by Prof David Ray Griffin
May 30, 2010
from
GlobalResearch Website
|
David Ray Griffin is the author
of 36 books on various topics, including philosophy, theology,
philosophy of science, and 9/11.
His 2008 book, The New Pearl
Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé, was named a
“Pick of the Week” by Publishers Weekly.
In September 2009, The New
Statesman ranked him #41 among “The 50 People Who Matter Today.”
His most recent book is The
Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official
Report about 9/11 is Unscientific and False (2009).
His next book will be Cognitive
Infiltration: An Obama Appointee’s Plan to Undermine the 9/11
Conspiracy Theory (September 2010).
He wishes to thank Tod
Fletcher, Jim Hoffman, and Elizabeth Woodworth for help with this
essay. |
At 5:21 PM on 9/11, Building 7 of the World
Trade Center collapsed, even though it had not been hit by a plane - a fact
that is important because of the widespread acceptance of the idea, in spite
of its scientific absurdity, that the Twin Towers collapsed because of the
combined effect of the impact of the airliners plus the ensuing jet-fuel-fed
fires.
The collapse of World Trade Center 7 (WTC
7) thereby challenges the official account of the destruction of
the World Trade Center, according to which it was accomplished by al-Qaeda
hijackers, even if one accepts the government’s scientifically impossible
account of the Twin Towers.
This fact was recently emphasized in the title
of a review article based on my 2009 book,
The Mysterious Collapse of
World Trade Center 7,[1] by National Medal of Science-winner
Lynn Margulis:
“Two Hit, Three Down - The Biggest Lie.”[2]
1. Why the Collapse of
WTC 7 Created an Extraordinary Problem
The collapse of WTC 7 created an extraordinary problem for the official
account of 9/11 for several reasons.
An Unprecedented Occurrence
One reason is that, because of the collapse of WTC 7, the official account
of 9/11 includes the dubious claim that, for the first time in the known
universe, a steel-frame high-rise building was brought down by fire, and
science looks askance at claims of unprecedented occurrences regarding
physical phenomena.
New York Times writer James Glanz, who himself
has a Ph.D. in physics, wrote:
“[E]xperts said no building like it, a
modern, steel-reinforced high-rise, had ever collapsed because of an
uncontrolled fire.”
Glanz then quoted a structural engineer as
saying:
“[W]ithin the structural engineering
community, [WTC 7] is considered to be much more important to understand
[than the Twin Towers],” because engineers had no answer to the
question, “why did 7 come down?”[3]
Visual Evidence of Implosion
Equally remarkable, besides the mere
fact that this building came down, was the way it collapsed:
straight down, in virtual free fall, making
the destruction of this building appear to be an example of the type of
controlled demolition known as “implosion,” in which explosives and/or
incendiaries are used to slice the building’s steel support columns in
such a way as to cause the building to collapse into its own footprint.
CBS anchor Dan Rather, not one to let a
remarkable fact go unremarked, said:
“[I]t’s reminiscent of those pictures we’ve
all seen... on television..., where a building was deliberately
destroyed by well-placed dynamite to knock it down.”[4]
Dan Rather, moreover, was not the only reporter
to make such a comment.
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.”[5]
Moreover, whereas Jones and Rather, being laymen
in these matters, merely said that the collapse of Building 7 looked like a
controlled demolition, experts, upon seeing the video, could tell
immediately that it actually was a controlled demolition.
In 2006, for example, a Dutch filmmaker asked
Danny Jowenko, the owner of a controlled demolition company in the
Netherlands, to comment on a video of the collapse of WTC 7, without telling
him what it was. (Jowenko had been unaware that a third building had
collapsed on 9/11.)
After viewing the video, Jowenko said:
“They simply blew up columns, and the rest
caved in afterwards... This is controlled demolition.”
When asked if he was certain, he replied:
“Absolutely, it’s been imploded. This was a
hired job. A team of experts did this.”[6]
Testimonies about Explosions
Besides the obviousness from the very appearance of the collapse of Building
7 that it was a product of controlled demotion, there were testimonies about
explosions in this building.
One of these was provided by Michael Hess, New York City’s
corporation counsel and a close friend of Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
While on his way back to City Hall, Hess was
stopped for an interview at 11:57 that morning, during which he said:
“I was up in the emergency management center
on the twenty-third floor [of WTC 7], and when all the power went out in
the building, another gentleman and I walked down to the eighth floor
[sic] where there was an explosion and we were trapped on the eighth
floor with smoke, thick smoke, all around us, for about an hour and a
half. But the New York Fire Department... just came and got us out.”[7]
Hess thereby reported a mid-morning explosion in
WTC 7.
The other gentleman, Barry Jennings of the New York City Housing Authority,
reported the same thing during another on-the-street interview, reporting
that he and “Mr. Hess” had been walking down the stairs when they became
trapped by a “big explosion.”[8] Jennings, in fact, said that explosions
continued going off while they were waiting to be rescued.[9]
There were also reports of explosions in the late afternoon, just as WTC 7
started coming down.
Reporter Peter Demarco of the New York
Daily News said:
“[T]here was a rumble. The building's top
row of windows popped out. Then all the windows on the thirty-ninth
floor popped out. Then the thirty-eighth floor. Pop! Pop! Pop! was all
you heard until the building sunk into a rising cloud of gray.”[10]
NYPD officer Craig Bartmer gave the
following report:
“I was real close to Building 7 when it fell
down... That didn't sound like just a building falling down to me... .
There's a lot of eyewitness testimony down there of hearing
explosions... [A]ll of a sudden... I looked up, and... [t]he thing
started pealing in on itself... I started running... and the whole time
you're hearing ‘boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.’”[11]
A New York University medical student, who had
been serving as an emergency medical worker that day, gave this report:
“[W]e heard this sound that sounded like a
clap of thunder... [T]urned around - we were shocked... [I]t looked like
there was a shockwave ripping through the building and the windows all
busted out... [A]bout a second later the bottom floor caved out and the
building followed after that.”[12]
Physical Evidence
In addition to the visual and testimonial evidence, there was clear physical
evidence that explosives and incendiaries were used to bring down WTC 7.
Swiss-Cheese Steel:
Within a few months of 9/11, three
professors from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) had issued a
report about a piece of steel from Building 7 that was described in a
New York Times story by James Glanz and Eric Lipton as,
“[p]erhaps the deepest mystery uncovered
in the investigation.”13
Part of the mystery was the fact that the steel
was,
“extremely thin,” indicating that the steel
had “melted away,” even though “no fire in any of the buildings was
believed to be hot enough to melt steel outright.”
Another part of the mystery was that atoms in
the steel seemed to have combined with sulfur,
“to form compounds that melt at lower
temperatures,” but as to the source of the sulfur, “no one knows.”[14]
Describing this mysterious piece of steel more
fully, an article entitled “The ‘Deep Mystery’ of Melted Steel” in WPI’s
magazine, 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... reveal that... a
eutectic reaction... caus[ed] intergranular melting capable of turning a
solid steel girder into Swiss cheese... 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.
A eutectic compound is a mixture [involving
sulfur]...
‘The important questions,' says [one of
the professors], ‘are how much sulfur do you need, and where did it
come from?’”[15]
The thinning and the holes even suggested that
the steel had vaporized.
Explaining as early as November 2001 why fire could
not account for this mysterious steel, Glanz paraphrased one of the three
WPI professors, Jonathan Barnett, as saying that it,
“appear[ed] to have been partly
evaporated
in extraordinarily high temperatures.”[16]
Another New York Times story reported that the
same phenomenon was described by Professor Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl of the
University of California at Berkeley, who had received a National Science
Foundation grant to spend two weeks at Ground Zero studying steel from the
buildings.
According to reporter Kenneth Change, Professor Astaneh-Asl, speaking of a horizontal I-beam from WTC 7, said:
“Parts of the flat top of the I, once
five-eighths of an inch thick, had vaporized.”[17]
These reports clearly showed that something
other than fire had been making things happen in the buildings, because the
fires could not possibly have been higher than 1800 degrees Fahrenheit,
while the boiling point of steel is roughly the same as that of iron, which
is 5182°F.
But even if the steel had not evaporated but had
simply melted, that by itself would have proved the point, because the
melting point of steel is only a little less than that of iron, which is
2800°F.
(An obvious source of both the melting and the
sulfidation would be a well-known incendiary,
thermate - a “mixture of
thermite and sulfur... which lowers the melting point of iron it contacts
when reacting by forming a eutectic system,” which is “useful in cutting
through steel.”)[18]
Evidence in Plain Sight
Therefore, clear evidence against the official account of Building 7,
according to which it was brought down by fire, existed in plain sight in
the form of videos of its collapse, published testimonies about explosions
in the building, and physical evidence reported in the New York Times.
The reasonable inference to draw from this
evidence - namely, that the official account is false - was reinforced by
the first official report on this building’s collapse, which was issued in
2002 by
FEMA.
Besides including as an appendix the paper by
the WPI professors containing the study of the Swiss-cheese piece of steel
recovered from WTC 7 - a study that attributed the erosion to “oxidation and
sulfidation” while adding:
“No clear explanation for the source of the
sulfur has been identified”[19] - the engineers who wrote the
FEMA report admitted that their “best hypothesis” about why WTC 7
collapsed had “only a low probability of occurrence.”[20]
Failure to Become Well Known
In addition to all these facts, WTC 7 was a very big building, being 47
stories high and having a base about the size of a football field.
Although it was dwarfed by the 110-story Twin
Towers, it would have been the tallest building in half of the states in the
nation. For all of these reasons, the collapse of this building should have
become one of the best-known facts about 9/11.
But it did not.
2. Widespread
Ignorance about WTC 7
A Zogby poll in May 2006 found that 43 percent of the American people were
unaware that WTC 7 had collapsed,[21] and that same year, as
mentioned earlier, Danny Jowenko of the Netherlands still did not know about
it, even though controlled demolition was his field.
A dramatic example of the fact that this building’s collapse has not been
prominent in the public consciousness was provided in a New York City
courtroom in September 2009. Judge Edward Lehner was hearing
arguments about a petition sponsored by NYC CAN to allow residents to vote
on whether New York City should have its own investigation of the World
Trade Center attacks.
After Judge Lehner had observed that the 9/11
Commission had carried out an investigation and issued a report, Dennis
McMahon, a lawyer for NYC CAN, said that this report left many unanswered
questions.
“One of the biggest questions,” he added,
“is why did Building 7 come down” - at which point Judge Lehner asked:
“Building what?”
McMahon replied:
“World Trade Center Seven. There were three
buildings that came down.”
When the judge, continuing to illustrate his
ignorance about this building, asked if it was owned by the Port Authority,
McMahon replied that it was owned by
Larry Silverstein.[22]
Judge Lehner, it should be emphasized, was not simply an ordinary American
citizen. Besides being a judge presiding in New York City, he had been
assigned to a case involving the 9/11 attacks in this city. So his ignorance
about this building was surprising. And yet it was typical.
With his query -
“Building what?” - he expressed the ignorance manifested in 2006 by
controlled demolition expert Danny Jowenko and almost half of the American
people.
How can we account for this ignorance?
Abnormal Circumstances
In a New York Times story in November 2001, James Glanz wrote
that the collapse of WTC 7 was,
“a mystery that under normal circumstances
would probably have captured the attention of the city and the world.”[23]
Clearly these were not normal circumstances.
Part of the abnormality was the fact that Building 7, while huge, was
overshadowed by the Twin Towers, which were over twice as tall. This fact by
itself, however, would not account for the enormous ignorance of this third
building’s collapse.
Knowledgeable people had said right away, as
Glanz pointed out, that there was a sense in which the collapse of Building
7 should have been the bigger story.
Why was it not?
Deliberate Suppression
The answer seems to be that it was a deliberately suppressed story.
This
conclusion is supported by the following facts:
-
First, after 9/11 itself, our television
networks played videos of the Twin Towers being hit by planes, then
coming down, over and over, but the collapse of Building 7 was
seldom if ever shown.
-
Second, when The 9/11 Commission Report
was issued in 2004, it did not even mention that Building 7 came
down.
-
Third, after
NIST - the National Institute of
Standards and Technology - took over from
FEMA the task of explaining the
destruction of the World Trade Center, it repeatedly delayed its
report on WTC 7.
In 2003, NIST said that this report would be
issued along with its report on the Twin Towers, the draft of which was to
appear in September 2004.[24]
However, even though NIST’s report on the Twin
Towers did not actually appear until 2005, the promised report on WTC 7 was
not included: NIST said that it would appear in 2006.
But when August of 2006 came, NIST said:
“It is anticipated that a draft report [on
WTC 7] will be released by early 2007.”[25]
But it was not released in 2007 - either early
or late. Instead, NIST in December 2007 “projected” that it would release
draft reports on July 8, 2008, followed by final reports on August 8, 2008.[26]
Instead, the draft report did not appear until
August, and the final report not until November of that year - when the
Bush-Cheney administration was about to leave office.
Moreover, when in 2008 NIST was accused of having deliberately delayed its
report on WTC 7 (which the
9/11 Truth Movement had long considered the
“Achilles Heel” or “Smoking Gun” of the official account of 9/11[27]),
NIST lied, saying that it had worked on this report only since 2005 and
hence for only three years - the same length of time it had worked on its
Twin Towers report.
Actually, however,
NIST had filed
progress reports on WTC 7 in December 2002 and May 2003;[28] in
June 2004, it published an Interim Report on WTC 7;[29] and in
April 2005, NIST released another preliminary report on WTC 7.[30]
Then, after ceasing work on this building until
after the report on the Twin Towers was issued in October 2005, NIST
reported,
“the investigation of the WTC 7 collapse
resumed.”[31]
In truth, therefore, NIST had worked on its
report on WTC 7 for almost six years, not merely three.
So there was good reason to suspect that this
report had been deliberately delayed for as long as possible.
3. NIST’s Draft for
Public Comment: Mystery Solved?
Be that as it may, when the Draft for Public Comment did finally
appear in August 2008, it was announced at a press conference with much
bravado.
Shyam Sunder, NIST’s lead investigator
for its World Trade Center projects, said:
“Our take-home message today is that the
reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery.
WTC 7 collapsed because of fires fueled by office furnishings. It did
not collapse from explosives.”[32]
The mainstream media for the most part simply
repeated Sunder’s claims.
For example, an Associated Press story entitled
“Report: Fire, Not Bombs, Leveled WTC 7 Building,” began by saying:
“Federal investigators said Thursday they
have solved a mystery of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: the collapse of
World Trade Center building 7, a source of long-running conspiracy
theories.”
Then, after reinforcing this message by quoting
Sunder’s assurance that “the reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7
is no longer a mystery,” this story concluded by quoting his claim that the
science behind NIST’s findings is,
"incredibly conclusive," so that “[t]he
public should really recognize that science is really behind what we
have said.”[33]
Reporters, however, could easily have discovered
that this was not so.
They could have seen, in fact, that NIST’s WTC 7
report repeatedly committed scientific fraud in the technical sense, as
defined by the National Science Foundation.
4. NIST's
Falsification of Evidence
One type of fraud is falsification, which includes “omitting data.”[34]
While claiming that it “found no evidence of
a... controlled demolition event,”[35] NIST simply omitted an
enormous amount of evidence for that conclusion.
Omitting Testimonial Evidence
NIST failed, for one thing, to mention any of the testimonial evidence for
explosions.
Besides claiming that the event described as a
mid-morning explosion by Michael Hess and Barry Jennings was
simply the impact of debris from the collapse of the North Tower - which
occurred at 10:28 and hence about an hour later than the explosion they had
described - NIST failed to mention any of the reports of explosions just as
the building started to come down.
Omitting Physical Evidence:
NIST’s report on this building also omitted
various types of physical evidence.
The Swiss-Cheese Steel:
One of these was the piece of Swiss-cheese
steel reported by the three WPI professors in a paper that was, as
mentioned earlier, included as an appendix to the 2002
FEMA report.
After describing the erosion of this piece of steel, the professors had
said:
“A detailed study into the mechanisms of
this phenomenon is needed.”[36]
When NIST took over from FEMA the
responsibility of issuing the official reports on the World Trade
Center, NIST’s director promised that its reports would address “all
major recommendations contained in the [FEMA] report.”[37]
However, when NIST’s report on Building 7
appeared in 2008, it did not even mention this mysterious piece of
steel, let alone explain how it had been produced. NIST even claimed
that no recovered steel from WTC 7 had been identified, because the
steel used in this building, unlike the steel used in the Twin Towers,
“did not contain... identifying characteristics.”[38]
NIST made this claim, incidentally, even though it had previously
published a document in which it had referred to steel recovered from
WTC 7, including the piece discussed by the WPI professors in the
appendix to the FEMA report.
This claim about not identifying any steel
was made by NIST (in August 2008), moreover, even though one of these
professors, Dr. Jonathan Barnett, had during a BBC program on WTC 7 (in
July 2008) discussed an “eroded and deformed” piece of steel that he and
his colleagues had studied in 2001, explaining that they knew “its
pedigree” because “this particular kind of steel” had been used only in
WTC 7, not in the Twin Towers.[39]
Melted Iron:
Deutsche Bank, which had a building close to
the World Trade Center that had been contaminated with dust, hired the
RJ Lee Group, a scientific research organization, to prove to its
insurance company that the dust contaminating its building was not
ordinary building dust, as its insurance company claimed, but had
resulted from the destruction of the World Trade Center.
Reports issued by the RJ Lee Group in 2003
and 2004 proved that the dust was indeed WTC dust, having its unique
chemical signature.
Part of this signature, the RJ Lee Group said in its
final (2004) report, was,
“[s]pherical iron... particles,”
and this meant, it had pointed out in its 2003 report, that iron had
“melted during the WTC Event, producing spherical metallic
particles.”[40]
The RJ Lee reports thereby provided
additional evidence that temperatures had been reached that
significantly exceeded those that could have been produced by fire.
These reports, which were made known in an
article published in January 2008 by a group of scientists led by
physicist Steven Jones,[41] were simply ignored by NIST.
Melted Molybdenum:
Another study was carried out by scientists
at the US Geological Survey.
Besides also finding the spherical iron
particles, these scientists found that something had melted molybdenum[42]
- which has an extremely high melting point: 4,753°F (2,623°C).[43]
Although these USGS scientists failed to
mention this discovery in the published version of their report, a group
of scientists led by Steven Jones, having obtained the USGS team’s data
through a FOIA request, reported evidence that this team had devoted
serious study to “a molybdenum-rich spherule.”[44]
NIST, however, failed to mention this
discovery by the US Geological Survey, although it is another federal
agency.
Nanothermite:
A peer-reviewed report by University of
Copenhagen chemist Niels Harrit and several co-authors, including
physicist Steven Jones and chemist Kevin Ryan, showed that the WTC
dust
contained unreacted nanothermite.
Unlike ordinary thermite, which is an
incendiary, nanothermite is a high explosive.
This report by Harrit, Jones, Ryan, and their colleagues did not appear
until 2009,45 so it could not have been mentioned in NIST’s
final report, which came out at the end of November 2008. However, given
the standard guidelines for the investigation of building fires, NIST
should have tested the WTC dust for signs of incendiaries, such as
ordinary thermite (including thermate), and explosives, such as
nanothermite.[46]
When asked whether it had carried out such tests, NIST said it had not.[47]
When a reporter asked NIST spokesman Michael
Newman why not, he replied:
“[B]ecause there was no evidence of
that.”
When the reporter asked the obvious
follow-up question,
“[H]ow can you know there’s no evidence
if you don’t look for it first?” Newman replied: “If you’re looking
for something that isn’t there, you’re wasting your time... and the
taxpayers’ money.”[48]
5. NIST’s Fabrication of
Evidence
Besides omitting and otherwise falsifying evidence, NIST also committed the
type of scientific fraud called fabrication, which means simply “making up
results.”[49]
No Girder Shear Studs
For example, in offering its
explanation as to how fire caused Building 7 to collapse, NIST said that the
culprit was thermal expansion, meaning that the fire heated up the steel,
thereby causing it to expand.
Expanding steel beams on the 13th
floor, NIST claims, caused a steel girder connecting columns 44 and 79 to
break loose. Having lost its support, column 79 failed, starting a chain
reaction in which all the other columns failed.[50]
Leaving aside the question of whether this is even remotely possible, let us
simply ask: Why did that girder fail?
NIST’s answer was that it was not connected to
the floor slab with sheer studs. NIST wrote:
“In WTC 7, no studs were installed on the
girders.”[51]
In another passage, NIST said:
“Floor beams... had shear studs, but the
girders that supported the floor beams did not have shear studs.”[52]
However, NIST’s Interim Report on WTC 7, which
it published in 2004 before it had developed its girder-failure theory, said
shear studs were used to anchor “[m]ost of the beams and girders,” including
the girder in question.[53]
A Raging 12th Floor Fire at 5:00
Although in its 2004 Interim Report on WTC 7, NIST said that by 4:45 PM,
“the fire on Floor 12 was burned out,”[54] it claimed in its 2008
report that at 5:00, just 21 minutes before the building collapsed, the fire
on this floor was still going strong.[55]
6. NIST’s Final
Report: Affirming a Miracle
NIST’s final report on WTC 7, which appeared in November 2008, was for the
most part identical with its draft report, which had appeared in August.
But NIST did add a new element: the affirmation of a
miracle, meaning a
violation of a fundamental law of physics.
This issue is treated in a cartoon in which a professor has written a proof
on a chalkboard.
Most of the steps consist of mathematical equations, but
one of them simply says:
“Then a miracle happens.”[56]
This is humorous because one thing scientists
absolutely cannot do in their scientific work is appeal to miracles, even
implicitly.
And yet that is what
NIST does. I will explain.
NIST’s August 2008 Denial of Free Fall
Members of the 9/11 Truth Movement had long been pointing out that Building
7 came down at the same rate as a free-falling object, or at least virtually
so.
But in NIST’s Draft for Public Comment, issued
in August 2008, it denied this, saying that the time it took for the upper
floors - the only floors that are visible on the videos - to come down,
“was approximately 40 percent longer than
the computed free fall time and was consistent with physical
principles.”[57]
As this statement implies, any assertion that
the building did come down in free fall would not be consistent with
physical principles - meaning the laws of physics.
Explaining why not, during a “WTC 7 Technical
Briefing” on August 26, 2008, Shyam Sunder said:
“[A] free fall time would be [the fall time
of] an object that has no structural components below it... [T]he...
time that it took... for those 17 floors to disappear [was roughly 40
percent longer than free fall]. 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.”[58]
In saying this, Sunder was, of course,
presupposing NIST’s rejection of controlled demolition - which could have
produced a free-fall collapse by causing all 82 columns to fail
simultaneously - in favor of NIST’s fire theory, which necessitated a theory
of progressive collapse.
Chandler’s Challenge and NIST’s November
Admission of Free Fall
In response, high-school physics
teacher David Chandler, who was able to speak at this briefing, challenged
Sunder’s denial of free fall, stating that Sunder’s,
“40 percent” claim contradicted “a publicly
visible, easily measurable quantity.”[59]
Chandler then placed a video on the Internet
showing that, by measuring this publicly visible quantity, anyone knowing
elementary physics could see that,
“for about two and a half seconds..., the
acceleration of the building is indistinguishable from freefall.”[60]
Amazingly, in NIST’s final report, which came
out in November 2008, it admitted free fall.
Dividing the building’s descent into three
stages, NIST described the second phase as,
“a freefall descent over approximately eight
stories at gravitational acceleration for approximately 2.25 s[econds].”[61]
So, after presenting over 600 pages of
descriptions, photographs, testimonies, graphs, analyses, explanations, and
mathematical formulae, NIST says, in effect:
“Then a miracle happens.”
Why this would be a miracle was explained by
Chandler, who said:
“Free fall can only be achieved if there is
zero resistance to the motion.”[62]
In other words, the upper portion of Building 7
could have come down in free fall only if something had suddenly removed all
the steel and concrete in the lower part of the building, which would have
otherwise provided resistance.
If everything had not been removed and the upper
floors had come down in free fall anyway, even for only a second, a miracle
- meaning a violation of laws of physics - would have happened.
That was what Sunder himself had explained the previous August, saying that
a free-falling object would be one “that has no structural components below
it” to offer resistance.
But then in November, while still defending its
fire theory of collapse, NIST agreed that, as an empirical fact, free fall
happened. For a period of 2.25 seconds, NIST admitted, the descent of WTC 7
was characterized by “gravitational acceleration (free fall).”[63]
Knowing that it had thereby affirmed a miracle,
NIST no longer claimed that its analysis was consistent with the laws of
physics. In its August draft, in which it said that the collapse occurred 40
percent slower than free fall, NIST had repeatedly said that its analysis
was “consistent with physical principles.”
One encountered this phrase at least three
times.[64]
In the final report, however, every instance of
this phrase had been removed. NIST thereby almost explicitly admitted that
its report on WTC 7, by admitting free fall while continuing to deny that
explosives and incendiaries were used, is not consistent with the principles
of physics.
Implications
NIST thereby implicitly acknowledged that Building 7 was intentionally
demolished. It also thereby implicitly admitted the same about the Twin
Towers, because the collapses of these buildings manifested many of the same
tell-tale signs of controlled demolition as did WTC 7, plus some additional
ones, including the horizontal ejection of sections of steel columns,
weighing many thousands of pounds, more than 500 feet from the towers.
(These ejections occurred at the outset of the
collapses, after which the Towers came straight down.).[65]
And with this implicit admission that the collapses were examples of
controlled demolition, NIST undermined the al-Qaeda theory of 9/11.
Why?
-
For one thing, the straight-down nature
of the collapses of the Twin Towers and Building 7 means that the
buildings were subjected to the type of controlled demolition known
as “implosion,” which is, in the words of a controlled demolition
website,
Al-Qaeda terrorists would not have had
this kind of expertise.
-
Second, the only reason to go to the
trouble of bringing a building straight down is to avoid damaging
nearby buildings. Had the World Trade Center buildings toppled over
sideways, they would have caused massive destruction in Lower
Manhattan, crushing dozens of other buildings and killing tens of
thousands of people.
Does anyone believe that, even if
al-Qaeda operatives had had the expertise to make the buildings come
straight down, they would have had the courtesy?
-
A third problem is that foreign
terrorists could not have obtained access to the buildings for all
the hours it would have taken to plant incendiaries and explosives.
Only insiders could have done this.[67]
7. Explaining the Ignorance
about WTC 7
NIST’s admission that Building 7 came down in free fall for over two seconds
should, therefore, have been front-page news.
The same is true, moreover, of the various other
things I have reported - NIST’s fabrications; NIST’s omission and distortion
of testimonial evidence; NIST’s omissions of physical evidence, such as the
Swiss-cheese steel and the particles showing that iron and molybdenum had
been melted; and the later discovery of nanothermite particles in the WTC
dust.
Especially given the fact that the collapse of
Building 7 had been declared a mystery from the outset, the world should
have been waiting with bated breath for every new clue as to why this
47-story building had come down. Upon hearing Building 7 mentioned, nobody
in the world with access to CNN should have asked, “Building what?”
How do we explain the fact that five and even
nine years after the mysterious collapse of this building, ignorance about
it was still widespread?
To begin answering this question, let us return to James Glanz’s statement
that the collapse of WTC 7 was,
“a mystery that under normal circumstances
would probably have captured the attention of the city and the world.”[68]
As I stated before, the abnormality seems to
have been such that videos and even the very fact of this building’s
collapse were deliberately suppressed.
What was this abnormality?
SCADs
A symposium in the February 2010 issue of American Behavioral Scientist,
one of our leading social science journals, argues that social scientists
need to develop a scientific approach to studying an increasingly important
type of criminality:
State Crimes Against Democracy,
abbreviated SCADs,[69] understood as,
“concerted actions... by government
insiders intended to manipulate democratic processes and undermine
popular sovereignty.” Having the “potential to subvert political
institutions and entire governments... [SCADs] are high crimes that
attack democracy itself.”[70]
Distinguishing between SCADs that have been
officially proven, such as,
“the Watergate break-ins and cover-up... ,
the secret wars in Laos and Cambodia... , the illegal arms sales and
covert operations in Iran-Contra... , and the effort to discredit Joseph
Wilson by revealing his wife’s status as an intelligence agent,” on the
one hand, and suspected SCADs for which there is good evidence, on the
other, the symposium authors include in the latter category “the
fabricated attacks on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964... , the
“October Surprises” in the presidential elections of 1968... and 1980...
, the assassinations of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy... , the
election breakdowns in 2000 and 2004... , the numerous defense failures
on September 11, 2001... , and the misrepresentation of intelligence to
justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq.”[71]
Besides regarding 9/11 as one of the suspected
SCADs for which there is good evidence, this symposium treats it as its
primary example.
The abstract for the introductory essay begins
by asserting:
“The ellipses of due diligence riddling the
official account of the 9/11 incidents continue being ignored by
scholars of policy and public administration.”[72]
The symposium’s final essay, criticizing the
majority of the academic world for its “blithe dismissal of more than one
law of thermodynamics” that is violated by the official theory of the World
Trade Center collapses,[73] also criticizes the academy for its
failure to protest when,
“Professor Steven Jones found himself forced
out of a tenured position for merely reminding the world that physical
laws, about which there is no dissent whatsoever, contradict the
official theory of the World Trade Center Towers’ collapse.”[74]
The authors of this symposium point out,
moreover, that the official theory of the destruction of the three World
Trade Center towers has serious implications for science and engineering.
If NIST’s explanation “provides the most robust
account of the Towers’ collapse, based on known science,” then some
previously accepted physical laws would need to be revised:
“[These laws] would have to succumb, at some
point, to the theoretical claims purported to explain the Towers’
collapse: New laws determining when steel melts and the phases at which
such material loses its tensile strength would have at some point to
replace existing science-based presumptions.”[75]
This revision of physical laws would also have
practical implications for building codes:
“[T]he specifications of design for all
skyscrapers ought, in the public interest, to be subjected to major
review.” The acceptance of NIST’s account, therefore, creates an
“obvious crisis,” which should be evoking scientific and practical
responses.[76]
The practical crisis that should have been
caused by NIST’s report on WTC 7 had previously been addressed by four of
the “Jersey Girls,” who had been instrumental in getting the 9/11 Commission
created.
In a statement released in September 2008,
they wrote:
“Over the past seven years, the Families of
the 9/11 Victims have been repeatedly told by fire experts, engineers
and architects that we should NOT FOCUS our efforts on advocating for
building and fire code changes based on the collapse of the WTC 1 and 2
towers. We were continuously reminded that the crashing of airplanes
into buildings was a unique event.
Additionally, we were told that the
design and construction of WTC Towers 1 and 2 was unique and that there
were no other buildings of that particular height or design in the
world. We were repeatedly told that the key was WTC 7 since this
building was of conventional design and height, yet it too collapsed
without the unique event of an airplane striking it...
“Dr. Shyam Sunder of NIST... stated that WTC 7 met all New York City
codes. Yet, WTC 7 is the first steel high-rise building of traditional
construction in the United States - and the world, to completely
collapse as a result of fire. According to... Dr. Sunder, "there were no
flaws with the construction of the building."
“We don't how the rest of the country is feeling about this news, but we
are very scared! These findings suggest that ANY EXISTING building is
prone to a progressive collapse if a fire should start and the sprinkler
system fails for whatever reason...
“The ultimate purpose of advocating for the $16 million to have NIST
study this event was to determine how to make buildings safer in the
future. If we are now to believe that any skyscraper is subject to total
collapse from fire, why isn't NIST emphasizing the impact on EXISTING
buildings?... NIST needs to... provide guidance for EXISTING buildings.
“NIST should put the most important conclusion in plain English and
announce it to the entire country: UNCONTROLLED FIRES IN HIGH-RISE
BUILDINGS CAN LEAD TO THEIR TOTAL COLLAPSE... NIST must address this
dangerous issue immediately.
The future safety of the public and the
fire services hangs in the balance.”[77]
Like the SCADs symposium, this brilliant piece
of satire makes clear that NIST’s explanation of WTC 7’s collapse should
have created a crisis in many fields, both theoretical and practical.
The implications of NIST’s explanation should
have been extensively discussed in technical journals of various types and
then in newspapers and on television programs and radio talk shows. But no
such discussion occurred. The worlds of physics, engineering, building
codes, and public safety continued on as if the report had never been
issued.
How can we understand this?
Hiding the Most Obvious Evidence that 9/11 Was
a SCAD
If the reason why the collapse of WTC
7 did not occur “under normal circumstances” is the fact that it was part of
9/11, which was a SCAD, then it would not be surprising that the collapse of
this building, which “under normal circumstances would probably have
captured the attention of the city and the world,” did not do so.
If 9/11 was a SCAD, the collapse of WTC 7 would not have been allowed to
capture the world’s attention for the reasons mentioned earlier:
Unlike the Twin Towers, it was not hit by a
plane; because of this, there was no jet fuel to spread big fires to
many floors; its collapse, unlike that of each of the Twin Towers,
looked exactly like a classic implosion, in which the collapse begins
from the bottom and the building folds in upon itself, ending up almost
entirely in its own footprint; and the videos show that it came down, at
least part of the way, in absolute free fall.
The fact that Building 7 was brought down by
controlled demolition was, therefore, more obvious.
This greater obviousness is illustrated not only by Danny Jowenko’s
response, but also by the many engineers and scientists who joined the 9/11
Truth Movement only after seeing a video of this building’s collapse.
For example, Daniel Hofnung, an engineer
in Paris, wrote:
“In the years after the 9/11 events, I
thought that all I read in professional reviews and French newspapers
was true. The first time I understood that it was impossible was when I
saw a film about the collapse of WTC 7.”[78]
Likewise, civil engineer Chester Gearhart wrote:
“I have watched the construction of many
large buildings and also have personally witnessed 5 controlled
demolitions in Kansas City. When I saw the towers fall on 9/11, I knew
something was wrong and my first instinct was that it was impossible.
When I saw building 7 fall, I knew it was a controlled demolition.”[79]
This video was also decisive for University of
Copenhagen chemist
Niels Harrit, who later became the first author of the nanothermite paper.
When asked how he became involved with these
issues, he replied:
“It all started when I saw the collapse of
Building 7, the third skyscraper. It collapsed seven hours after the
Twin Towers. And there were only two airplanes. When you see a 47-storey
building, 186 meters tall, collapse in 6.5 seconds, and you are a
scientist, you think “What?” I had to watch it again...and again. I hit
the button ten times, and my jaw dropped lower and lower.
Firstly, I had never heard of that building
before. And there was no visible reason why it should collapse in that
way, straight down, in 6.5 seconds. I have had no rest since that day.”[80]
Given these reactions, it is obvious why, if
9/11 was a State Crime Against Democracy, the fact of Building 7’s collapse,
especially the video of this collapse, had to be suppressed as much as
possible.
WTC 7 as a Dud?
Having made this point, I need to respond
to an obvious objection:
If those who were responsible for bringing
down Building 7 were going to need to suppress the video of its
collapse, why did they wait until late in the afternoon, when the air
was clean and cameras would be trained on this building, with the
consequence that we have perfectly clear videos of the collapse of this
building from various angles, each one showing its straight-down
free-fall descent?
Why did they not bring it down in the
morning, shortly after one of the Twin Towers had collapsed, when the
resulting dust cloud would have made any images impossible?
After the collapse of the North Tower at 10:28,
for example, visibility did not return sufficiently for film crews to come
back to the area, NIST reported, until 11:00.[81]
Had Building 7 been imploded at, say, 10:45, its
collapse would still have been a big mystery, but there would have been no
videos showing that it had come straight down and, for over two seconds, in
absolute free fall.
There are many reasons, as I showed in an appendix to The Mysterious
Collapse of World Trade Center 7, to believe that this had indeed been
the plan, but that this building was, as one researcher put it, “a dud”[82]
- meaning that,
“the demolition system in WTC 7 simply did
not respond as intended and the building defiantly remained intact.”[83]
As a result, agents were perhaps sent into the
building to set fires to provide the basis for a cover-story saying that
fires had brought the building down.
This hypothesis - that fires were set in the
building only after a controlled demolition system had failed to bring it
down in the morning - would explain why, although the fires in Building 7
were supposedly started by burning debris from the North Tower’s collapse at
10:28, no flames are visible in this building, as NIST admits, until after
noon, and on some floors there is no photographic evidence of fire until
3:40 PM or even later.[84]
I have emphasized this likelihood - that the destruction of WTC 7 was a
botched operation - because if true it provides the clearest possible
illustration of the theme of this essay, namely, that SCADs can be hidden in
plain sight.
There are literally dozens of problems in the
official account of 9/11 sufficiently serious to show the official story to
be false. But the clearest proof is provided by the video of this enormous
building coming straight down in absolute free fall.
And yet even though this proof has existed in
plain sight for all these years, the fact that 9/11 was an inside job, and
hence a State Crime Against Democracy, has remained a hidden fact, at least
in the sense that it is not part of the public conversation.
If the destruction of WTC 7 was a botched
operation, then the hiding of the fact that 9/11 was a SCAD is even more
impressive.
How has this hiding been achieved?
Hiding SCADs: The Role of the Mainstream Media
Peter Dale Scott, discussing the erosion of the US Constitution in
recent times, suggests that,
“this erosion has been achieved in part
through a series of important deep events in [post-World-War-II]
American history - events aspects of which... will be ignored or
suppressed in the mainstream media.”[85]
Indeed, Scott adds:
“[T]he mainstream U.S. media... have become
so implicated in past protective lies... that they, as well as the
government, have now a demonstrated interest in preventing the truth
about any of these events from coming out. This means that the current
threat to constitutional rights does not derive from the deep state
alone...
[T]he problem is a global dominance mindset
that prevails not only inside the Washington Beltway but also in the
mainstream media... , one which has come to accept recent inroads on
constitutional liberties, and stigmatizes, or at least responds with
silence to, those who are alarmed by them... [A]cceptance of this
mindset’s notions of decorum has increasingly become a condition for
participation in mainstream public life.”[86]
Referring thereby to events such as,
...Scott by “deep events” means the same types
of events called SCADs by the authors of the symposium on that topic.
Indeed, one of those authors explicitly cites
Scott’s writings, treating his “deep events” as examples of SCADs and
quoting his statements about the complicity of the mainstream media in
covering up the truth about these events.[87]
These authors also make the same point themselves, remarking that,
“the U.S.
government’s account of 9/11 [is] parroted by the
mainstream media”[88]
and commenting on, “the profound disavowal of still burning,
molten questions originating at 9/11 Ground Zero gone begging by the
American media.”[89]
Besides parroting the government’s account of
9/11 and stigmatizing those who provide alternative accounts with the
discrediting label “conspiracy theorists,” how has America’s mainstream
media kept the truth about WTC 7 hidden from the majority of the American
people?
Through various means, including the following:
-
First, by never replaying the statements
by Dan Rather and other reporters about how the collapse of WTC 7
looked just like a controlled demolition.
-
Second, by seldom if ever replaying the
video of this building’s collapse.
-
Third, by never mentioning credible
critiques of the official account. For example, The Mysterious
Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report
about 9/11 is Unscientific and False, which has been endorsed by
prestigious scientists and engineers, has never been reviewed in the
mainstream media, even though my previous 9/11 book, The New Pearl
Harbor Revisited, was a Publishers Weekly “Pick of the Week” in
2008.[90]
-
Fourth, by never mentioning, except for
one story that apparently slipped through,[91] the existence of an
organization called Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, which
by now has some 1,200 professional architects and engineers calling
for a new investigation of WTC 7 as well as the Twin Towers.[92]
-
Fifth, by never reporting scientific
evidence contradicting the official account of these buildings’
destruction, such as the reported discovery of nanothermite in the
WTC dust.
-
Sixth, by overlooking the fact that
NIST’s report on WTC 7 omitted an enormous amount of evidence
showing that explosives and/or incendiaries must have been used. For
example, although the New York Times in 2002 called the piece of
Swiss-cheese steel recovered from this building “the deepest mystery
uncovered in the investigation,” it did not issue a peep when NIST’s
2008 report on this building failed to mention this piece of steel
and even claimed that no steel from this building had been
identified: The Times clearly knew better but said nothing.
-
Seventh, by not mentioning the fact,
even after it was reported in my 2009 book, The Mysterious Collapse
of World Trade Center 7, that NIST had used various types of
fabricated evidence to support its theory of a fire-induced
collapse.
-
Eighth, by reporting NIST’s August 2008
press briefing, in which Shyam Sunder announced, triumphantly, that
the “the reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no
longer a mystery” and that “science is really behind what we have
said,” but then not reporting on NIST’s final report in November of
that year, in which NIST almost explicitly admitted that science
does not stand behind, but instead contradicts, its theory of this
building’s collapse.
-
Ninth, by systematically ignoring the
fact that the official account of WTC 7’s collapse has implications
for many fields that, if taken seriously by leaders in those fields,
would demand revolutionary changes in both theory and practice.[93]
Conclusion and
Proposal
Through these and related means, the truth about the collapse of WTC 7 has
been effectively hidden, even though it has existed in plain sight all these
years.
Even the bare fact of the collapse itself has
been so effectively hidden that in 2006 over 40 percent of the American
public did not know about it, and in 2009 a judge in New York City, upon
hearing a reference to Building 7, asked:
“Building what?”
I offer this essay as a case study in the power
of the forces behind SCADs or deep events to hide things that exist in plain
sight, because if they can hide the straight-down free-fall collapse of a
47-story building captured on video in broad daylight, they can hide almost
anything.
I say this, however, not to instill despair, but to point to the seriousness
of the problem, and also to pave the way for making a proposal. Recognizing
the high correlation between those who know about the collapse of WTC 7 and
those who believe that a new - or rather real - 9/11 investigation is
needed, I propose that the international 9/11 Truth Movement initiate,
starting this September, a world-wide, year-long “Building What?” campaign.
Through this campaign, we would seek to make the
fact of its collapse so widely known that the mention of Building 7 would
never again evoke the question:
“Building What?” [94]
Notes
1 David Ray Griffin, The Mysterious Collapse
of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report about 9/11 Is
Unscientific and False (Northampton: Olive Branch [Interlink Books],
2009).
2 Lynn Margulis, “Two Hit, Three Down - The Biggest Lie,” Rock Creek
Free Press, January 24, 2010 (http://rockcreekfreepress.tumblr.com/post/353434420/two-hit-three-down-the-biggest-lie).
3 James Glanz, “Engineers Have a Culprit in the Strange Collapse of 7
World Trade Center: Diesel Fuel,” New York Times, November 29, 2001
(http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/29/nyregion/nation-challenged-site-engineers-have-culprit-strange-collapse-7-world-trade.html).
4 Rather’s statement is available on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvx904dAw0o).
5 See the video 911 Eyewitness (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=65460757734339444)
at 29:05.
6 See “Danny Jowenko on WTC 7 Controlled Demolition,” YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=877gr6xtQIc),
or, for more of the interview, “Jowenko WTC 7 Demolition Interviews,” in
three parts (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3DRhwRN06I&feature=related).
7 “Michael Hess, WTC7 Explosion Witness,” YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUfiLbXMa64).
Hess should have said “down to the sixth floor.” As Barry Jennings later
clarified, the explosion that blocked their descent occurred when they
reached the sixth floor, after which they walked back up to the eighth
floor, where they waited to be rescued; see “Barry Jennings-–9/11 WTC7
Full Uncut Interview,” Part 2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxUj6UgPODo),
at 5:08-5:33.
8 See “Barry Jennings - 9/11 Early Afternoon ABC 7 Interview” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LO5V2CJpzI).
9 This statement could previously be seen in “Barry Jennings-–9/11 WTC7
Full Uncut Interview,” Part 1, at 3:57-4:05. But at the time this essay
was posted, this portion of the interview had been blocked from the
Internet, because it is now in the film Loose Change 9/11: An American
Coup.
10 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.
11 Bartmer’s statement is quoted in Paul Joseph Watson, “NYPD Officer
Heard Building 7 Bombs,” Prison Planet, February 10, 2007 (http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2007/100207heardbombs.htm).
12 This unnamed medical student can be seen making this statement in 911
Eyewitness (at 31:30).
13 James Glanz and Eric Lipton, “A Search for Clues in Towers’
Collapse,” New York Times, February 2, 2002 (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E0DE153DF931A35751C0A9649C8B63).
14 Ibid.
15 Joan Killough-Miller, “The ‘Deep Mystery’ of Melted Steel,” WPI
Transformations, Spring 2002 (http://www.wpi.edu/News/Transformations/2002Spring/steel.html).
16 James Glanz, “Engineers Suspect Diesel Fuel in Collapse of 7 World
Trade Center,” New York Times, November 29, 2001 (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/29/nyregion/29TOWE.html).
I have here quoted Glanz’s paraphrase of Barnett’s statement.
17 See Kenneth Change, “Scarred Steel Holds Clues, And Remedies,” New
York Times, October 2, 2001 (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B05E6DC123DF931A35753C1A9679C8B63).
18 For the melting point of iron, see “Iron,” WebElements: The Periodic
Table on the Web (http://www.webelements.com/iron/physics.html). The
description of thermate is from “Thermite,” Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite),
as of May 25, 2010.
“Iron,” WebElements: The Periodic Table on the Web (http://www.webelements.com/iron/physics.html).
19 Jonathan Barnett, Ronald R. Biederman, and R. D. Sisson, Jr.,
“Limited Metallurgical Examination,” Appendix C of World Trade Center
Building Performance Study, FEMA, 2002 (http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_apc.pdf);
also available on Jim Hoffman’s website (http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/metallurgy/WTC_apndxC.htm);
see “C.2: Sample 1 (from WTC 7),” pages 1-5.
20 See FEMA, World Trade Center Building Performance Study (http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_ch5.pdf),
Chap. 5, Sect. 6.2, “Probable Collapse Sequence,” at page 31.
21 “A Word about Our Poll of American Thinking Toward the 9/11 Terrorist
Attacks,” Zogby International, May 24, 2006 (http://www.zogby.com/features/features.dbm?ID=231).
22 In the ensuing exchange, Judge Lehner showed that he was not
completely unaware of this building’s destruction, asking if it was “the
one that has been rebuilt.” Shortly thereafter, however, the judge
confused this building with the Twin Towers. See pages 16-19 of
“Proceedings, Christopher Burke et al, Petitioners. vs. Michael
McSweeney as City Clerk of New York and Clerk of the City Council of New
York and the Board of Elections in the City of New York, before
Honorable Edward H. Lehner, J. S. C., Supreme Court of the State of New
York, September 29, 2009.”
23 Glanz, “Engineers Have a Culprit in the Strange Collapse of 7 World
Trade Center.”
24 “National Construction Safety Team Advisory Committee 2003 Report to
Congress” (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/NCSTAC2003ReporttoCongressFinal.pdf),
4.
25 NIST, “Answers to Frequently Asked Questions,” August 30, 2006
(http://911research.wtc7.net/reviews/nist/WTC_FAQ_reply.html), Question
14. This is the original version of the document, which contained what
is stated in the text. But NIST, never a stickler for retaining past
statements that later prove embarrassing, “updated” this document over
two years later, on January 28, 2008 (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm).
This “updated” version of this 2006 document gives the reader the
impression that NIST in 2006 - instead of having said, “It is
anticipated that a draft report will be released by early 2007” -
actually said: “It is anticipated that a draft report will be released
for public comment by July 2008 and that the final report will be
released shortly thereafter.” The original document, as updated August
30, 2006, has been preserved in Jim Hoffman, “NIST’s World Trade Center
FAQ” (http://911research.wtc7.net/reviews/nist/WTC_FAQ_reply.html).
26 NIST, “WTC Investigation Overview,” December 18, 2007 (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/NCSTAC_December18(Sunder).pdf).
Like the NIST 2006 document discussed in the previous note, this one has
also been revised, so that it now says merely July and August, 2008,
respectively, without giving exact dates.
27 See “WTC 7: The Smoking Gun of 9/11” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwSc7NPn8Ok),
and 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 (http://infowars.wordpress.com/2007/03/05/bbcs-911-yellow-journalism-backfires).
28 “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 (http://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 (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/MediaUpdate%20_FINAL_ProgressReport051303.pdf).
29 Interim Report on WTC 7, NIST, June 2004 (http://wtc.nist.gov/progress_report_june04/appendixl.pdf).
30 “WTC 7 Collapse,” NIST, April 5, 2005 (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/WTC%20Part%20IIC%20-%20WTC%207%20Collapse%20Final.pdf).
31 “Answers to Frequently Asked Questions,” NIST, August 30, 2006
((http://911research.wtc7.net/reviews/nist/WTC_FAQ_reply.html), Question
14 (see note 25, above).
32 Shyam Sunder, “Opening Statement,” NIST Press Briefing, August 21,
2008 (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/opening_remarks_082108.html).
33 Associated Press, “Report: Fire, Not Bombs, Leveled WTC 7 Building,”
USA Today, August 21, 2008 (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-08-21-wtc-nist_N.htm).
34 National Science Foundation, Office of Inspector General, “What is
Research Misconduct?” in New Research Misconduct Policies, (http://www.nsf.gov/oig/session.pdf).
This document is undated, but internal evidence suggests that it was
published in 2001.
35 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Structural Fire Response and Probable Collapse
Sequence of World Trade Center Building 7, November 2008, Vol. 1
(http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201-9%20Vol%201.pdf) : 324.
36 Jonathan Barnett, Ronald R. Biederman, and Richard D. Sisson, Jr.,
“Limited Metallurgical Examination,” FEMA, World Trade Center Building
Performance Study, May 2002, Appendix C (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/AppendixC-fema403_apc.pdf):
13.
37 Dr. Arden L. Bement, Jr., testimony before the House Science
Committee Hearing on “The Investigation of the World Trade Center
Collapse,” May 1, 2002 (http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/wtc/official/nist/bement.htm).
In the quoted statement, “FEMA” replaces “BPAT,” which is the
abbreviation for “Building Performance Assessment Team,” the name of the
ASCE team that prepared this report for FEMA.
38 “Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation,” August
21, 2008 (http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/nist/wtc_qa_082108.html).
In response to the question, “Why didn't the investigators look at
actual steel samples from WTC 7?
” NIST replied: “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.” This document was originally available on NIST’s
website (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wtc_qa_082108.html).
However, like some other NIST reports, it has been removed. But is
preserved at Jim Hoffman’s website (http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/nist/wtc_qa_082108.html).
This statement was repeated in a version of this document that was
updated April 21, 2009, which is also preserved at Hoffman’s site
(http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/nist/wtc_qa_042109.html).
39 In NIST NCSTAR 1-3C, Damage and Failure Modes of Structural Steel
Components, September 2005 (http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201-3C%20Damage%20and%20Failure%20Modes.pdf),
the authors, Stephen W. Banovic and Timothy Foecke, referred to “the
analysis of the steel from WTC 7 (Sample #1 from Appendix C, BPAT/FEMA
study) where corrosion phases and morphologies were able to determine a
possible temperature region” (233). The BBC program was The Conspiracy
Files: 9/11 - The Third Tower, July 6, 2008 (available at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9072062020229593250#
and http://www.911blogger.com/node/16541); the statement by Barnett is
at 48:00. I am indebted to Chris Sarns for both of these discoveries.
40 RJ Lee Group, “WTC Dust Signature,” Expert Report, May 2004 (http://www.nyenvirolaw.org/WTC/130%20Liberty%20Street/Mike%20Davis%20LMDC%20130%20Liberty%20Documents/Signature%20of%20WTC%20dust/WTCDustSignature_ExpertReport.051304.1646.mp.pdf):
11; “WTC Dust Signature Study: Composition and Morphology,” December
2003 (http://www.nyenvirolaw.org/WTC/130%20Liberty%20Street/Mike%20Davis%20LMDC%20130%20Liberty%20Documents/Signature%20of%20WTC%20dust/WTC%20Dust%20Signature.Composition%20and%20Morphology.Final.pdf):
17. For discussion of the differences between these two versions of the
RJ Lee report, see Griffin, The Mysterious Collapse, 40-42.
41 Steven E. Jones et al., "Extremely High Temperatures during the World
Trade Center Destruction," Journal of 9/11 Studies, January 2008
(http://journalof911studies.com/articles/WTCHighTemp2.pdf): 8.
42 Ibid., 4-5.
43 “Molybdenum,” WebElements: The Periodic Table on the Web (http://www.webelements.com/molybdenum/physics.html).
44 For the published USGS report, see Heather A. Lowers and Gregory P.
Meeker, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of the Interior,
“Particle Atlas of World Trade Center Dust,” 2005 (http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1165/508OF05-1165.html).
The USGS’s evidence for the molybdenum-rich spherule is reported in
Steven Jones et al., “Extremely High Temperatures,” 4.
45 Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, et al., “Active
Thermitic Material Observed in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center
Catastrophe,” The Open Chemical Physics Journal 2 (2009): 7-31 (http://www.bentham.org/open/tocpj/openaccess2.htm).
46 According to the Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations, put out
by the National Fire Protection Association, investigators should, in
seeking to determine the cause of a fire, look for evidence of
accelerants, which are any substances that could be used to ignite a
fire or accelerate its progress (National Fire Protection Association’s
921 Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations, 1998 Edition, Section
12-2.4 (http://www.interfire.org/res_file/92112m.asp), and thermite
mixtures are explicitly classified as accelerants (Section 19.2.4,
“Exotic Accelerants” and “Thermite Mixtures”).
47 “Answers to Frequently Asked Questions,” NIST, August 30, 2006
(http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm), Question 12 (NIST’s
answer to this question has not been “updated” [see note 25, above]).
48 Jennifer Abel, “Theories of 9/11,” Hartford Advocate, January 29,
2008 (http://www.ae911truth.org/press/23).
49 National Science Foundation, “What is Research Misconduct?”
50 See Griffin, The Mysterious Collapse, 150-55.
51 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Vol. 1: 346.
52 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Vol. 2 (http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201-9%20Vol%202.pdf),
462.
53 See NIST, Interim Report on WTC 7 (http://wtc.nist.gov/progress_report_june04/appendixl.pdf):
L-6-7, and Griffin, The Mysterious Collapse, 212-15.
54 Interim Report on WTC 7: L-26. This contradiction is pointed out in a
video, “NIST Report on WTC7 Debunked and Exposed!” YouTube, December 28,
2008 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFpbZ-aLDLY), at 0:45 to 1:57.
55 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Vol. 2: 384, Figure 9-11.
56 This cartoon can be seen on the Internet (http://www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/pages/gallery.php).
57 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Draft for Public Comment, Vol. 2 (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/NIST_NCSTAR_1-9_vol2_for_public_comment.pdf),
595-96. In “Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation,”
which was issued August 21, 2008 (simultaneously with NIST’s Draft for
Public Comment), NIST repeated this denial, saying: “WTC 7 did not enter
free fall.” As pointed out in note 38, above, NIST has removed this
document from its website, but it has been preserved by Jim Hoffman
(http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/nist/wtc_qa_082108.html).
58 “WTC 7 Technical Briefing,” NIST, August 26, 2008. NIST has removed
this video and the accompanying transcript from the Internet. However,
Nate Flach has made the video available at Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/11941571),
and the transcript, entitled “NIST Technical Briefing on Its Final Draft
Report on WTC 7 for Public Comment,” is available at David Chandler’s
website (http://911speakout.org/NIST_Tech_Briefing_Transcript.pdf).
59 Ibid.
60 David Chandler, “WTC7 in Freefall - No Longer Controversial,”
September 4, 2008 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVCDpL4Ax7I), at 2:45.
61 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Vol. 2: 607. The same point is stated in the brief
version of NIST’s WTC 7 report, NIST NCSTAR 1A, which states: “In Stage
2, the north face descended at gravitational acceleration, as the
buckled columns provided negligible support to the upper portion of the
north face. This free fall drop continued for approximately 8 stories”
(45).
62 Chandler, “WTC7 in Freefall - No Longer Controversial,” at 3:27.
63 “Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation,” NIST,
updated April 21, 2009 (http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/nist/wtc_qa_042109.html).
(This version was “updated” from the original, which was posted August
21, 2008: see notes 38 and 57, above.) This updated document, originally
available at NIST’s website (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wtc_qa_082108.html),
has been removed it. It is preserved, however, at Jim Hoffman’s website
(http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/nist/wtc_qa_042109.html).
64 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Draft for Public Comment, Vol. 2: 595-96, 596, 610.
65 See my discussion in Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11,
the Cover-Up, and the Exposé (Northampton: Olive Branch, 2008), 30-31.
66 “The Myth of Implosion” (http://www.implosionworld.com/dyk2.html).
67 As to how domestic terrorists could have gotten access, an answer
becomes possible if we are aware that Larry Silverstein, who owned
Building 7 and had recently taken out a lease on the rest of the World
Trade Center, stood to make several billion dollars if it was destroyed
in a terrorist attack, and that a brother and a cousin of George W. Bush
were principals of a company that handled security for the World Trade
Center (Griffin, Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular
Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory
[Northampton: Olive Branch, 2007], 111).
68 Glanz, “Engineers Have a Culprit in the Strange Collapse of 7 World
Trade Center.”
69 Symposium on State Crimes Against Democracy, American Behavioral
Scientist 53 (February 2010): 783-939 (http://abs.sagepub.com/content/vol53/issue6).
Online access is expensive, but the entire issue can be purchased for
$24 (journals@sagepub.com).
70 Lance deHaven-Smith, “Beyond Conspiracy Theory: Patterns of High
Crime in American Government,” American Behavioral Scientist 53
(February 2010): 795-825 (http://abs.sagepub.com/content/vol53/issue6),
at 796.
71 Ibid. 797.
72 Ibid., 783.
73 Matthew T. Witt, “Pretending Not to See or Hear, Refusing to Signify:
The Farce and Tragedy of Geocentric Public Affairs Scholarship,”
American Behavioral Scientist 53 (February 2010): 921-39 (http://abs.sagepub.com/content/vol53/issue6),
at 934.
74 Ibid., 932 (emphasis in original).
75 Ibid., 932.
76 Ibid.
77 “Statement of September 11th Advocates Regarding the Release of the
NIST Final Draft of Collapse of WTC7” (signed by Patty Casazza, Monica
Gabrielle, Mindy Kleinberg, and Lorie Van Auken), September 26, 2008
(http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20080927030009489).
78 Daniel Hofnung, Patriots Question 9/11
(http://patriotsquestion911.com/engineers.html#DHofnung).
79 Chester W. Gearhart, Patriots Question 9/11
(http://patriotsquestion911.com/engineers.html#Gearhart).
80 “Danish Scientist Niels Harrit, on Nanothermite in the WTC Dust
(English subtitles),” YouTube, April 6, 2009 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_tf25lx_3o).
81 NIST NCSTAR 1A, Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center
Building 7 (brief report), November 2008 (http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201A.pdf):
51; NIST NCSTAR 1-9: 119.
82 Jeremy Baker, “Was WTC 7 a Dud?” Serendipity, 2005 (http://www.serendipity.li/wot/wtc7_dud.htm).
83 Jeremy Baker, “Last Building Standing,” Serendipity, 2007 (http://www.serendipity.li/wot/last_building_standing.pdf).
This is a revised and updated version of Baker, “Was WTC 7 a Dud?”
84 NIST NCSTAR 1: 1-9: 194, 243, 244, 247.
85 Peter Dale Scott, “9/11, Deep State Violence, and the Hope of
Internet Politics,” Global Research, June 11, 2008 (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9289).
86 Ibid. More recently, Scott has ceased speaking about a “deep state,”
because it suggests an organized entity with a location, and speaks
instead only of “deep events” brought about by “deep forces.” This
revised language is reflected in his forthcoming book, American War
Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to
Afghanistan (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), in which he refers
to “deep events” as “events that are systematically ignored, suppressed,
or falsified in public (and even internal) government, military, and
intelligence documents as well as in the mainstream media and public
consciousness,” and says that underlying these events “is frequently the
involvement of deep forces linked either to the drug traffic or to
agencies of surveillance (or to both together).” He then adds: “A
clearly defined deep event will combine both internal features -
evidence, such as a discernible cover-up, that aspects are being
suppressed - and external features - an ongoing and perhaps irresoluble
controversy as to what happened.”
87 Laurie A. Manwell, “In Denial of Democracy: Social Psychological
Implications for Public Discourse on State Crimes Against Democracy
Post-9/11,” American Behavioral Scientist 53 (February 2010): 848-84
(http://abs.sagepub.com/content/vol53/issue6), at 867-70.
88 Ibid., 863.
89 Matthew T. Witt and Alexander Kouzmin, “Sense Making Under
‘Holographic’ Conditions: Framing SCAD Research,” American Behavioral
Scientist 53 (February 2010): 783-94 (http://abs.sagepub.com/content/vol53/issue6),
at 789.
90 Publishers Weekly, November 24, 2008 (http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/1-legacy/15-web-exclusive-book-reviews/article/6017-web-exclusive-reviews-week-of-11-24-2008-.html).
91 Jennifer Harper, "Explosive News," Washington Times, February 22,
2010 (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/22/inside-the-beltway-70128635/?feat=home_columns).
92 Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (http://ae911truth.org).
93 On the failure of the press release about WTC 7 by the Jersey Girls
(see note 77, above) to receive any press coverage: Email letter from
Lorie Van Auken, May 23, 2010.
94 This essay is based on a lecture of the same title delivered at a
conference, “Understanding Deep Politics,” held May 14-16, 2010, in
Santa Cruz, California, which was organized by Gabriel Day, Cheryl
Curtiss, Jason King, and Kevin Zenzie.