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| quote: | (Between Early 1984 and October 1985): Office of Special Planning Studies Vulnerability of WTC to Terrorist Attack
The Office of Special Planning (OSP), a unit set up by the New York Port Authority to assess the security of its facilities against terrorist attacks (see Early 1984), spends four to six months studying the World Trade Center. It examines the center’s design through looking at photographs, blueprints, and plans. It brings in experts such as the builders of the center, plus experts in sabotage and explosives, and has them walk through the WTC to identify any areas of vulnerability. According to New York Times reporters James Glanz and Eric Lipton, when Edward O’Sullivan, head of the OSP, looks at WTC security, he finds “one vulnerability after another. Explosive charges could be placed at key locations in the power system. Chemical or biological agents could be dropped into the coolant system. The Hudson River water intake could be blown up. Someone might even try to infiltrate the large and vulnerable subterranean realms of the World Trade Center site.” In particular, “There was no control at all over access to the underground, two-thousand-car parking garage.” However, O’Sullivan consults “one of the trade center’s original structural engineers, Les Robertson, on whether the towers would collapse because of a bomb or a collision with a slow-moving airplane.” He is told there is “little likelihood of a collapse no matter how the building was attacked.” [Glanz and Lipton, 2004, pp. 227; New York County Supreme Court, 1/20/2004] The OSP will issue its report called “Counter-Terrorism Perspectives: The World Trade Center” late in 1985 (see November 1985).
Entity Tags: Edward O'Sullivan, World Trade Center, Office of Special Planning, Leslie Robertson |
| quote: | F. The Bombing
On February 26, 1993, at 12:18 p.m., a bomb exploded beneath the WTC, on the B-2 level of the underground parking garage, on a ramp that leads toward an exit from the garage. (See affidavit of Jan Gilhooly, dated Dec. 23, 2002.) The explosion had the force of 1,500 pounds of dynamite. (Plaintiffs' exhibit 65 [Goodman hearing transcript at 67].) The investigation revealed that the bomb had been detonated in a yellow van parked on the ramp of the public parking garage. (Plaintiffs' exhibit 64 [Goodman Report at 10].) Six people were killed, and many, many more were injured, mostly from smoke inhalation. (Plaintiffs' exhibit 65 [Goodman transcript at 67].) There was evidence that the perpetrators had made several surveillance visits to the garage, and drew maps of the garage. (Plaintiffs' exhibit 15 [Maikish deposition at 221, 268-269].) The explosion made a crater six stories deep, compressed several levels of concrete slab, blew down a wall onto the PATH concourse, and destroyed the walls of a number of elevator shafts. (Plaintiffs' exhibits 64 [Goodman Report at 10], 63 [House hearing transcript at 26].) The explosion destroyed the communications system, the police area and operations control center, and vital utility systems, including water and electrical, and fire standpipes. (Plaintiffs' exhibit 65 [Goodman hearing transcript at 71-72].) Because of the loss of the operations control center, the Port Authority lost the ability to communicate with tenants and their employees in the complex, and to institute its emergency evacuation procedures. (Plaintiffs' exhibit 64 [Goodman transcript at 26].) |
| quote: | September 12, 2001-February 2002: Witnesses See Molten Metal in the Remains at Ground Zero
A chunk of hot metal being removed from the North Tower rubble about eight weeks after 9/11. [Source: Frank Silecchia]
In the weeks and months after 9/11, numerous individuals report seeing molten metal in the remains of the World Trade Center:
 Ken Holden, who is involved with the organizing of demolition, excavation and debris removal operations at Ground Zero, later will tell the 9/11 Commission, “Underground, it was still so hot that molten metal dripped down the sides of the wall from [WTC] Building 6.” [9/11 Commission, 4/1/2003]
William Langewiesche, the only journalist to have unrestricted access to Ground Zero during the cleanup operation, describes, “in the early days, the streams of molten metal that leaked from the hot cores and flowed down broken walls inside the foundation hole.” [Langewiesche, 2002, pp. 32]
Leslie Robertson, the structural engineer responsible for the design of the WTC, describes fires still burning and molten steel still running 21 days after the attacks. [SEAU News, 10/2001  ]
Alison Geyh, who heads a team of scientists studying the potential health effects of 9/11, reports, “Fires are still actively burning and the smoke is very intense. In some pockets now being uncovered, they are finding molten steel.” [Johns Hopkins Public Health Magazine, 2001]
Ron Burger, a public health advisor who arrives at Ground Zero on September 12, says that “feeling the heat” and “seeing the molten steel” there reminds him of a volcano. [National Environmental Health Association, 9/2003, pp. 40 ]
According to a member of New York Air National Guard’s 109th Air Wing, who is at Ground Zero from September 22 to October 6, “One fireman told us that there was still molten steel at the heart of the towers’ remains. Firemen sprayed water to cool the debris down but the heat remained intense enough at the surface to melt their boots.” [National Guard Magazine, 12/2001]
New York firefighters recall “heat so intense they encountered rivers of molten steel.” [New York Post, 3/3/2004]
As late as five months after the attacks, in February 2002, firefighter Joe O’Toole sees a steel beam being lifted from deep underground at Ground Zero, which, he says, “was dripping from the molten steel.” [Knight Ridder, 5/29/2002] Steven E. Jones, a physics professor from Utah, later will claim this molten metal is “direct evidence for the use of high-temperature explosives, such as thermite,” used to deliberately bring down the WTC towers. [MSNBC, 11/16/2005] He will say that without explosives, a falling building would have “insufficient directed energy to result in melting of large quantities of metal.” [Deseret Morning News, 11/10/2005] There is no mention whatsoever of the molten metal in the official reports by FEMA, NIST, or the 9/11 Commission. [Federal Emergency Management Agency, 5/1/2002; 9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004; National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005 ] But Dr. Frank Gayle, who leads the steel forensics aspects of NIST’s investigation of the WTC collapses, is quoted as saying, “Your gut reaction would be the jet fuel is what made the fire so very intense, a lot of people figured that’s what melted the steel. Indeed it didn’t, the steel did not melt.” [ABC News 7 (New York), 2/7/2004] As well as the reports of molten metal, data collected by NASA in the days after 9/11 finds dozens of “hot spots” (some over 1300 degrees) at Ground Zero (see September 16-23, 2001).Entity Tags: Ken Holden, William Langewiesche, Leslie Robertson, Frank Gayle, Steven E. Jones, Joe O'Toole, Ron Burger, Alison Geyh, World Trade Center
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