Part 1 of 2
4. NIST'S IGNORING OF PHYSICAL EVIDENCE FOR EXPLOSIVESAs we saw in Chapter 2, one of the most important criteria for determining whether an investigation into some issue has been truly scientific is whether it reflects, in the words of Alfred North Whitehead, an "unflinching determination to take the whole evidence into account." Whitehead added that it is easy to find a theory that is logically harmonious, "provided that you are content to disregard half your evidence," but that such short cuts lead to "a merely illusory success."
It would be difficult to find a more apt description of NIST's report on WTC 7. Even if NIST's theory about the collapse of this building were logically harmonious and otherwise impeccable -- and we will see in Part II that it is not -- it would still be inadequate, because it simply ignores half of the relevant evidence. For this reason alone, any of NIST's apparent success in dealing with the mystery of WTC 7's collapse would be "merely illusory."
The ignored evidence points to explosives as the cause of the collapse of WTC 7. The evidence for explosives that NIST ignored consists of two general types, testimonial and physical. Whereas the next chapter will be devoted to testimonial evidence that explosives were used, the present chapter deals with physical evidence for this conclusion.
1. SQUIBS AND BLOWN-OUT WINDOWSIn the Introduction and Chapter 3, we saw seven features of the collapse of WTC 7 that are also common features of controlled implosions -- namely, that the collapse began at the bottom, started suddenly, was total, was vertical, occurred in virtual free fall, involved the pulverization of much of the concrete, and resulted in a relatively small pile of debris. These features, which can all be seen in videos of WTC 7's collapse, [1] are acknowledged by NIST. Bur there are two other features, which can also be seen on videos, that NIST does not acknowledge: apparent demolition squibs and windows that were blown out at the onset of the collapse.
Apparent Demolition SquibsWhen explosives are used to implode a building, it is often possible to see sequences of horizontal puffs of smoke and pulverized material, known as "demolition squibs," coming out of various floors of the building before they collapse. Examples of implosions in which squibs are visible can be viewed on the internet. [2]
One of the types of physical evidence for the conclusion that WTC 7 was imploded is that such phenomena -- which Kevin Ryan suggests would best be described as "high velocity bursts of debris ejected from point-like sources" [3] -- are visible in videos of its collapse. Physicist Steven Jones, referring to some of these videos, [4] said in a 2006 essay: [5]
[H]orizontal puffs of smoke and debris, sometimes called "squibs," emerge from the upper floors of WTC 7, in regular sequence, just as the building starts to collapse. The upper floors have evidently not moved relative to one another yet, from what one can observe on the videos .... The official reports lack an explanation for these squibs.
Defenders of the official account typically try to claim that these high-velocity ejections of debris were simply caused by compression after the floors began to collapse. In its "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions" about the Twin Towers, published in 2006, NIST gave this explanation as to why the "puffs of smoke," as it called them, did not provide evidence of controlled demolition:
[T]he falling mass of the building compressed the air ahead of it -- much like the action of a piston-forcing smoke and debris our the windows as the stories below failed sequentially. [6]
However, this explanation for the apparent demolition squibs from the Twin Towers does not fit the descriptions given by several witnesses. For example, firefighter James Curran said: "I looked back and ... I heard like every floor went chu-chu-chu .... [E]verything was getting blown our of the floors before it actually collapsed." [7] If material was being blown out from floors before those floors collapsed, then the ejections cannot be explained as resulting from compressed air caused by the collapse.
Moreover, Ryan has pointed out, videos of the collapses of the Twin Towers show that bursts of debris ejected from point-like sources sometimes occurred on floors long before the collapse front reached them. Some of the bursts occurred "at levels twenty to thirty floors below a 'collapse' front." [8]
This same problem exists with regard to the bursts of debris ejected during the collapse of WTC 7. As Jones pointed out, the bursts coming from the upper floors of WTC 7 occurred at a time when "[t]he upper floors have evidently not moved relative to one another." [9] There are videos on the internet in which these squibs, moving up the building near the top, can be seen. [10]
The concluding sentence of Jones's 2006 essay -- "The official reports lack an explanation for these squibs" -- remains true today. NIST, in fact, did not even try to explain the apparent squibs coming out of WTC 7. A search of its long (729-page) report turns up not a single instance of the word "squib" or "puff." The issue is also not addressed in its "Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation." [11] So, having given an obviously inadequate explanation of the squibs that appeared during the collapses of the Twin Towers, NIST simply ignored the squibs that are visible in videos of the collapse of WTC 7.
A Vertical Row of Blown-Out WindowsIn 2008, a video of the collapse of WTC 7 appeared on the internet that evidently had not previously been available to the public. In this video, titled "New 911 Building 7 Collapse Clearly Shows Demolition," a vertical row of approximately eight windows, between (roughly) the 29th and 37th floors, can be seen being blown out as WTC 7 begins to collapse. [12] There would seem to be no way that NIST's theory of this building's collapse, to be discussed in Part II of this book, could explain these blown-out windows. It is not surprising, therefore, that NIST did not mention them.
The apparent demolition squibs and the blown-out windows were evidently part of the physical evidence that NIST was content to ignore in order to find a politically acceptable theory. But they were only a small part. There is much more.
2. MOLTEN METAL IN THE DEBRISThe existence of molten metal -- which has usually been described as "molten steel" but may have actually been molten iron (which is a byproduct when thermite melts steel) -- was reported in the Ground Zero rubble by many credible witnesses.
Leslie Robertson, a member of the engineering firm that designed the Twin Towers, reportedly said during a speech in early October 2001: "As of 21 days after the attack, the fires were still burning and molten steel was still running." This statement was reported by James Williams, the president of the Structural Engineers Association of Utah. [13]
Two men in charge of the clean-up operation also reportedly spoke of molten steel in the rubble. Peter Tully, president of Tully Construction, said that he saw pools of "literally molten steel" at the site. Mark Loizeaux, president of Controlled Demolition, Inc., said that several weeks after 9/11, when the rubble was being removed, "hot spots of molten steel" were found "at the bottoms of the elevator shafts of the main towers, down seven [basement] levels." Loizeaux also reportedly said "that molten steel was also found at WTC 7." [14]
Firefighters at Ground Zero also reportedly spoke of having "encountered rivers of molten steel." [15] One of these firefighters was Captain Philip Ruvolo, who said: "You'd get down below and you'd see molten steel, molten steel, running down the channel rails, like you're in a foundry, like lava." [16] Joe O'Toole, a Bronx firefighter who worked on the rescue and clean-up efforts, reported that one beam lifted from deep below the surface "was dripping from the molten steel." [17]
Other people at the site reported that steel beams had become molten. Greg Fuchek, vice president of a company that supplied computer equipment employed to identify human remains, said: "[S]ometimes when a worker would pull a steel beam from the wreckage, the end of the beam would be dripping molten steel." [18] Tom Arterburn, writing in waste Age, reported that the New York Department of Sanitation removed "everything from molten steel beams to human remains." [19]
Health professionals who visited the site gave similar testimonies. One of these was Dr. Ronald Burger of the National Center for Environmental Health, who spoke of "[f]eeling the heat, seeing the molten steel." [20] Dr. Alison Geyh of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, who headed up a scientific team that went to the site shortly after 9/11 at the request of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said: "Fires are still actively burning and the smoke is very intense. In some pockets now being uncovered they are finding molten steel." [21]
This body of testimony creates a problem for the official account, defended by NIST, according to which the only source of energy (beyond gravity) for bringing down the WTC buildings was fire (along with, in the case of the Twin Towers, the impact of the airplanes). Could the fires have melted steel?
Structural steel does not begin to melt until it reaches about 1,482°C (2,700°F). [22] NIST does not suggest that any of the steel in WTC 7 came anywhere close to this temperature. Its most extravagant claim is that some of the beams reached 675°C (1,250°F). [23] The fires, which would have been considerably hotter than the steel, would themselves not have been close to 1,482°C (2,700°F). NIST's most extravagant claim for fires, as we will see in Chapter 9, is that they reached 1,100°C (2,012°F) in some places.
If fires did not melt any steel in WTC 7, could the molten steel under WTC 7 have come from the Twin Towers, in which the fires had been fed by jet fuel? MIT's Thomas Eagar, who supports the official account of how the WTC buildings came down, says that the fires in the towers were "probably only about 1,200 or 1,300°F [648 or 704°C]." [24] For those fires to have heated any steel up even to that temperature, they would have had to have been very big and long-lasting fires, which they were not. NIST itself reported that it found "no evidence that any of [the steel in the Twin Towers] had reached temperatures above 600°C [1,100°F]." [25] NIST also explicitly stated that the fires in the towers could not have melted any steel. [26] In response to this situation, physicist Steven Jones wrote:
[NIST] admits that the fires were insufficient to melt steel beams. That admission raises the obvious question: Where, then, did the molten metal come from? [27]
NIST had three ways of responding to this question. Its first way was simply to dispute the claim that steel had melted. When John Gross, one of the authors of NIST's WTC reports, was asked about the molten steel, he challenged the questioner's "basic premise that there was a pool of molten steel," saying: "I know of absolutely no ... eyewitness who has said so." [28] As we have seen, however, many credible witnesses testified to its existence.
A second way in which NIST responded to the molten metal was to say that, if it did exist, it was probably produced in the rubble pile after the collapse. One of the questions raised in response to NIST's 2005 report on the Twin Towers was: "Why did the NIST investigation not consider reports of molten steel in the wreckage from the WTC towers?" NIST replied:
Under certain circumstances it is conceivable for some of the steel in the wreckage to have melted after the buildings collapsed. Any molten steel in the wreckage was more likely due to the high temperature resulting from long exposure to combustion within the pile than to short exposure to fires or explosions while the buildings were standing. [29]
But there are two problems with this response.
One problem is that this response is simply incredible. Structural steel does not begin to melt, as we saw, until it reaches almost 1,500°C (2,732°F). For a fire to heat steel up to that temperature, it would obviously have to be at least that hot. But a diffuse hydrocarbon fire, even if oxygen is abundant, could never get much above 1,000°C (l,832°F). NIST's answer, therefore, implausibly suggested that combustion in an oxygen-starved pile of rubbish could produce temperatures 500°C (almost 900°F) hotter than the world's hottest forest fire.
A second problem with this answer by NIST is that, as Steven Jones has pointed out, it is a purely speculative -- that is, unscientific -- answer. In the experimental sciences, a claim, to count as a scientific claim, must be supported either by experimental evidence or historical precedent. Jones wrote:
It would be interesting if underground fires could somehow produce molten steel, but then there should be historical examples of this effect, since there have been many large fires in numerous buildings. But no such examples have been found. It is not enough to argue hypothetically that fires could possibly cause all three pools of molten metal. One needs at least one previous example. [30]
NIST also could have carried out an experiment to find out whether steel could melt in such an environment. But it provides no evidence of having done so.
NIST's third response to the molten metal was to declare that, even if it existed, it was irrelevant. NIST wrote:
The condition of the steel in the wreckage of the WTC towers (i.e., whether it was in a molten state or not) was irrelevant to the investigation of the collapse since it does not provide any conclusive information on the condition of the steel when the WTC towers were standing. [31]
This answer, which NIST presumably meant to apply to WTC 7 as well the Twin Towers, is absurd. If molten steel -- or molten iron, a byproduct produced when steel is melted by certain substances, such as thermite -- was present in the rubble, it does provide some information on the condition of the steel when the buildings were still standing. It indicates that during the final moments of the buildings, some of their steel was melted.
As emphasized in Chapter 2, a purported explanation of some event cannot be considered adequate unless it takes into account all of the evidence related to that event. Philosopher of science James Fetzer, responding to NIST's claim that the molten metal was irrelevant to understanding the collapse, has written:
The presence of molten metal .. three, four, and five weeks later cannot be "irrelevant" to the NIST explanation of the "collapse," since it was an effect of that event. If the NIST cannot explain it, then the NIST's account is incomplete and fails to satisfy a fundamental requirement of scientific reasoning, known as the requirement of total evidence, which states scientific reasoning must be based upon all of the available relevant evidence. [32]
NIST's failure to do justice to the squibs, the blown-out windows, and the pools of molten metal would, by themselves, make its theory inadequate. But there are still more things that NIST ignores.
3. SCIENTIFIC REPORTS INDICATING EXTREMELY HIGH TEMPERATURESThree studies, which were surely known to the scientists at NIST, reported phenomena in the Ground Zero debris that could have been created only by extremely high temperatures.
The RJ Lee ReportIn May 2004, the RJ Lee Group issued a report entitled "WTC Dust Signature" at the request of the Deutsche Bank, which had occupied the building at 130 Liberty Street, across from the South Tower. The occasion for this request by Deutsche Bank was its insurer's claim that most of the dust in the building was "either innocuous or, to the extent that it contained contamination, resulted from a pre-existing condition." The purpose of the RJ Lee study was to prove that the building was "pervasively contaminated with WTC Dust, unique to the WTC Event." [33] This study was not, therefore, aimed at determining the cause of the collapses. But it did report findings that bear on this question.
The RJ Lee report of May 2004 represented, incidentally, a revision of an earlier report, entitled "WTC Dust Signature Study: Composition and Morphology," dated December 2003. [34] Why the report was revised is not made clear, but there are some interesting differences between the two versions.
In order to prove the Deutsche Bank's contamination claim, the RJ Lee Group argued in its final report that the dust in the building had characteristics that resulted from "the collapse of the WTC Towers and the subsequent fires at the WTC site which collectively were unique events that produced unique dust." In a statement that explained its title, the RJ Lee report added: "The unique characteristics of this dust are collectively referred to as the WTC Dust Signature," which "differentiate[s] it from other building dust." [35]
The report then listed five main elements in this signature, one of which was: "Spherical iron and spherical or vesicular silicate particles that result from exposure to high temperature." [36] This statement, which implies (without explicitly stating) that iron had melted, is the only statement about the modification of iron by high temperature in the final version of the RJ Lee report.
The earlier version, by contrast, had contained much more about iron. It said: "Particles of materials that had been modified by exposure to high temperature, such as spherical particles of iron and silicates, are common in WTC Dust ... but are not common in 'normal' interior office dust." [37] This 2003 version of the report even pointed out that, whereas iron particles constitute only 0.04 percent of normal building dust, they constituted (a whopping) 5.87 percent of WTC dust. This earlier version also explicitly stated that iron and other metals were "melted during the WTC Event, producing spherical metallic particles." [38]
The word "melt" was completely absent, by contrast, from the 2004 version. Only scientifically informed readers would realize that the existence of spherical iron particles implied that iron had melted. Nevertheless, the final version of the RJ Lee report did indicate that the dust contained spherical iron and silicate particles, which had been produced by "high temperatures."
What caused these high temperatures? Making no suggestion that these high-temperature effects had been produced by explosives, the RJ Lee report instead said: "[T]he heat affected particles result from the fires that ensued following the WTC Event." [39] (The earlier report had similarly attributed the particles to "the fire that accompanied the WTC Event." [40])
This explanation, however, does not work. The existence of "spherical iron particles" means -- as the 2003 report had explicitly stated -- that iron had been melted. Iron does not melt until it reaches 1,538°C (2,800°F), [41] and the building fires, as we saw earlier, could not have heated iron anywhere close to that temperature.
The RJ Lee report, moreover, suggested that some substances must have been heated to still higher temperatures. Lead must have become hot enough to volatilize (boil) and hence to vaporize:
The presence of lead oxide on the surface of mineral wool indicate [sic] the existence of extremely high temperatures during the collapse which caused metallic lead to volatilize, oxidize, and finally condense on the surface of the mineral wool. [42]
Although the word "vaporize" was never used in the final version of the RJ Lee report, the 2003 version of this passage explicitly referred to temperatures "at which lead would have undergone vaporization." [43] For lead to boil and hence vaporize, it must be heated to 1,749°C (3,180°F). [44] As the report indicates, therefore, the temperatures must have been not merely high but extremely high. [45]
The purpose of the RJ Lee report, as stated before, was simply to prove that the Deutsche Bank building had been pervasively contaminated by dust from the destruction of the World Trade Center. For this purpose, the report merely needed to show that the dust in this building had a distinctive signature that identified it as WTC dust. There was no need for the report to explain the origin of all the ingredients in this signature. Insofar as the report did, nevertheless, suggest that all of the effects requiring high temperatures were caused by fire, it was inadequate, because phenomena such as melted iron and vaporized lead could not have been produced by fire.
In spite of this defect, however, the report was commendable from a scientific point of view, precisely because it reported phenomena that it was unable to explain.
NIST's treatment was not equally commendable. It dealt with the RJ Lee report's revelation -- that certain ingredients in the WTC dust had been produced by extremely high temperatures -- by simply ignoring it. From reading NIST's reports on the Twin Towers and WTC 7, one would never know about the remarkable findings of the RJ Lee Group's extensive study of the WTC dust.
The USGS ReportAnother major report, "Particle Atlas of World Trade Center Dust," came our in 2005. Written by Heather Lowers and Gregory Meeker on behalf of the United States Geological Survey (USGS), it was intended to aid the "identification of WTC dust components."
For our present purposes, the most significant feature of this report was its statement that the WTC dust signature included "trace to minor amounts" of "metal or metal oxides" (which its methods could not clearly distinguish). It said, in particular: "The primary metal and metal-oxide phases in WTC dust are Fe-rich [iron-rich] and Zn-rich [zinc-rich] particles." [46] One must, however, wonder at its suggestion that there were at most "minor" amounts of iron-rich particles, given the statement by the 2003 version of the RJ Lee report that these particles constituted almost 6.0 percent of the WTC dust.
In any case, the existence of the iron-rich particles was even emphasized by the inclusion of micrographs for two of them, one of which was labeled "iron-rich sphere." [47]
How do these iron-rich spherical particles or "spherules," as they are sometimes called, come about? As indicated earlier, iron must be melted and then -- as explained by Steven Jones and several coauthors in an article to be discussed below -- "sprayed into the air so that surface tension draws the molten droplets into near-spherical shapes." [48]
This means that the USGS's report mentions the existence of particles in the dust that should not have been there, given the official explanation of the collapses (according to which they were produced by a combination of airplane impacts, fire, and gravitation, without the aid of explosives). And yet the USGS report, like the RJ Lee report, provides no explanation as to how those iron-rich spheres could have been created. But at least the USGS report, like the RJ Lee report, did mention these phenomena.
By contrast, just as NIST did not mention the RJ Lee report's findings, it also did not mention those of the USGS report, even though this report had been produced by another agency of the federal government (the USGS is an agency of the US Department of the Interior). NIST thereby avoided the need to explain how these iron-rich particles could have been created without explosives to produce the requisite temperature.
The failure of the NIST scientists to mention these iron-rich particles, it should be emphasized, was not based on ignorance of them. It was a simple refusal to mention them -- a refusal that could be defended only by a pretense not to understand a basic principle of scientific method. After the release of NIST's Draft report on WTC 7 in August 2008, a member of the 9/11 truth movement asked NIST about the iron-rich spheres. NIST replied with one sentence: "The NIST investigative team has not seen a coherent and credible hypothesis for how iron-rich spheres could be related to the collapse of WTC 7." [49] In giving this answer, the NIST scientists pretended not to understand that the scientific method works the other way around. Scientists cannot legitimately refuse to mention some phenomenon until they have found a "coherent and credible hypothesis" to account for it (and certainly not until they have found a politically acceptable hypothesis). The empirical dimension of scientific methodology demands that empirical data be reported, whether or not a hypothesis is currently on hand to explain them. To refuse to report the data is to commit scientific fraud.
The Report by the Steven Jones GroupNIST also ignored a third scientific report describing phenomena in the WTC dust that could have been produced only by extremely high temperatures. Entitled, in fact, "Extremely High Temperatures during the World Trade Center Destruction," this report, published by Steven Jones and seven other scientists early in 2008, pointed out the existence of particles in the dust that required even higher temperatures than those implied by the reports of the RJ Lee Group and the USGS.
Using their own samples of WTC dust, which had been collected on or shortly after 9/11 -- either right after the collapse of the WTC buildings or inside some buildings near the WTC site -- which means that the dust could not have been contaminated by clean-up operations at Ground Zero -- Jones and his colleagues ran their own tests. They reported finding "an abundance of tiny solidified droplets roughly spherical in shape (spherules)," which were primarily "iron-rich ... and silicates." As stated earlier, the formation of the iron-rich spherules would have required a temperature of 1,538°C (2,800°F). Silicates are compounds of silicon, oxygen, and a metal, which is often aluminum. The formation of aluminosilicate spherules, which were found in abundance, would have required a temperature of 1,450°C (2,652°F). [50]
The most remarkable feature of this study, however, was its discussion of another type of spherule reportedly found in the dust. Having used a FOIA request to obtain data from the USGS that was not mentioned in its "Particle Atlas of the World Trade Center Dust," Jones and his coauthors learned that "the USGS team had observed and studied a molybdenum-rich spherule." This fact is of special significance because molybdenum (Mo) is "known for its extremely high melting point," which is 2,623°C (4,753°F). [51]
Noting that the data about this molybdenum-rich spherule "were not previously released in the public USGS reports," Jones and his coauthors pointed out that this silence was evidently not due to lack of interest, because the number of images and graphs about this spherule in the unpublished material obtained by the FOIA request shows that "considerable study was performed on this Mo-rich spherule." They added: "No explanation of the high temperature needed to form the observed Mo-rich spherule is given in the USGS material (either published or obtained by FOIA action)." [52]
The material obtained through the FOIA request also contained no explanation as to why the USGS's published report did not mention the molybdenum. One might suspect that it was precisely because it is "known for its extremely high melting point." In any case, whatever be the explanation for this silence, the point at hand is that the molybdenum was also not mentioned by NIST, even though it could have obtained the information about its presence in the WTC dust from the article by the Jones group or directly from the USGS.
To summarize: Although NIST claimed that it knew of no evidence that explosives had been used, it ignored evidence, provided by three different sets of scientists, showing that the WTC dust contained particles that could have been created only by extremely high temperatures -- temperatures that could not have been produced by fire.
4. THE "DEEPEST MYSTERY": THINNING AND SULFIDATION OF STEELNIST also ignored evidence of extremely high temperatures published by a fourth set of scientists. Although the discussion of this report could have been included in the previous section, it is discussed separately for two reasons: first, this report introduces a new factor, the sulfidation of metal; and second, this report was published as an appendix to FEMA's WTC report, which was the predecessor to NIST's reports.
The New York Times on the "Deepest Mystery"In light of Shyam Sunder's announcement that NIST had solved the mystery of the collapse of WTC 7, we would assume that its report would, at least, have explained a phenomenon that had been called the deepest mystery associated with this collapse. But it did not.
In a New York Times story published in February 2002, James Glanz and Eric Lipton wrote:
Perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation involves extremely thin bits of steel collected ... from 7 World Trade Center .... The steel apparently melted away, but no fire in any of the buildings was believed to be hot enough to melt steel outright.
Glanz and Lipton's final sentence states the mystery: Although fire could not have melted steel, steel had melted. In suggesting a possible solution, Glanz and Lipton wrote:
A preliminary analysis of the steel at Worcester Polytechnic Institute using electron microscopes suggests that sulfur released during the fires -- no one knows from where -- may have combined with atoms in the steel to form compounds that melt at lower temperatures. [53]
As their statement mentions, sulfur can greatly lower the temperature at which Structural steel will melt, as Steven Jones points out. [54]
Far from providing a possible solution, however, this information simply deepened the mystery, for three reasons. First, NIST itself does not claim, as we saw earlier, that any of the steel in WTC 7 was heated even to 700°C, let alone to 1,000°C. So the fact that sulfur can lower steel's melting point to about 1,000°C does not explain why some of the building's steel had melted, if the official explanation, according to which fire brought the building down, is presupposed. Second, as Glanz and Lipton indicate, as long as that explanation is presupposed, the presence of the sulfur constitutes a second mystery. Third, even if the presence of sulfur could be explained, there would still be the mystery of how some of it, as they reported, "combined with atoms in the steel," because that could happen only at extremely high temperatures.
The WPI ReportIn mentioning Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), Glanz and Lipton were alluding to the fact that three professors involved in that school's Fire Protection Engineering program -- Jonathan Barnett, Ronald R. Biederman, and Richard D. Sisson, Jr. -- had analyzed a section of steel from WTC 7 (as well as a section from one of the Twin Towers). [55] Their discoveries were then reported in an article by Joan Killough-Miller entitled "The 'Deep Mystery' of Melted Steel," which appeared in a WPI publication. [56]
This article brought out the implications of the professors' analysis even more fully than did the New York Times story. In a statement that is especially significant in light of NIST's conclusion that WTC 7 was caused to collapse by "an ordinary building contents fire," [57] this article said:
[S]teel -- which has a melting point of 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit -- may weaken and bend, but does not melt during an ordinary office fire. Yet metallurgical studies on WTC steel brought back to WPI reveal that a novel phenomenon -- called a eutectic reaction -- occurred at the surface, causing intergranular melting capable of turning a solid steel girder into Swiss cheese.... The New York Times called these findings "perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation." The significance of the work on a sample from Building 7 and a structural column from one of the twin towers becomes apparent only when one sees these heavy chunks of damaged metal. A one-inch column has been reduced to half-inch thickness. Its edges -- which are curled like a paper scroll -- have been thinned to almost razor sharpness. Gaping holes -- some larger than a silver dollar -- let light shine through a formerly solid steel flange. This Swiss cheese appearance shocked all of the fire-wise professors, who expected to see distortion and bending -- but not holes. [58]
As this statement makes clear, the startling discovery was that something had melted the steel so as to reduce its thickness and even produce holes in it. The WPI professors, therefore, had pointed to another phenomenon indicating that effects had been produced in WTC 7 that could not have been produced by "an ordinary building contents fire."
Statements about Vaporized Steel Attributed to Professors Barnett and Astaneh-AslIn an article that appeared in November 2001, Glanz reported that one of the WPI professors, Jonathan Barnett, said that fire "would not explain steel members in the debris pile that appear to have been partly evaporated in extraordinarily high temperatures." [59] If Glanz (who himself has a Ph.D. in physics) was correctly reporting Barnett's statement, so that Barnett had said that some steel had evaporated, then we would be talking about very high temperatures indeed, because the normal boiling point of structural steel -- apart from a reaction involving sulfur -- is roughly the same as that of iron, namely 2,861°C (5,182°F).
The claim that some steel had evaporated was also attributed to Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl, a professor of civil engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. Immediately after 9/11, he received a National Science Foundation grant to spend two weeks at Ground Zero studying steel from the buildings. One of his discoveries involved a horizontal I-beam from WTC 7. According to a New York Times story by Kenneth Change, Astaneh-Asl reported that "[p]arts of the flat top of the I, once five-eighths of an inch thick, had vaporized." [60]
If both of these professors meant that steel had literally evaporated or vaporized, then they were both implying that some steel in WTC 7 had reached its boiling point, which is a temperature -- 2,861°C (5,182° F) -- even higher than that needed to melt molybdenum. But even if the words "evaporated" and "vaporized" were used loosely, to mean only that the melting had caused some of the steel to disappear from view, these professors were reporting phenomena that NIST's fire theory could not come close to explaining.
The Barnett-Biederman-Sisson Appendix to the FEMA ReportBarnett and the other two WPI professors reported their discoveries in an essay entitled "Limited Metallurgical Examination," which was included as an appendix to FEMA's report on the WTC buildings. [61]
Two Mysteries: In the summary of their analysis of a piece of steel from WTC 7, Barnett, Biederman, and Sisson made the following statement:
1. The thinning of the steel occurred by a high-temperature corrosion due to a combination of oxidation and sulfidation.
2. Heating of the steel into a hot corrosive environment approaching 1,000°C (1,832°F) results in the formation of a eutectic mixture of iron, oxygen, and sulfur that liquefied the steel.
3. The sulfidation attack of steel grain boundaries accelerated the corrosion and erosion of the steel.
Having mentioned sulfidation in each of these three points, they then, under the heading "Suggestions for Further Research," added: "The severe corrosion and subsequent erosion of Samples 1 and 2 are a very unusual event. No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified." [62]
NIST, as we will see later, said that it did not bother to test for sulfur because its presence in the debris would mean nothing, as it could be explained by the fact that the wallboard of the WTC buildings was made of gypsum, which is calcium sulfate.
What the WPI professors reported, however, was not merely that there was sulfur in the debris. They reported that the steel had been sulfidized, which means that sulfur had entered into the intergranular structure of the steel (which Glanz and Lipton had indicated by saying that sulfur had "combined with atoms in the steel"). As chemist Kevin Ryan has said, the question NIST would need to answer is: "[H]ow did sulfates, from wallboard, tunnel into the intergranular microstructure of the steel and then form sulfides within?" [63] Physicist Steven Jones has added:
[I]f NIST claims that sulfur is present in the steel from gypsum, they should do an (easy) experiment to heat steel to about 1000°C in the presence of gypsum and then test whether sulfur has entered the steel.. .. [I]f they actually do scientific experiments like this, they will find that sulfur does nor enter steel under such circumstances. [64]
Once again, Jones pointed out that NIST, which claims that its conclusions are based on good science, should not have answered crucial questions by merely offering speculative hypotheses. Insofar as a hypothesis suggested by NIST was amenable to empirical testing, NIST needed, in order to claim the mantle of science, to perform the test.
Jones stated, moreover, that if NIST had performed the test, the result would have been negative. Niels Harrit, a chemist at the University of Copenhagen, has explained why this can be known in advance: Although gypsum contains sulfur, this is not elemental sulfur, which can react, but sulfur in the form of calcium sulfate, which cannot. [65]
We have seen, in any case, that the WPI professors were puzzled by two mysteries: the source of the sulfur in the steel and the intergranular melting caused by a "eutectic" reaction. [66]
The Thermate Solution: There is a well-known possible answer for both mysteries, namely, thermate, which results when (elemental) sulfur is added to thermite. Steven Jones has written:
The thermate reaction proceeds rapidly and is in general faster than basic thermite in cutting through steel due to the presence of sulfur. (Elemental sulfur forms a low-melting-temperature eutectic with iron.) [67]
Besides providing an explanation for the eutectic reaction, thermate can also, Jones pointed out, explain the melting, oxidation, and sulfidation of the steel studied by the WPI professors:
When you put sulfur into thermite it makes the steel melt at a much lower temperature, so instead of melting at about 1,538°C [2,800°F] it melts at approximately 988°C [l ,820°F], and you get sulfidation and oxidation in the attacked steel. [68]
Although the WPI professors did not mention this possible explanation of the phenomena they reported, they did speak of the possibility that the corrosion and erosion "started prior to collapse and accelerated the weakening of the steel structure." In light of that possibility, moreover, they concluded: "A detailed study into the mechanisms of this phenomenon is needed." [69]
NIST's Response to the FEMA AppendixGiven the presence of this statement in an appendix to FEMA's WTC report, which came out in 2002, we would assume that NIST would have studied this phenomenon. This is especially the case in light of the fact that Arden Bement, who was the director of NIST when it took on the WTC project, said that NIST's projected report would address "all major recommendations contained in the [FEMA] report." [70]
That, however, would not be the case. NIST's report on WTC 7 -- like its earlier report on the Twin Towers -- did not even mention the discovery of the three WPI professors, which had been reported in the appendix to the FEMA report and elsewhere. It ignored, therefore, what the New York Times had called "perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation."
In spite of this fact, Shyam Sunder, as we saw, declared that NIST had solved the mystery of the collapse of WTC 7.
NIST had said in its 2005 preliminary report on this building that it had "seen no evidence that the collapse of WTC 7 was caused by bombs or ... controlled demolition." [71] In its final report, it says: "NIST found no evidence of a blast or controlled demolition event." [72] In an alternative formulation, which evidently used "blast event" for any kind of explosion occurring as part of a controlled demolition, NIST said that it "found no evidence whose explanation required invocation of a blast event." [73]
The authors of the NIST report, however, clearly knew about the thinned and sulfidized steel reported in the FEMA report's appendix. They also surely knew about the report by Professor Astaneh-Asl, which had been discussed in a New York Times story. [74] They also knew, on the one hand, that fire could not have produced these phenomena and, on the other hand, that thermate, which is thermite to which sulfur has been added, could produce them. As Kevin Ryan has pointed out: "The thermite reaction, available in several useful variations for the purposes of cutting steel, can explain this thinning and sulfidation quite readily." [75] The NIST authors knew, therefore, that these phenomena provided prima facie evidence that explosives or steel-cutting incendiaries with sulfur, perhaps thermate, had gone off in WTC 7.
It would seem, therefore, that a more candid statement by these authors would have been: NIST, being an agency of the Bush-Cheney administration's Commerce Department, could not report any evidence whose explanation required invocation of a "controlled demolition event. " But these NIST authors were clearly not being paid to be candid.
NIST's Denial of Recovered WTC 1 Steel: Besides ignoring the startling discoveries of Professor Astaneh-Asl and the three WPI professors, NIST's reports even claimed that no recovered steel from WTC 7 existed to be studied. Its "Questions and Answers" document of August 2008 included the following question: "Why didn't the investigators look at actual steel samples from WTC 7?" In its answer, NIST wrote:
Steel samples were removed from the site before the NIST investigation began. In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, debris was removed rapidly from the site to aid in recovery efforts and facilitate emergency responders' efforts to work around the site. Once it was removed from the scene, the steel from WTC 7 could not be clearly identified. Unlike the pieces of steel from WTC 1 and WTC 2, which were painted red and contained distinguishing markings, WTC 7 steel did not contain such identifying characteristics. [76]
This statement was clearly intended to give the impression that no steel from WTC 7 had been recovered. NIST had even made this claim explicitly in a 2005 report. [77] In light of the experiments on pieces of WTC 7 steel reported by the four professors, how could we avoid concluding that this statement was simply a lie?
The falsity of NIST's claim was pointed out by a critic in one of the "Comments" posted at NIST's website in response to its Draft for Public Comment, issued in August 2008. Referring to NIST's 2005 report stating that no steel from WTC 7 was recovered, this critic, using the pseudonym "Skeptosis," wrote:
NIST seems to have made no effort to obtain or examine existing steel samples (such as the heavily corroded beam featured in FEMA 403, Appendix C) known to have come from WTC 7, choosing instead to estimate the properties of the steel "completely from the literature."
Being required by NIST's protocol to explain the reason for his comment and to provide a suggested revision of the passage, Skeptosis added these statements:
Reason for Comment: Surely the theoretical steel described in the literature would not show any signs of sulfidation and erosion (as were found on the actual steel recovered from WTC 7), ensuring that NIST would not be required to investigate or identify the cause of this bizarre phenomenon.
Suggestion for Revision: "While steel from WTC 7 was, in fact, recovered, NIST made no efforts to obtain or examine this steel. Despite the failures of previous examinations to determine the cause of the sulfidation and erosion of steel samples from WTC 7, NIST felt that an investigation into the potential causes of this deterioration could threaten the Institute's ability to arrive at a conclusion that would not implicate domestic saboteurs." [78]
Whether this letter made the NIST authors smile, I do not know. But it did not, in any case, lead them to revise their report.
Sunders Oral Acknowledgment of the Sulfidized Steel: NIST's defenders cannot, incidentally, suggest that NIST may have failed to mention the sulfidized steel simply because it did not know about it. Besides the fact that this steel was mentioned in the appendix to the FEMA report on WTC 7, Shyam Sunder himself mentioned it during a "technical briefing" on WTC 7 that he gave on August 26, 2008, shortly after the release of NIST's Draft for Public Comment. In response to a question by attorney James Gourley as to whether NIST had tested "any WTC 7 debris for explosive or incendiary chemical residues," Sunder said:
With regard to the issue of the residue, there is reference often made to a piece of steel from Building 7 that is documented in the earlier FEMA report that deals with some kind of a residue that was found, sulfur-oriented residue. And in fact that was found by a professor who was then at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Professor Jonathan Barnett. But that piece of steel has been subsequently analyzed by Professor Barnett and by Professor Rick Sisson, who is also from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and they reported in a BBC interview that aired on July 6 [2008] [79] that there was no evidence that any of the residue in that. .. piece of steel had any relationship to an undue fire event in the building or any other kind of incendiary device in the building. [80]
This response raises five questions.
First, it reveals that NIST's lead investigator knew about this "piece of steel from Building 7," and yet NIST, besides not mentioning it in its Draft for Public Comment, which was released five days before this technical briefing, also did not mention it in its Final Report, which was issued three months later.
Second, NIST continued to claim in its public documents that no steel from WTC 7 had been recovered: In an updated version of its "Questions and Answers" document about WTC 7, which appeared in December 2008, NIST repeated the statement quoted above from the first version of this document, in which it had claimed that "the steel from WTC 7 could not be clearly identified" -- even though this was almost four months after Sunder's acknowledgment that he knew about at least one piece of steel recovered from WTC 7. [81] There can be no doubt, therefore, that NIST was guilty of scientific fraud by deliberately failing to report, and even denying the existence of, evidence that contradicted its theory.
Third, Sunder acknowledged knowing about this piece of steel only after two of the professors who had reported it -- Jonathan Barnett and Richard Sisson -- had stated on a BBC program about WTC 7 (to be discussed in the next chapter) that, in Sunder's paraphrase, "there was no evidence that any of the residue in that ... piece of steel had any relationship to an undue fire event in the building or any other kind of incendiary device in the building." Why had he not acknowledged it earlier, before he had a statement from them that could be used to suggest -- even if deceptively -- that it no longer posed a threat to NIST's theory? This is not how science is supposed to operate.
Fourth, the Barnett-Sisson-Sunder statement did not really lessen the threat to the official story posed by this piece of steel, which had been melted, oxidized, and sulfidized -- processes that would take extremely high temperatures. If these changes in the steel were not caused by fire (as everyone agrees) or some kind of "incendiary device" (such as one made of thermate) or by an explosive, then how were they brought about? Neither Barnett, Sisson, nor Sunder answered this question. For people who accept the official account of the destruction of the World Trade Center, this melted, oxidized, and sulfidized piece of steel still remains a deep mystery.
Fifth, given the fact that this piece of steel had been publicly acknowledged as a deep mystery, it clearly demanded a thorough investigation and discussion. And yet NIST's only public treatment of it consisted of Sunder's paraphrase of a statement made on a television show. If this is how the present staff at NIST believes that science should be done, then it would seem that a thorough housecleaning (among other things) is in order, if President Obama's commitment to good science is to be fulfilled.