was conducted under Project 6 of the NIST WTC Investigation, Structural Fire Response and Collapse Analysis" (letter from Benjamin Stein, January 22, 2009). Given the fact that Therese McAllister was not only a co-leader of Project 6 (NC NCSTAR 1A [2008]: iii]), but was also the only co-leader to be listed among the contributors to the 2004 progress report, one can infer that she had primary responsibility for Appendix L, the Interim Report on WTC 7.

66 Interim Report on WTC 7(2004), L-18 (each page number is preceded by "L" because this is Appendix L of the 2004 progress report).

67 The conclusion that Hess and Jennings were rescued no later than 11:30 might seem to be ruled out by the fact that Jennings, near the end of the interview with Dylan Avery posted as "Barry Jennings Uncut," said that he and Hess "didn't get out of there until like 1:00" (Part 2, at 5:49-5:53), after which Avery made a supporting statement, saying that the interview with Hess took place at about 1:00. But there are many reasons to conclude that they both misspoke. First, Avery, who supplied the tape of the UPN 9 News interview of Hess (which shows that Hess was being interviewed before noon), has confirmed that he misspoke (email July 9, 2008). Second, if Hess and Jennings had not gotten out of the building until 1:00, they would have been trapped for three-and-a-half hours, and Hess surely would not have described such a long period as "an hour and a half." Third, Jennings said that the firemen came back to rescue them after the collapse of the North Tower, which occurred at 10:28, and the rescue certainly would not have taken another two-and-a-half hours after that. Fourth, 1:00 would be about 45 minutes later than even NIST claimed that the men had been rescued.

68 NIST's main report on the Twin Towers, which has 247 pages, is NIST NCSTAR 1, Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers, September 2005 (wtc.nist.gov/NISTNCSTAR1CollapseofTowers.pdf). "NCSTAR" stands for the National Construction Safety Team Act Report. The  entire report, which consists of some 10,000 pages, includes the main report plus 42 companion volumes, which contain the results of eight investigations. They are abbreviated NIST NCSTAR 1-1, NIST NCSTAR 1-2, on up to NIST NCSTAR 1-8. (The brief report on WTC 7 is numbered NIST NCSTAR 1A; the long version is NCSTAR 1-9, which is divided into Volume 1 and Volume 2.) For the entire set of documents, see Final Reports of the Federal Building and Fire Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster (hup:/ /wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/).

69 NIST NCSTAR 1-8, The Emergency Response Operations, by j. Randall Lawson and Robert L. VETTori, SeptembeR 2005 (wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201-8.pdf), 109-10. Henceforth cited simply as NIST NCSTAR 1-8.

70 Ibid., 109n380. NIST also ignored Jennings' statement that, before he and Hess were finally rescued, the firefighters had come twice but then had run away twice when the two towers came down. NIST simply said: "The two men went back to the 8th floor [and] broke out a window and called for help. Firefighters on the ground saw them and went up the stairs." NIST thereby portrayed Jennings as having broken the window after 10:30, rather than, as Jennings indicated, an hour or more earlier.

71 "Death of Key Witness Barry Jennings: New Info Points to Foul Play," Dylan Avery interviewed by Jack Blood on Deadline Live, April 16, 2009: Part II (www.videosurf.com/videof death-of-911-key-witness-barry-jennings-newinfo- points-to-foul-play-2-of-4-65323174), at 8:00.

72 The Conspiracy Files: 9/11-The Third Tower, July 6,2008 (available at www.911blogger.com/node/16541).

73 Ibid., at 10:36-10:39.

74 Ibid., at 12:06-12:40.

75 Ibid., at 13:29-13:40.

76 Ibid., at 13:45-13:55.

77 Ibid., at 14:20-14:31.

78 Ibid., at 18:55-19:10.

79 Ibid., at 13:45-14:10.

80 Ibid., at 46:47--47:40.

81 Ibid., at 47: 14--47:35.

82 Aaron Dykes, "Key Witness to WTC 7 Explosions Dead at 53," Infowars.com, updated September 17, 2008 (www.infowars.com/?p=4602); "Passing of Barry Jennings," NYCHA [New York City Housing Authority] Bulletin, October 2008 (www.nyc.gov/html/nycha/downloads/pdf/emp_ bulletin_oct_2008.pdf). This NYCHA obituary, incidentally, says the following about Jennings: "In 2002 Mr. Jennings was promoted to the highly demanding position of Emergency Coordinator/Deputy Director in ESD. The dedication and proficiency with which he discharged his duties were widely recognized within and beyond his department .... Mr. Jennings's ability to face and survive disaster had earlier been tested during the tragic events of 9/11, when he was credited with saving the life of Corporation Counsel Michael Hess."

83 "Death of Key Witness Barry Jennings: New Info Points to Foul Play," Dylan Avery interviewed by Jack Blood on DeadLine Live, April 16, 2009, Part III (www.videosurf.comlvideof death-of-911-key-witness-barry-jennings-newinfo- points-to-foul-play-3-of-4-65225203), at 1:35-2:45. He had paid this private investigator, Avery added, "a decent sum of money. It was definitely not a sum that would be turned down unless there was something at stake."

84 The Conspiracy Files:9/11-The Truth behind the Third Tower, BBC, October 26, 2008 (available at video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5313004818217244745 or bestdocumentaries. blogspot.com/2009/01/conspiracy-files-truth-behind-third. html).

85 Ibid., at 30: 17-30:24.

86 Mike Rudin, "Caught Up in a Conspiracy Theory," BBC, October 21, 2008 (www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditorsl 2008/1of caught_up_in_a_conspiracy_ theo.html). A video of the BBC interview with Hess is available at this blog. This interview, henceforth called "Michael Hess BBC interview," is the source for most of the footage of Hess contained in the second version of the BBC's show.

87 Rudin, "Caught Up in a Conspiracy Theory."

88 The Conspiracy Files: 9/11-The Truth behind the Third Tower, at 30:24-30:40; see also Michael Hess BBC interview (see note 86).

89 The Conspiracy Files:9/11- The Truth behind the Third Tower, at 30:09-30: 16.

90 Much of this interview is included in Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup, scheduled to appear in September 2009.

91 "Michael D. Hess, Vice Chairman," Giuliani Partners (www.giulianipartners. com/mhess.aspx).

92 Michael Hess BBC interview; The Conspiracy Files: 9/11-The Truth behind the Third Tower, at 58:39.

93 Michael Hess BBC interview.

94 Ibid.; The Conspiracy Files: 9/11-The Third Tower, at 14:57-15:01.

95 Michael Hess BBC interview; The Conspiracy Files: 9/11-The Truth behind the Third Tower, at 30: 17-30:24.9.

96 Paul Vallely, "Terror in America: The Survivors-Inside the Towers, They Scrambled."

97 The Conspiracy Files: 9/11- The Truth behind the Third Tower, 9: 12- 9:25; also in Michael Hess BBC interview.

98 Ibid.

99 NIST NCSTAR 1-9 (2008): 298-99. The note cites "WTC 7 Interviews 2041604 and 1041704, spring 2004," which designate the interviews with Hess and Jennings (as can be seen at NIST NCSTAR 1-8: 109, n. 380).

100 NIST NCSTAR 1-9: 299.

101 The 2005 rescue account is contained in NIST NCSTAR 1-8, Chapter 6, which was written by J. Randall Lawson and Robert Vettori. The primary author of NIST's 2004 Interim Report on WTC 7, as pointed out in note 65, was likely Therese McAllister.

102 On the cover page of NIST NCSTAR 1-8, The Emergency Response Operations (2005), J. Randall Lawson is the first of two authors listed, the other being Robert L. Vettori. In NIST's 2008 report on WTC 7, Lawson was the first-mentioned author of Chapter 6, entitled "Emergency Response," which includes the rescue account. (The other author was Richard G. Gann.) Lawson was the Project Leader for the project dealing with Emergency Response Technologies and Guidelines, which had the task of documenting the activities of the emergency responders; see NC NSTAR 1A [2008]: xxviii).

103 NIST NCSTAR 1-8: 110.

104 As we saw earlier, the BBC suggested that Jennings got out of the building at 12:03.

105 NIST NCSTAR 1-9: 197.

106 Ibid., 298-99.

107 Oral History: Captain Karin Deshore of the FDNY Emergency Medical Services (graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/ 9110192.PDF),10-12.

108 Oral History: Paramedic Louis Cook (graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/ pdf/nyregion/20050812_ WTC_GRAPHIC/9110103.PDF), 14-17.

109 "Barry Jennings Uncut," Part 2, at 5: 17.

110 Jennings certainly would have said this, and Hess at that time probably would have had no reason to give a false account.

111 See NIST NCSTAR 1-8: iii.

112 "WTC 7 Technical Briefing," NIST, August 26, 2008 (event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=lobby.jsp&event id=118145), at 2:02:30.

113 Ibid., at 2:10:10.

114 NIST NCSTAR 1-8: 110.

115 Oral History: Captain Ray Goldbach (graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/ 9110150.PDF), 14.

116 Oral History: Firefighter Vincent Massa (graphics8.nytimes.com/ packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110222.PDF), 17.

117 Oral History: EMT Decosta Wright (graphics8.nytimes.com/ packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110054.PDF), 12.

118 Oral History: Chief Daniel Nigro (graphics8.nytimes.com/ packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110154.PDF), 10.

119 Oral History: Firefighter Kevin McGovern (graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_ GRAPHIC/ 911030l.PDF), 12.

120 Oral History: Captain Robert Sohmer (graphics8.nytimes.com/ packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110472.PDF), 5.

121 Oral History: Chief Frank Fellini (graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/ pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110217.PDF), 3.

122 Oral History: Chief Thomas McCarthy (graphics8.nytimes.com/ packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110055.PDF), 10-11.

123 Oral History: EMT Decosta Wright (graphics8.nytimes.com/ packages/pdf.nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110054.PDF), 11.

124 "WTC: This Is Their Story: Deputy Chief Nick Visconti," Firehouse Magazine, August 2002 (www.firehouse.com/terrorist/911/magazine/gz/ visconti.html).

125 Thomas von Essen, Strong of Heart: Life and Death in the Fire Department of New York (New York: William Morrow, 2002), 45.

126 Dean E. Murphy, September 11: An Oral History (New York: Doubleday, 2002), 175-76.

127 David Ray Griffin, 9/11 Contradictions: An Open Letter to Congress and the Press (Northampton: Olive Branch Press, 2008), 226-29.

128 Ibid., Chap. 7, "How Did Rudy Giuliani Know the Towers Were Going to Collapse?"

129 "Another Smoking Gun? Now CNN Jumps the Gun," Information Liberation, February 27, 2007 (www.informationliberation.com/?id=20521).

130 See Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones, "BBC Reported Building 7 Had Collapsed 20 Minutes Before It Fell," Prison Planet.com, February 27, 2007 (www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2 ... lding7.htm); "BBC's 'WTC 7 Collapsed at 4:45 p.m.' Videos," What Really Happened (www.whatreallyhappened.com/bbc_wtc7_videos.html).

131 Richard Porter, "Part of the Conspiracy?" February 27, 2007 (www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/02/ part_of_the_conspiracy.html).

132 Sheila Barter, "How the World Trade Center Fell," BBC News, September 13, 2001 (news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1540044.stm).

133 "The Conspiracy Files: 9/11," produced by Guy Smith, was broadcast February 18, 2007, by BBC 2. The documentary can be viewed on Live Video (www.livevideo.com/video/094F3DD8A30B485 ... onspiracy- files-9-11-p1.aspx?lastvcid=78869). I pointed out some of the failings of this show in my Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory (Northampton: Olive Branch Press, 2007). A more extensive, truly devastating, critique has been provided in a documentary, "911 and the British Broadcasting Conspiracy," produced by Adrian Connock (video.google.com/ videoplay?docid=-1882365905982811133). Still another devastating critique has charged that this program egregiously violates the BBC's charter, which stipulates: "The BBC must do all it can to ensure that controversial subjects are treated with due accuracy and impartiality in all relevant output." Pointing out that there are over 230 survivors of 9/11 and family members of victims who have publicly questioned the official story, this critique asks: "How could the BBC make a documentary without including even one 'questioning' survivor, eye witness or relative of a victim?" Moreover, the critique adds: "Neither is any mention made of the many politicians, military personnel, scientists, engineers and pilots who question the accuracy of the government's account." Still more: "The BBC omits the all-important question of physics, with the Twin Towers and Building 7 disintegrating at near free-fall speed-yet no account made for conservation of energy momentum, nor of the source of energy needed to turn most of the rowers into dust, fragmented rubble and pockets of molten iron. How were the immutable laws of physics suspended?" ("Reviewing the BBC's Coverage of the 2001 Attack on the World Trade Center & the Pentagon," which is on a blog called Monitoring Authority: BBC Charter Compliance [www.bbcmot.blogspot.com ]).

134 Richard Porter, "Part of the Conspiracy? (2)," BBC World, March 2, 2007 (www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/03/ ... acy_2.html) .

135 Guns and Butter, KPFA, April 27, 2005 (kpfa.org/archives/ index.php?arch=78l), quoted in Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones, "More Ground Zero Heroes on the Record: Building 7 Was Deliberately Brought Down," Prison Planet (www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2007/ 090207broughtdown.htm) .

136 "Seven Is Exploding" (www.youtube.com/watch?v=58h0LjdMry0).

137 Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones, "More Ground Zero Heroes on the Record."

138 America Rebuilds, PBS documentary, September 2002. This portion of the program can now be seen on YouTube (www.youtube.com/ watch?v=CahEva8zQas) .

139 NIST NCSTAR 1-9: 301-02. NIST's footnote says: "Letter from Silverstein Properties to NIST, March 24, 2006."

140 See "We Are Change Confronts Larry Silverstein 3/13/03," 911 Blogger.com (www.911blogger.com/node/14361).

141 NIST NCSTAR 1-9: 303.

142 David Dunbar and Brad Reagan, eds., Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts: An In-Depth investigation by Popular Mechanics (New York: Hearst Books, 2006), 58.

143 This endorsement was given in a critique of 9/11 Revealed: The Unanswered Questions, by Rowland Morgan and Ian Henshall (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005). This critique, entitled "9/11 Revealed? New Book Repeats False Conspiracy Theories," was published on a US Department of State webpage called "Identifying Misinformation" in 2005, the year that Condoleezza Rice became secretary of state. It remained there throughout Rice's tenure but has since been removed. It can still be read, however, on the Internet Archive (web.archive.org/web/20080214143807re_/ usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Sep/16-241966.html).

144 "WTC 7 Technical Briefing," at 2: 19:50.

145 Ibid., at 2:22:05.

146 Ibid., at 2:27:50.

147 Rather's statement is available on YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvx904dAw0o).

148 See Patriots Question 9/11: Hugo Bachmann (www.patriotsquestion911. com/engineers.html#Bachmann) and Jorg Schneider (patriotsquestion911.com/engineers.html#Schneider). These quotations were drawn from Daniele Ganser, "Swiss Professors: WTC 7 Most Likely Controlled Demolition," trans. Jesse Goplen, Journal of 9/11 Studies, Letters, February 29, 2008. This letter can be accessed directly (journalof911studies.com/ letters/d/GanserSwissProfs.pdf) or by scrolling down to "Prof. Ganser article in English (February 29, 2008)" under "Letters" (journalof911 studies. com/ letters.html).

149 Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (www.ae911truth.org/supporters.php?g=ENG#998929).

150 Jowenko Explosieve Demolitie B.V

151 See "Danny Jowenko on WTC 7 Controlled Demolition," YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=877gr6xtQIc). or, for more of the interview, "Jowenko WTC 7 Demolition Interviews," in three parts (www.youtube.com/ watch?v=k3DRhwRN06I&feature=related). These videos are taken from a Dutch television program entitled Zembla Investigates 9/11 Theories (cgi.omroep.nl/cgi-bin/streams?/tv/vara/zembla/bb.20060911.asf). A portion of this interview is contained in Loose Change Final Cut.

152 Patriots Question 9/11 (patriotsquestion911.com/engineers.html# Jowenko).

153 Interview of Danny Jowenko by Jeff Hill, Patriots Question 9/11 (patriotsquestion911.com/engineers.html#Jowenko).

154 "Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation (Updated 04/21/2009)" (www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/ wtc_qa_082108.html).
admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 36125
Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am

PreviousNext

Return to Political Science

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 11 guests

cron