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-- Do you believe there is a U.S. government cover-up surrounding 9/11?
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| Originally posted by donnybrasco Until I came on this board, I wouldn't have believed that so many SCREWBALLS could possibly be on the Internet...I should have known better. So you all think it's much more plausible that 9-11 was at the very least, a co-conspirated event, co-ordinated to occur with the Al Queda attacks or, co-ordianted solely by the U.S. government? THIS seems more plausible to you than the possibility that Osama and his orginaztion, who took credit for the atttack, and who are still out there today attacking, could be the sole attackers? My god. Get out from behind your computers more often...take a walk...talk to real people...and get back in the REAL WORLD! You sit here talking about this as though it's something to be realistically debated, like the economy or politics! How on EARTH could the U.S. government keep such a thing secret? WHY on earth would any group of Americans do something that horrific against other Americans? Trancer, just to be fair to you and just so you know, I have read most of what you posted in this thread and I went to these expose' websites that you posted links to. None of those so-called "revealing" pictures reveal SHIT! Have you really looked at them? There's nothing in them that even remotely supports the points they're trying to make! And the content of the texts? PSYCHO-BABLE! Not that I expected anything different, but these sites are barely even good for a laugh! I'll even give you an example; Supposedly, there's a picture of a helicopter puting a bomb on top of one of the towers after it's been attacked...do you really think a bomb would be needed at this point? I mean, a freakin HUGE JET PLANE was just flown in to the building! I think it was going to fall all on it's own, don't you?!?! This forum needs a section for;  PS: Pakastani; If you truly are entertaining the possibility that any of this conspiracy theory crap is even remotely credible, then you are going to lose a lot of credibility all the way around, imho. |
911 Truth Statement
Respected Leaders and Families Launch 9/11 Truth Statement Demanding Deeper Investigation into the Events of 9/11
NEW YORK CITY, NY (Oct. 26, 2004) - An alliance of 100 prominent Americans and 40 family members of those killed on 9/11 today announced the release of the 911 Truth Statement, a call for immediate inquiry into evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur. The Statement supports an August 31st Zogby poll that found nearly 50% of New Yorkers believe the government had foreknowledge and "consciously failed to act," with 66% wanting a new 9/11 investigation.
Focusing on twelve questions, the Statement highlights areas of incriminating evidence that were either inadequately explored or ignored by the Kean Commission, ranging from insider trading and hijacker funding to foreign government forewarnings and inactive defenses around the Pentagon. The Statement asks for four actions: an immediate investigation by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, Congressional hearings, media analysis, and the formation of a truly independent citizens-based inquiry.
The Statement's list of signatories includes notables spanning the political spectrum, from Presidential candidates Ralph Nader, Michael Badnarik, and David Cobb to Catherine Austin Fitts, a member of the first Bush administration, as well as Washington veterans like Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and retired CIA analyst Ray McGovern. Other signers range from peace activists like Code Pink co-founder Jodie Evans and Global Exchange's Kevin Danaher to former US Ambassador and Chief of Mission to Iraq, Edward L. Peck; from environmentalists like Randy Hayes and John Robbins to business leaders such as Paul Hawken and Karl Schwarz, CEO of Patmos Nanotechnologies; from populist journalist Ronnie Dugger to renowned investigative reporter Kelly Patricia O'Meara.
The Statement also includes 43 noted authors, including New York Times #1 bestseller John Gray, as well as 18 eminent professors, historians, and theologians. Other notables include five-term Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, singers Michelle Shocked and Michael Franti, and actors Ed Asner and Mimi Kennedy.
The Statement was facilitated by 911truth.org, a leading coalition. The organization has also announced a press conference outside of Eliot Spitzer's Manhattan office (corner of Cedar and Nassau) at 2:00PM on Thursday, Oct. 28th where 9/11 family members and victim group representatives will file a formal complaint demanding the first criminal investigation of 9/11 events by the New York Attorney General.
The Statement
We Want Real Answers About 9/11
On August 31, 2004, Zogby International, the official North American political polling agency for Reuters, released a poll that found nearly half (49.3%) of New York City residents and 41% of those in New York state believe US leaders had foreknowledge of impending 9/11 attacks and "consciously failed" to act. Of the New York City residents, 66% called for a new probe of unanswered questions by Congress or the New York Attorney General.
In connection with this news, we have assembled 100 notable Americans and 40 family members of those who died to sign this 9/11 Statement, which calls for immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.
We want truthful answers to questions such as:
Those who are demanding deeper inquiry now number in the hundreds of thousands, including a former member of the first Bush administration, a retired Air Force colonel, a European parliamentarian, families of the victims, highly respected authors, investigative journalists, peace and justice leaders, former Pentagon staff, and the National Green Party.
As Americans of conscience, we ask for four things:
Given the importance of the coming election, we feel it is imperative that these questions be addressed publicly, honestly, and rigorously so that Americans may exercise their democratic rights with full awareness.
In closing, we pray and hope for the strength to approach this subject with wisdom and compassion so that we may heal from the wounds inflicted on that terrible day.
http://www.911truth.org/article.php...041026093059633
^^^Even if any of those things turn out to be accurate or true, it doesn't mean that the U.S. Government INTENTIONALLY allowed 9-11 to happen, you nut-jobs!! Have you ever heard the term "Bureaucracy"?? The Government even admitted that they had certain hijackers on their watch lists, but that they couldn't deciminate the intel on them fast enough because they are just over-loaded with too many people on those lists to keep track of, and that's it!
There is no great conspiracy here, there's only human beings, who fuck up and don't do their jobs!
And I for one doubt that this so-called petition (if it even exists) signed by Ralph Nader is about a "conspiracy" so much as it's about asking why the intel community failed to do it's job. I have heard NOTHING from Nader about a "grand conspiracy" anywhere else. You quoting your "911truth.org" source is NOT credible! "NEW YORK, NY (Oct. 26, 2004)"...WTF IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN!??! Does that mean the screwball who runs this conspiracy site woke up at 3 in the morning on Oct. 26, 2004 and concocted this fantasy in his head? Who is this person? Who wrote this? It's not from a credible media outlet, I can tell you that! ...I think someone on the Internet is twisting this petition to fit his own stupid conspiracy theory garbage!
God, I can't believe I let myself be sucked in to this STUPID debate, TOTAL waste of time. You guys lose ALL credibility in any of your arguments on any subject as far as I'm concerned when you entertain lame plots like this. I feel sorry for you guys. You're whole life is a waste...please, become suicide bombers and join the Jihad already! The sooner, the better!
Do you actually think you can pull off something like 9/11 without some spook knowing?
You give too much credit to the intelligence community believing they were caught with their pants down.
At your screwball comments:
Sounds like a persons desperate attempts at name calling rather than fact finding. Sure you can say all you want but you never ever argue what you really know and that is nothing.
Just the ideal mindset that was bestowed upon you by watching too many spy and war movies.
Clear your mind of useless clutter from established media. This is the same media that told you Saddam had WMD's.
Now if you still believe that this and previous administrations had no idea what events were to unfold on 9/11/01 then I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn for a low price.
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| Originally posted by donnybrasco I have heard NOTHING from Nader about a "grand conspiracy" anywhere else. You quoting your "911truth.org" source is NOT credible! "NEW YORK, NY (Oct. 26, 2004)"...WTF IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN!??! Does that mean the screwball who runs this conspiracy site woke up at 3 in the morning on Oct. 26, 2004 and concocted this fantasy in his head? Who is this person? Who wrote this? It's not from a credible media outlet, I can tell you that! |
9/11 and the Mainstream Press
by Dr. David Ray Griffin
septembereleventh.org
Friday, Jul 29, 2005
Link to Original
Address given at the National Press Club
July 22, 2005
After the attacks of 9/11, I accepted the blowback thesis, according to which the attacks were payback for US foreign policy. About a year later, a colleague suggested that the attacks were orchestrated by our own government. My response was that I didn�t think the Bush administration---even the Bush administration---would do such a thing. A few months later, another colleague suggested that I look at a website containing the massive 9/11 timeline created by Paul Thompson. This timeline, I found, contained an enormous number of reports, all from mainstream sources, that contradicted the official account. This started a process that led me to publish The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11, which summarized much of the evidence that had been discovered by previous researchers---evidence, I concluded, that provided a "strong prima facie case for official complicity."
In a criminal trial, once the prosecution has presented its initial case, the defense asks the judge for a dismissal on the grounds that a prima facie case for guilt has not been presented. However, if the judge declares that such a case has been made, then the defense must rebut the various elements in the prosecution�s case. The defense cannot simply ignore the prosecution�s case by stating that it is "too outrageous to be dignified by a response." If the defense fails to offer a convincing rebuttal, the prima facie case is presumed to be conclusive.
The Bush administration responded to the charges against it as a defense attorney would, declaring them too outrageous to be taken seriously. President Bush himself advised people, perhaps especially reporters, not to tolerate "outrageous conspiracy theories." What the president really meant is that people should not tolerate any outrageous conspiracy theories except his own, according to which 19 Arab Muslims defeated the most powerful and sophisticated defense system in history and also defeated the laws of physics, bringing down three steel-frame building in a way that perfectly mimicked controlled demolition.
In any case, what was needed at that stage was someone to play the role of the judge, determining, from an impartial perspective, whether a prima facie case for the guilt of the Bush administration had been made.
This role should have been played by the press. But the mainstream press instead offered itself as a mouthpiece for the administration�s conspiracy theory.
The role of the impartial judge has, nevertheless, been played by civil society, in which tens of millions of people in this country and around the world now accept the 9/11 truth movement�s contention that the Bush administration was complicit in the attacks.
The fact that the president was finally forced to appoint a 9/11 commission provided an opportunity for the Bush administration to rebut the allegations made against it. You might assume that the 9/11 Commission would have played the role of an impartial jury, simply evaluating the evidence for the competing conspiracy theories and deciding which one was more strongly supported.
The Commission�s investigative work, however, was carried out by its staff, and this staff was directed by the White House�s man inside the Commission, Philip Zelikow, a fact that the mainstream press has not emphasized. Under Zelikow�s leadership, the Commission took the role of the prosecution for the Bush administration�s brief against al-Qaeda. In doing so, it implicitly took the role of the defense for the Bush administration. Accordingly, an important question to ask about The 9/11 Commission Report, especially since we know that the Commission had many copies of The New Pearl Harbor, is how well the Commission rebutted the prima facie case against the Bush-Cheney administration, which was summarized in that book.
In a second book, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, I showed that the Commission simply ignored most of that evidence and distorted the rest. I will summarize a few of the 115 sins of omission and distortion that I identified.
The New Pearl Harbor reported evidence that at least six of the alleged hijackers are still alive. David Harrison of the Telegraph interviewed two of the men who supposedly died on Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, one of whom said that he "had never even heard of Pennsylvania," let alone died there. The Associated Press reported that Waleed al-Shehri, supposedly on Flight 11, contacted the U.S. embassy in Morocco about two weeks after 9/11. The 9/11 Commission Report, nevertheless, suggested that al-Shehri was responsible for stabbing one of the flight attendants shortly before Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower.
The New Pearl Harbor cited reports that although Mohamed Atta, the supposed ringleader, had been portrayed as a devout Muslim ready to meet his maker, he actually loved alcohol, pork, and lap dances. Zelikow�s commission, however, said that Atta had become "fanatically" religious. They also claimed that they could find no credible explanation as to why Atta and the other hijackers went to Las Vegas. The mainstream press has let the Commission get away with these obvious contradictions.
People who have seen Michael Moore�s Fahrenheit 9/11 know that President Bush was in a classroom in Sarasota when he was told that a second plane had struck the World Trade Center, a sign that the country was suffering an unprecedented terrorist attack. And yet the president just sat there. Many critics have asked why he did not immediately assume the role of commander-in-chief, but the more important question is why the highly trained Secret Service agents did not immediately rush him to safety. Bush�s location had been highly publicized. They should have worried that a hijacked airliner was bearing down on them at that very moment. And yet they allowed the president to remain at the school another half hour, thereby implying that they knew the president was not a target.
The 9/11 Commission�s only response was to report that "[t]he Secret Service told us they . . . did not think it imperative for [the President] to run out the door." The Commissioners evidently accepted the implied suggestion that maintaining presidential decorum was more important than protecting the president�s life. The mainstream press has had no comment on this remarkable response to that remarkable incident.
Another big question created by the official story is how the hijackers, by crashing planes into the Twin Towers, caused them and Building 7 to collapse. One problem is that Building 7 was not struck by an airplane, and steel-frame buildings had never before been caused to collapse by fire alone, even when the fires had been much bigger, hotter, and longer-lasting. The Commission avoided this problem by simply not mentioning this fact or even, incredibly, that Building 7 collapsed.
Another problem, which I mentioned earlier, is that the collapses had all the standard features of controlled demolitions. For example, all three buildings came down at virtually free-fall speed. The Commission even alluded to this feature, saying that the "South Tower collapsed in 10 seconds." But it never explained how fire plus the impact of an airplane could have produced such a collapse.
Controlled demolition was also suggested by the fact that the collapses were total, with the 110-story Twin Towers collapsing into a pile of rubble only a few stories high. The core of each tower had consisted of 47 massive steel columns, which extended from the basements through the roofs. Even if we ignore all the other problems in the official "pancake" theory of the collapses, those massive steel columns should have still been sticking up a thousand feet in the air. Zelikow�s commission handled this problem with the audacious claim that "[t]he interior core of the buildings was a hollow steel shaft."
James Glanz, a science writer for the New York Times, co-authored a book in 2003 entitled The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center. This book contains an extensive discussion of the construction of the towers around the 47 interior columns. And yet when the Commission in 2004 published its incredible denial that these columns existed, the Times did not protest.
Another example: Breaking those massive steel columns would have required very powerful explosives. Many survivors of the towers have reported hearing and feeling explosions. But the 9/11 Commission failed to mention any of these reports. William Rodriguez told the 9/11 Commission behind closed doors about feeling and hearing a huge explosion in the sub-basement of the North Tower, then rescuing people from its effects, but neither his name nor any of his testimony is found in Zelikow�s final report.
The mainstream press has also refused to report Rodriguez�s story, even though NBC News spent a day at his home taping it.
The Commission also failed to address the many reasons to conclude that the Pentagon was not struck by Flight 77. The Commission in particular failed to subpoena the film from the video cameras, confiscated by the FBI immediately after the attacks, which could at least clear up one of the questions---whether the attacking aircraft was a Boeing 757.
The Commission did allude to one problem---the fact that Hani Hanjour, the alleged pilot, was known to be completely incompetent, incapable of flying a Boeing 757, let alone performing the remarkable maneuver reportedly executed by the aircraft that hit the Pentagon. The Commission handled this problem simply by saying in one place that Hanjour was considered a "terrible pilot" while saying elsewhere that he was given the assignment to hit the Pentagon because he was "the operation�s most experienced pilot." The mainstream press has not pointed out this contradiction.
The Commission also failed to discuss the considerable evidence that Flight 93 was shot down by the US military, perhaps when passengers were about to wrest control of it. The Commission dealt with this problem only indirectly, by claiming that Vice President Cheney did not give the shoot-down order until 10:10, which was at least four minutes after Flight 93 crashed. In support of this claim, the Commission said that Cheney did not enter the Operations Center under the White House until almost 10:00 that morning. To make this claim, however, the Commission had to contradict all prior reports. It also had to delete Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta�s testimony, given during the Commission�s public hearings, that when he got down there at 9:20, Cheney was already in charge. Even such an obvious lie, supported by such blatant suppression of evidence, has elicited no murmur from our mainstream press.
There are dozens of other omissions and distortions the press has allowed the Commission to get away with. For example, the Commission�s endorsement of the claim by General Richard Myers that he was on Capitol Hill that morning ignores Richard Clarke�s report, in Against All Enemies, that Myers was in the Pentagon, participating in Clarke�s videoconference. Also, the Commission�s account of why the hijacked airliners were not intercepted contradicts the account that had been told since shortly after 9/11 not only by the U.S. military but also by the press, in thousands of stories. But the press now, like Gilda Radnor, says "Never Mind."
In any case, as these illustrations show, the 9/11 Commission, which had the opportunity to rebut the prima facie case against the Bush administration, failed to do so. This means that the publication of The 9/11 Commission Report needs to be recognized as a decisive event, because it was the moment at which the prima facie case against the Bush administration became a conclusive case.
What we need now is a press that will let the American people in on this development---which is most important, given the fact that the official story about 9/11 has provided the pretext for virtually every other horrible thing this administration has done.
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| Originally posted by donnybrasco The Government even admitted that they had certain hijackers on their watch lists, but that they couldn't deciminate the intel on them fast enough because they are just over-loaded with too many people on those lists to keep track of, and that's it! |
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"NEW YORK, NY (Oct. 26, 2004)"...WTF IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN!??! Does that mean the screwball who runs this conspiracy site woke up at 3 in the morning on Oct. 26, 2004 and concocted this fantasy in his head? Who is this person? Who wrote this? It's not from a credible media outlet, I can tell you that! ...I think someone on the Internet is twisting this petition to fit his own stupid conspiracy theory garbage! |
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God, I can't believe I let myself be sucked in to this STUPID debate, TOTAL waste of time. You guys lose ALL credibility in any of your arguments on any subject as far as I'm concerned when you entertain lame plots like this. I feel sorry for you guys. You're whole life is a waste...please, become suicide bombers and join the Jihad already! The sooner, the better! |
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| Originally posted by Trancer-X Your brutal attempt to shroud this whole thing with your stigmatic veil has pretty much been a failure, anyway. There are already too many intelligent, analytical, and hard-working professionals involved in researching all of the events and anomalies surrounding 9/11 - and also what the true reason could be behind our government's sorry explanation for them. [/color] |
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| Originally posted by ogvh5150 Sounds like a persons desperate attempts at name calling rather than fact finding. Sure you can say all you want but you never ever argue what you really know and that is nothing. |
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| Originally posted by donnybrasco Ooooh brother....what went wrong in your up-bringing that has you so messed up in the head dude? |
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| Originally posted by donnybrasco Let me ask you something; Aside from this little fantasy world you have going on the Internet, have you tried to spew these theories directly in person to anyone? Have you noticed that most people you've told have probably looked at you like you're absolutely off your rocker? Maybe they've even told you that you are! My advise to you is; LISTEN TO THEM!! |
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| Originally posted by donnybrasco My advise to you is; LISTEN TO THEM!! |
For the record:
Nearly two thirds of people that voted in this poll believe there was a cover up. This is one of those that believe otherwise:
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| Originally posted by donnybrasco Fact finding and debating worthwhile theories is one thing, but this transcends common sense! My god, use your head! Think of what it would take to make your big conspiracy theories happen, versus the realties of life and how improbable they are! NUTS!! You should be embarrassed for yourselves! Let me ask you something; Aside from this little fantasy world you have going on the Internet, have you tried to spew these theories directly in person to anyone? Have you noticed that most people you've told have probably looked at you like you're absolutely off your rocker? Maybe they've even told you that you are! My advise to you is; LISTEN TO THEM!! |
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| Originally posted by Trancer-X ...who also have enough common sense to know when they're being lied to by an increasingly secretive and ever invasive government. |
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| Originally posted by donnybrasco I may have some typos, but at least my grammer is correct; I think you mean "evasive"... |
Here, I looked it up for you:
invasive
One entry found for invasive.
Main Entry: in�va�sive
Pronunciation: -siv, -ziv
Function: adjective
1 : of, relating to, or characterized by military aggression
2 : tending to spread; especially : tending to invade healthy tissue
3 : tending to infringe
4 : involving entry into the living body (as by incision or by insertion of an instrument)
- in�va�sive�ness noun
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/invasive
I know the difference between the words, and I still think you meant "evasive", lol.
I believe the coverup surrounds the incompetance of the administration and sensitive ties to allies who may have been duplicitious in their support for Al-Qaeda. As for having direct involvement or a failure to act ... while I have not looked at every claim, I find it maintains some similarities to the dubious Pearl Harbor allegations. And I have investigated EVERY allegation posed by credible historians (ffs I read their goddamned books and at least they had the intellectual integrity to fully research their sources and footnote disclaimers where they are needed) in the case of the latter.
while it's nothing conclusive, Dr. Reynolds does bring about some really good points
Why Did the Trade Center Skyscrapers Collapse?
by Morgan Reynolds
quote: "It didn�t seem real� There are thousands of these steel beams that just fell like pickup sticks."
~ John Albanese, volunteer firefighter and amateur photographer
quote: "What struck us � guys like Warren Jennings and myself, who have spent basically all our lives in the scrap business � we�d never seen steel this heavy, this huge, this massive. It was just unbelievable."
~ Michael Henderson (p. 93),
General Manager, Marine Terminals, Metal Management NE
To explain the unanticipated free-fall collapses of the twin towers at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, mainstream experts (also see The American Professional Constructor, October 2004, pp. 12�18) offer a three-stage argument: 1) an airplane impact weakened each structure, 2) an intense fire thermally weakened structural components that may have suffered damage to fireproofing materials, causing buckling failures, which, in turn, 3) allowed the upper floors to pancake onto the floors below.
Many will nod their head, OK, that does it and go back to watching the NBA finals or whatever, but I find this theory just about as satisfying as the fantastic conspiracy theory that "19 young Arabs acting at the behest of Islamist extremists headquartered in distant Afghanistan" caused 9/11. The government�s collapse theory is highly vulnerable on its own terms, but its blinkered narrowness and lack of breadth is the paramount defect unshared by its principal scientific rival � controlled demolition. Only professional demolition appears to account for the full range of facts associated with the collapses of WTC 1 (North Tower), WTC 2 (South Tower), and the much-overlooked collapse of the 47-story WTC building 7 at 5:21 pm on that fateful day.
The scientific controversy over the initial structural weakening has two parts: what caused the original tower damage and did that damage "severely" weaken the structures? Photos show a stable, motionless North Tower (WTC 1) after the damage suffered at 8:46 am and the South Tower after its 9:03 am impact. If we focus on the North Tower, close examination of photos reveals arguably "minor" rather than "severe" damage in the North Tower and its perimeter columns.
As many as 45 exterior columns between floors 94 and 98 on the northeast (impact) side of the North Tower were fractured � separated from each other � yet there is no direct evidence of "severe" structural weakening. None of the upper sections of the broken perimeter columns visibly sags or buckles toward its counterpart column below. We can infer this because of the aluminum covers on the columns: each seam uniformly aligns properly across the Tower, forming a horizontal "dashed line" in the fa�ade from beveled end to end. Despite an impact hole, gaps in perimeter columns, and missing parts of floors 95�98 at the opening, the aluminum fa�ade shows no evidence of vertical displacement in the columns, suggestive of little or no wider floor buckling at the perimeter.
The aluminum covers attached to the columns also aligned vertically after impact, that is, separated columns continued to visually remain "plumb" (true vertical), lining up top to bottom around the aperture, implying no perceptible horizontal displacement of the columns. Photographic evidence for the northeast side of the North Tower showed no wider secondary structural impact beyond the opening itself. Of course, there was smoke pouring out of the upper floors.
The fact that perimeter columns were not displaced suggests that the floors did not buckle or sag. Despite missing parts of floors 95�98, photos show no buckling or sag on other floors. If so, that boosts the likelihood that there was little damage to the core. Photos do not document what happened within the interior/core and no one was allowed to inspect and preserve relevant rubble before government authorities � primarily FEMA � had it quickly removed. Eyewitness testimony by those who escaped from inside the North Tower concerning core damage probably is unavailable.
Photos do not allow us to peer far into the interior of the building; in fact the hole is black, with no flames visible. We know that the structural core and its steel was incredibly strong (claimed 600% redundancy) making it unlikely that the core was "severely" damaged at impact. There were 47 core columns connected to each other by steel beams within an overall rectangular core floor area of approximately 87 feet x 137 feet (26.5 m x 41.8 m). Each column had a rectangular cross section of approximately 36" x 14" at the base (90 cm x 36 cm) with steel 4" thick all around (100 mm), tapering to �" (6 mm) thickness at the top. Each floor was also extremely strong (p. 26), a grid of steel, contrary to claims of a lightweight "truss" system.
Those who support the official account like Thomas Eagar (p. 14), professor of materials engineering and engineering systems at MIT, usually argue that the collapse must be explained by the heat from the fires because the loss of loading-bearing capacity from the holes in the Towers was too small. The transfer of load would have been within the capacity of the towers. Since steel used in buildings must be able to bear five times its normal load, Eagar points out, the steel in the towers could have collapsed only if heated to the point where it "lost 80 percent of its strength, " around 1,300oF. Eagar believes that this is what happened, though the fires did not appear to be extensive and intense enough, quickly billowing black smoke and relatively few flames.
While some experts claim that airliner impact severely weakened the entire structural system, evidence is lacking. The perimeters of floors 94�98 did not appear severely weakened, much less the entire structural system. The criminal code requires that crime scene evidence be saved for forensic analysis but FEMA had it destroyed before anyone could seriously investigate it. FEMA was in position to take command because it had arrived the day before the attacks at New York�s Pier 29 to conduct a war game exercise, "Tripod II," quite a coincidence. The authorities apparently considered the rubble quite valuable: New York City officials had every debris truck tracked on GPS and had one truck driver who took an unauthorized 1 � hour lunch fired.
The preliminary NIST Response claims that "the wall section above the impact zone moved downward" (pdf, p. 36) on WTC 1 but offers no evidence. It offers photographic evidence, however, for a "hanging floor slab" on the 82d floor of the South Tower at 9:55 a.m. This looks minor though because there is no sag on adjacent floors and the integrity of the structure looks very much intact. The fire looks weak too, yet the South Tower collapsed only four minutes later. This would be quite a puzzle without a demolition theory.
About a dozen of the fragmented ends of exterior columns in the North Tower hole were bent but the bends faced the "wrong way" because they pointed toward the outside of the Tower. This fact is troublesome for the official theory that a plane crash created the hole and subsequent explosion between floors 94 and 98. The laws of physics imply that a high-speed airplane with fuel-filled wings breaking through thin perimeter columns would deflect the shattered ends of the columns inward, if deflected in any direction, certainly not bend them outward toward the exterior.
A possible response would be that, well, yes, an airliner crash would bend a column inward rather than outward, if bent at all, but the subsequent force of a jet fuel blast would act in the opposite direction: any inward bends caused by plane impact would straighten toward vertical or even reverse the bent steel columns toward the exterior under blast pressure. However, such a proposed steel "reversal theory" (first bend inward by collision, then bend outward by explosion) suffers two major handicaps:
Occam�s razor would suggest that the outward bends in the perimeter columns were caused by explosions from inside the tower rather than bends caused by airliner impact from outside. Also supporting this theory is the fact that the uniformly neat ends of the blown perimeter columns are consistent with the linear shaped charges demolition experts use to slice steel as thick as 10 inches. The hypothesis of linear shaped charges also explains the perfectly formed crosses found in the rubble (crucifix-shaped fragments of core column structures), as well as the rather-neatly shorn steel everywhere.
The engineering establishment�s theory has further difficulties. It is well-known that the hole in the west wing of the Pentagon, less than 18-foot diameter, was too small to accommodate a Boeing 757, but the North Tower�s hole wasn�t big enough for a Boeing 767 either, the alleged widebody airliner used on AA Flight 11 (officially tail number N334AA, FAA-listed as "destroyed"). A Boeing 767 has a wingspan of 155� 1" (47.6 m) yet the maximum distance across the hole in the North Tower was about 115 feet (35 m), a hole undersized by some 40 feet or 26 percent. "The last few feet at the tips of the wings did not even break through the exterior columns," comments Hufschmid (p. 27). But 20 feet on each wing? I�d call that a substantial difference, not "the last few feet," especially since aircraft impact holes tend to be three times the size of the aircraft, reflecting the fact that fuel-laden airliners flying into buildings send things smashing about in a big way. The small size of the holes in both towers casts doubt on the airliner-impact hypothesis and favors professional demolition again. There were no reports of plane parts, especially wings, shorn off in the collision and bounced to the ground on the northeast side of the tower, to my knowledge, though FEMA reported a few small pieces to the south at Church street (pp. 68�9) and atop WTC-5 to the east of WTC-1.
Adding to the suspicious nature of the small aperture in WTC 1 is that some vertical gaps in the columns on the left side of the northeast hole were so short, probably less than three feet (p. 105) high (p. 27). Not much of a jumbo jet could pass through such an opening, especially since a fuel-laden plane would not minimize its frontal area. The engines are a special problem because each engine is enormous and dense, consisting mainly of tempered steel and weighing 5�6 tons, depending upon model. No engine was recovered in the rubble yet no hydrocarbon fire could possibly vaporize it.
The hole in the North Tower also is suspicious because it did not even have a continuous opening at the perimeter, but instead contained substantial WTC material (p. 27) just left of center (pp. 62, 105). This material appears integral to that area, so it did not move much, suggesting minimal displacement and no clean penetration by a jumbo jet. These huge airliners weigh 82 tons empty and have a maximum takeoff weight of up to 193 tons.
In the case of the South Tower, an engine from UAL Flight 175 (tail number N612UA and FAA-registered as still valid!) has not been recovered despite the fact that the flight trajectory of the video plane implied that the right engine would miss the South Tower. Photos showing minor engine parts on the ground are unconvincing, to put it mildly. Perhaps independent jet engine experts (retired?) can testify to the contrary. Further contradicting the official account, the beveled edge of the southeast side of the south tower was completely intact upon initial impact. The government never produced a jet engine yet claimed it recovered the passport of alleged hijacker Satam al Suqami unharmed by a fiery crash and catastrophic collapse of the North Tower. The government has not produced voice (CVR) or flight data recorders (FDR) in the New York attack either, so-called black boxes, a fact unprecedented in the aviation history of major domestic crashes.
Adding to the problems of the official theory is the fact that photos of the North Tower hole show no evidence of a plane either. There is no recognizable wreckage or plane parts at the immediate crash site. While the issue probably takes us too far afield, the landing wheel assembly that allegedly flew out of the North Tower and was found several streets away could easily have been planted by FEMA or other government agents. I�ve never seen any objective analysis of this wheel assembly though it would be welcome. In fact, the government has failed to produce significant wreckage from any of the four alleged airliners that fateful day. The familiar photo of the Flight 93 crash site in Pennsylvania (The 9/11 Commission Report, Ch. 9) shows no fuselage, engine or anything recognizable as a plane, just a smoking hole in the ground. Photographers reportedly were not allowed near the hole. Neither the FBI nor the National Transportation Safety Board have investigated or produced any report on the alleged airliner crashes.
The WTC 1 and Pentagon holes were not alone in being too small. Photos show that the hole in WTC 2 also was too small to have been caused by the crash of a Boeing 767. In fact, the South Tower hole is substantially smaller than the North Tower hole.
The next question is whether the fires were hot enough to cause the WTC buildings to collapse. In defending the official account and its clones that try to explain the unprecedented collapses of three steel-framed skyscrapers without demolition, heat arguably is more important than structural impact. That�s obviously true for building WTC 7 because there was no alleged airplane impact.
First, no steel-framed skyscraper, even engulfed in flames hour after hour, had ever collapsed before. Suddenly, three stunning collapses occur within a few city blocks on the same day, two allegedly hit by aircraft, the third not. These extraordinary collapses after short-duration minor fires made it all the more important to preserve the evidence, mostly steel girders, to study what had happened. On fire intensity, consider this benchmark: A 1991 FEMA report on Philadelphia�s Meridian Plaza fire said that the fire was so energetic that "[b]eams and girders sagged and twisted," but "[d]espite this extraordinary exposure, the columns continued to support their loads without obvious damage" (quoted by Griffin, p. 15). Such an intense fire with consequent sagging and twisting steel beams bears no resemblance to what we observed at the WTC.
Second, severe structural damage to the WTC towers would have required fires that were not only large but growing throughout the buildings and burning for a considerable period of time. None of these conditions was present. "The lack of flames is an indication that the fires were small, and the dark smoke is an indication that the fires were suffocating," points out Hufschmid (p. 35). Eyewitnesses in the towers, as well as police and firefighters, reported (pp. 199�200) the same thing.
Third, the impact opening was 15 floors lower in the South Tower than in the North Tower, where core columns were thicker, so the South Tower fire had to produce more heat to raise the steel temperatures to soften up (thermally weaken) the steel columns. Yet its fires were considerably smaller and 30 minutes shorter in duration. The Tower collapsed after burning only 56 minutes. A prime candidate to explain why "the wrong tower fell first" is that the small dying fire in the South Tower forced the hand of the mass murderers who decided to trigger demolition earlier than planned in order to sustain the lie that fire caused the collapse. The North Tower stood for another 29 minutes and its core steel was thinner at its upper stories. The 1991 Meridian Plaza fire burned for 19 hours and the fire was so extreme that flames came from dozens of windows on many floors. It did not collapse.
Fourth, implicitly trying to explain away these difficulties, the current NIST investigation, conducted by "an extended investigation team of 236 people," makes "dislodged fireproofing" the key variable to explain the collapses. Supposedly, "the probable collapse sequence for the WTC towers are (sic) based on the behavior of thermally weakened structural components that had extensive damage to fireproofing or gypsum board fire protection induced by the debris field generated by aircraft impact" (p. 111). "Had fireproofing not been dislodged by debris field," this team of government-paid experts claims, "temperature rise of structural components would likely have been insufficient to induce global collapse" (p. 108). Perhaps acknowledging the lack of direct evidence for its conjectures, the NIST admits that "a full collapse of the WTC floor system would not occur even with a number of failed trusses or connections" and it "recognizes inherent uncertainties" (pp. 110 and 112). The NIST will have to boost its creativity to plausibly explain the WTC 7 collapse because it won�t have the benefit of tales of aircraft and debris fields.
Aside from specific defects in the fire collapse theory, a wide variety of facts undermine it:
Griffin (pp. 25�7) succinctly identifies the primary defects in the official account of the WTC collapses, and its sister theories. These problems were entirely ignored by The 9/11 Commission Report (2004), so the government appointees must have found it difficult to account for the following facts:
Professional demolition, by contrast, can explain all of these facts and more. Demolition means placing explosives throughout a building, and detonating them in sequence to weaken "the structure so it collapses or folds in upon itself" (p. 44). In conventional demolitions gravity does most of the work, although it probably did a minority on 9/11, so heavily were the towers honeycombed with explosives.
Controlled demolition would have required unimpeded access to the WTC, access to explosives, avoiding detection, and the expertise to orchestrate the deadly destruction from a nearby secure location. Such access before 9/11 likely depended on complicity by one or more WTC security companies. These companies focus on "access control" and as security specialist Wayne Black says, "When you have a security contract, you know the inner workings of everything." Stratesec, a now-defunct company that had security contracts at the World Trade Center and Dulles International Airport, should be investigated, among others, because of the strange coincidence that President Bush�s brother, Marvin P. Bush, and his cousin, Wirt D. Walker III, were principals in the company, with Walker acting as CEO from 1999 until January 2002 and Marvin reportedly in New York on 9/11. At least one report claims that a "power down" condition prevailed on September 8�9 (pdf, p. 45) at WTC to complete a "cabling upgrade," presenting an opportunity to plant explosives with low risk of detection.
A related point is that demolition companies go to considerable expense to wire steel-framed skyscrapers with explosives to produce safe implosions, and they would love to do it more cheaply by simply setting two small fires like those that (allegedly) caved in building 7. Apparently, the terrorist-inventors have kept this new technology secret.
Why would the killers destroy WTC-7, especially since a collapse would arouse suspicion in some quarters? A logical if unproven theory is that the perpetrators used Mayor Giuliani�s sealed OEM "bunker" on the 23d story of WTC-7 to conduct the twin tower implosions and then destroyed the building and evidence to cover up their crimes, just as a murderer might set his victim�s dwelling ablaze to cover up the crime (one in four fires is arson). Giuliani�s "undisclosed secret location" was perfect because it had been evacuated by 9:45 a.m. on 9/11, it enabled unmolested work, provided a ringside seat, was bullet- and bomb-resistant, had its own secure air and water supply, and could withstand winds of 160 mph, necessary protection from the wind blasts generated by collapsing skyscrapers.
There is special import in the fact of free-fall collapse (item one in the list immediately above), if only because everyone agrees that the towers fell at free-fall speed. This makes pancake collapse with one floor progressively falling onto the floor below an unattractive explanation. Progressive pancaking cannot happen at free-fall speed ("g" or 9.8 m/s2). Free-fall would require "pulling" or removing obstacles below before they could impede (slow) the acceleration of falling objects from above. Sequenced explosions, on the other hand, explain why the lower floors did not interfere with the progress of the falling objects above. The pancake theory fails this test.
If we put the murder of 2,749 innocent victims momentarily aside, the only unusual technical feature of the collapses of the twin towers was that the explosions began at the top, immediately followed by explosions from below. WTC-7, by contrast, was entirely conventional, imploding from bottom up.
It is hard to exaggerate the importance of a scientific debate over the cause(s) of the collapse of the twin towers and building 7. If the official wisdom on the collapses is wrong, as I believe it is, then policy based on such erroneous engineering analysis is not likely prove to be sound. Revised engineering and construction practices, for example, based on the belief that the twin towers collapsed through airplane damage and subsequent fires is premature, to say the least.
More importantly, momentous political and social consequences would follow if impartial observers concluded that professionals imploded the WTC. If demolition destroyed three steel skyscrapers at the World Trade Center on 9/11, then the case for an "inside job" and a government attack on America would be compelling. Meanwhile, the job of scientists, engineers and impartial researchers everywhere is to get the scientific and engineering analysis of 9/11 right, "though heaven should fall." Unfortunately, getting it right in today�s "security state" demands daring because explosives and structural experts have been intimidated in their analyses of the collapses of 9/11.
June 9, 2005
Morgan Reynolds, Ph.D., is professor emeritus at Texas A&M University and former director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis headquartered in Dallas, TX. He served as chief economist for the US Department of Labor during 2001�2, George W. Bush's first term. ~(Wiki)
http://www.lewrockwell.com/reynolds/reynolds12.html
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while it's nothing conclusive, Dr. Reynolds does bring about some really good points |
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| Originally posted by occrider Indeed they are good points, and I look forward to researching them. It's slow from now until my vacation after christmas . |
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| Originally posted by Trancer-X We want truthful answers to questions such as:
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Re: while it's nothing conclusive, Dr. Reynolds does bring about some really good poi
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| Originally posted by Trancer-X Why Did the Trade Center Skyscrapers Collapse? |
Flash movie
My brotha sent me this a while back. It has various photos of the pentagon. It argues there is a conspiracy/cover-up.
i am not so sure about NYC attacks, they seem more likely to have been real, but the Pentagon? Where is the missing plane?
Re: Re: while it's nothing conclusive, Dr. Reynolds does bring about some really good poi
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| Originally posted by Fir3start3r The fact of the matter is....they DID fall... |
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