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edit"Internet Archive: Details: ABC Sept. 11, 2001 9:54 am - 10:36 am". Archive.org. Retrieved 2008-10-30. ·
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"ABC News anchor Peter Jennings said "Anybody who ever watched a building being demolished on purpose knows that if you're going to do this you have to get at the under infrastructure of a building and bring it down." Talk:World Trade Center controlled demolition conspiracy theories#Is this WP:SYN? |
"WTC destroyed by bombs, not planes, senator says". Arizona Capitol Times. June 10, 2008. ·
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She also gave a speech on the floor of the Arizona Senate that included her support for the demolition theory, its proponents, and its relevance to current foreign policy in the US. Johnson said in her speech:
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- Uyttebrouck, Olivier (2001-09-11). "Use Of Explosives Believed". Extra. Albuquerque Journal. p. A2. Retrieved 2007-11-01. ·
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Richard Sisson says the sulfur came from gypsum in the wallboards [...] "As well as housing offices of leading financial companies, Tower 7 also had some unusual tenants: the Secret Service, the CIA, the Department of Defence and the Office of Emergency Management, which would coordinate any response to a disaster or a terrorist attack. Dylan Avery, the writer and director of the internet film Loose Change, thinks the building was suspicious: "You have to look at what was inside Building 7. You had the largest CIA field office ... you had a number of government agencies inside the building. [...] Some people argue that the US government had to demolish Tower 7 because it is where plans were hatched for a massive conspiracy on 9/11 and even that the hijacked planes were guided to their targets from Tower 7. Others believe the government also wanted to destroy key files held there about corporate fraud. [...] However, the chief counter-terrorism adviser to President Bush on 9/11, Richard Clarke, does not think there is anything mysterious about Tower 7. He told The Conspiracy Files: "I was in the World Trade Centre 7 on a number of occasions. This was a commercial office building in downtown New York. The fact that there were some government agencies in there, is certainly true, but there were lots of other people in there too and you could have rented an office or floor anybody could have." [...] However, critics argue that the evidence they have seen suggests there was very little fire in Tower 7 and certainly not enough to cause it to collapse. A fire protection engineer, Scott Grainger, who has joined Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, told the BBC: "The fires weren't burning on all the floors simultaneously. They were scattered about on the floors. "And as they burn they're going to move through the building so they'll certainly heat up some of the steel in an area. But then as it moves on when it consumes the combustibles there, the chairs, desks, the tables, whatever papers were there. Then there's no longer any source of heat." [...] Lt Frank Papalia of the New York Fire Department told the programme: "We looked at it and said there's so much fire in this building, nobody's going to put this fire out". Photographer Steve Spak, who took some of the clearest images of the damage to Tower 7, told the BBC there was smoke on a lot of floors on the south side of the building and numerous floors had fires. "Through my experience of taking fire photography for the last 30 years, to me that's an indication of extremely heavy fire condition and a dangerous fire condition." [...] However, critics say the report has been too long coming. Some have even suggested the way official bodies have investigated Tower 7's collapse makes it looks like they are hiding something. The first inquiry into Tower 7 by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or Fema, said the building collapsed because intense fires burned for hours, fed by thousands of gallons of diesel stored in the building. But it also said this had "only a low probability of occurrence" and more work was needed. Critics point out that was six years ago. [...] According to Richard Gage, an American architect who founded Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, the skyscraper was destroyed by a controlled demolition: "Building 7 is the smoking gun of 9/11. It is the most obvious example of controlled demolition with explosives." [...] They point to Danny Jowenko, a Dutch demolition expert who has been in the business for 28 years, and who when shown footage of Tower 7's collapse said: "That is a controlled demolition... absolutely. It's been imploded. It's a hired job done by a team of experts." [...] Critics of the official account believe they have found evidence of the unconventional demolition of Tower 7 using a substance called thermite. Thermite is a substance that can literally melt steel and is made up of iron oxide and aluminium. Sceptics base their claims for this on an analysis of the dust from the World Trade Centre site after the attacks. In this dust they have found tiny iron rich spheres. These spheres can only be formed in very high temperatures - temperatures higher than those reached in the fires in the towers before their collapse. The former professor of physics, Steven Jones, believes the spheres he has found in the dust from the World Trade Centre site match the spheres you get in a thermite reaction. He argues that thermite is the explanation for the presence of iron and aluminium in the spheres. However, other scientists say there are other explanations for presence of these tiny iron rich spheres. They could have come from the cutting torches used after 9/11 to clear the site, from any building work on the site before the attacks or even from the collapse of the Towers themselves. [...] Professor Richard Sisson says it did not melt, it eroded. The cause was the very hot fires in the debris after 9/11 that cooked the steel over days and weeks. Professor Sisson determined that the steel was attacked by a liquid slag which contained iron, sulphur and oxygen. However, rather than coming from thermite, the metallurgist Professor Sisson thinks the sulphur came from masses of gypsum wallboard that was pulverised and burnt in the fires. [...] Critics say that by using the phrase "pull it" Larry Silverstein let slip the fact that he was involved in a decision to bring the building down. They point out that Silverstein took out a $3.5bn (£1.75bn) insurance policy on the Twin Towers just two months before the attacks. A policy that was to pay out in the event of a terrorist attack. [...] Because of the furore over the use of the words "pull it" in the interview, on 9, September 2005, Mr Dara McQuillan, a spokesman for Silverstein Properties, issued the following statement on the issue: "In the afternoon of September 11, Mr Silverstein spoke to the Fire Department Commander on site at Seven World Trade Centre. "The Commander told Mr Silverstein that there were several fire fighters in the building working to contain the fires. "Mr Silverstein expressed his view that the most important thing was to protect the safety of those fire fighters, including, if necessary, to have them withdraw from the building. "Later in the day, the Fire Commander ordered his fire fighters out of the building and at 5:20pm the building collapsed. No lives were lost at 7 World Trade Centre on September 11, 2001. "As noted above, when Mr Silverstein was recounting these events for a television documentary he stated, 'I said, you know, we've had such terrible loss of life. Maybe the smartest thing to do is to pull it.' Mr McQuillan has stated that by 'it', Mr Silverstein meant the contingent of fire fighters remaining in the building." [...] Both CNN and the BBC reported that Tower 7 was about to collapse or had collapsed when in fact it was still standing. Some have even suggested this shows the media were handed scripts by the conspirators. The BBC says this was simply an honest mistake on what was probably the fastest moving, most chaotic and most confusing story they had ever covered. After an investigation the head of BBC World News, Richard Porter, told The Conspiracy Files: "The investigations we've carried out suggest very strongly that we were working on the basis of an incorrect news agency report." The news agency Reuters have given this statement to the BBC: "On September 11, 2001, Reuters incorrectly reported that one of the buildings at the New York World Trade Centre, 7WTC, had collapsed before it actually did. The report was picked up from a local news story and was withdrawn as soon as it emerged that the building had not fallen." [...] There is no evidence that anyone died in Tower 7 on 9/11. However, conspiracy talk shows and websites seized on a recent interview for Loose Change with the crucial eyewitness Barry Jennings. The writer and director of Loose Change, Dylan Avery, told The Conspiracy Files: "The amount of detail that Barry gave us in this interview was unreal. He says he was stepping over dead bodies in the lobby." Barry Jennings himself disagrees with their interpretation of his words. Barry Jennings told the BBC: "I didn't like the way you know I was portrayed. They portrayed me as seeing dead bodies. I never saw dead bodies" Dylan Avery is adamant that he didn't take anything out of context. He played The Conspiracy Files a recording of Barry Jennings words: "The fire fighter who took us down kept saying do not look down. And I kept saying why. "He said do not look down. And we're stepping over people and you know you could feel when you're stepping over people." However, Barry Jennings told the BBC: "I said it felt like I was stepping over them but I never saw any. "And you know that's the way they portrayed me and I didn't appreciate that so I told them to pull my interview."" |
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In defense of the decision to dispose of the steel, Mayor Bloomberg said: "If you want to take a look at the construction methods and the design, that's in this day and age what computers do."[1] David Ray Griffin notes that this is exactly what Manning had worried about when he warned that "the investigation into the World Trade Center fire and collapse will amount to paper-and computer-generated hypotheticals.
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Its tenants included Salomon Smith Barney (which leased 44% of the available office space), ITT Hartford Insurance Group (8%), the Securities and Exchange Commission (8%), the Secret Service (5%), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Regional Council (3%). Smaller tenants included the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Department of Defense, though these shared a single floor with the IRS. Altogether, U.S. local, state, and federal government agencies occupied 11 of the overall 47 floors, or about 28% of the available 39 floors of office space. |
""Burning Questions...Need Answers": FE's Bill Manning Calls for Comprehensive Investigation of WTC Collapse". 2002-01-04. Retrieved 2009-01-04. ·
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A call to action by Bill Manning, the chief editor of the trade journal Fire Engineering, is often quoted in this connection. In a January 2002 editorial, Manning called the early ASCE investigation (which would later turn into the FEMA building performance study) a "half-baked farce" and said that "the destruction and removal of evidence must stop immediately." He said that the cleanup of the WTC site differed in many respects from that of other engineering disasters. |
"FOXNews.com - Silent Tribute Marks End of Ground Zero Search - U.S. & World". Foxnews.com. May 30, 2002. Retrieved 2008-10-30. ·
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The debris removal process began shortly after the attacks, and concluded in May 2002. |
- "BYU Professor Who Believes WTC Brought Down by Explosives Resigns". FoxNews. Oct. 21, 2006.
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{{cite news}}: Missing or empty |title= (help) · {{cite news}}: |pages= has extra text (help) · Gallagher, Patrick. "Response to McIlvaine Appeal" (PDF). Office of the Chief Information Officer. Retrieved 2009-03-15. ·
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Members of the 9/11 Truth movement have filed Requests for Correction to the NIST report. Only one of their requests resulted in a change to correct an inconsistency between two parts of the NIST report. An unsuccessful appeal was then filed. |
Gartner, John (Jan. 21, 2005). "Military Reloads with Nanotech". MIT Technology Review. Retrieved May 3, 2009.
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Because of its highly increased reaction rate, nanosized thermitic materials are being researched by the U.S. military with the aim of developing new types of bombs that are several times more powerful than conventional explosives. |
James R. Gourley (2008). "Discussion of "Mechanics of Progressive Collapse: Learning from World Trade Center and Building Demolitions" by Zdenek P. Bažant and Mathieu Verdure". ASCE Publications, Reston, VA. ·
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In October 2008, an essay describing what the author sees as fundamental errors in a Bažant and Verdure paper was published in The Journal of Engineering Mechanics by James Gourley. |
- John J. Granier (May 2005). Combustion Characteristics of Al Nanoparticles and Nanocomposite Al+MoO3 Thermites (PDF). Retrieved May 3, 2009(PhD thesis).
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Gravois, John (2006-06-23). "Professors of Paranoia?". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 2008-10-09. ·
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[...] His paper — written by an actual professor who works at an actual research university — has made him a celebrity in the conspiracy universe. He is now co-chairman of a group called the Scholars for 9/11 Truth, which includes about 50 professors — more in the humanities than in the sciences — from institutions like Clemson University, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Wisconsin. [...] Steven Jones's contribution to the September 11 conspiracy movement is that he avoids these problems — or at least holds them at bay — by just talking about physics. Like many others in the movement, Mr. Jones sees a number of "red flags" in the way the buildings fell. Why did the towers collapse at speeds close to the rate of free fall? Why did they fall straight down, instead of toppling over? Why did World Trade Center 7, a 47-story high-rise that was never hit by a plane, suddenly collapse in the same fashion — fast and straight down — on the evening of September 11? A rather hefty report by the National Institute of Standards and Technology explains how high-temperature fires started by jet fuel caused the buildings' outer columns to bow in, leading to the buildings' collapse. But the conspiracy theorists complain that the report stops short of showing computer models of the collapses. Mr. Jones's hypothesis is that the buildings were taken down with preplanted thermite — a mixture of iron oxide and aluminum powder that burns hot enough to vaporize steel when it is ignited. Mr. Jones says that this hypothesis offers the most elegant explanation for the manner in which the buildings collapsed. He says it best explains various anecdotal accounts that molten metal remained pooled in the debris piles of the buildings for weeks. And he says it offers the only satisfying explanation for a weird sight captured in video footage of the south tower just before its collapse. Near a corner of the south tower, at around 9:50 a.m., a cascade of a yellow-hot substance started spewing out of the building. The National Institute of Standards and Technology says in its report that the substance was most likely molten aluminum from the airplane fuselage. But Mr. Jones points out that aluminum near its melting point is a pale-silver color, not yellow. By his reckoning, then, that spew is a thermite reaction in plain sight. [...] Hence, in the world of mainstream science, Mr. Jones's hypothesis is more or less dead on the vine. But in the world of 9/11 Truth, it has seeded a whole garden of theories. [...] By many accounts, scholarly contributions to the movement began with Mr. Griffin, who retired from the Claremont School of Theology in 2004. About a year and a half after September 11, Mr. Griffin began reading books and Web sites arguing that the U.S. government was complicit in the attacks. Eventually, they won him over. That left him feeling a peculiar sense of obligation, he says. The official story had all the voices of authority on its side, and the case for government complicity in the attacks had no real standing. "It was not reaching a really wide audience," he says. So Mr. Griffin wrote his own book, trading on his authority as an academic. He called it The New Pearl Harbor. It was mostly just a synthesis of all the material he had read, tidied up by a philosopher's rhetorical skills. When it was finished, he aggressively pursued blurbs for the book jacket — and eventually scored one from Howard Zinn, the radical professor emeritus of political science at Boston University. Mr. Zinn said the book was "the most persuasive argument I have seen for further investigation on the Bush administration's relationship to that historic and troubling event." It went on to become one of the most successful books on the purported conspiracy. [...] James H. Fetzer, the co-chairman of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, retired last month from his post as a distinguished McKnight university professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota at Duluth. He wanted to focus more on the movement. "Whether there's another critical-thinking course being taught at the University of Minnesota is relatively trivial," he says, "compared to this." [...] |
- Griffin, David Ray (2004). The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press. ISBN 1-56656-552-9. ·
Griffin, David Ray (Sep. 10, 2006). "David Ray Griffin interview". CBC News. Retrieved May 4, 2009.
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To support his claim that explosives were used to bring down the WTC towers, David Ray Griffin refers to the testimonies of eyewitnesses released by FDNY in August 2005. |
Griffin, David Ray. "The Destruction of the World Trade Center: Why the Official Account Cannot Be True". Retrieved 2007-10-31. ·
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David Ray Griffin notes that this is exactly what Manning had worried about when he warned that "the investigation into the World Trade Center fire and collapse will amount to paper-and computer-generated hypotheticals." |
Griffin, David Ray (2006-09-30). 9/11 and the American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out. Olive Branch Press. ISBN 1566566592.
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The most notable statements of the controlled demolition conspiracy theory have been made by Steven Jones, David Ray Griffin, Webster Griffin Tarpley and Kevin Ryan. Jones has published his paper "Why Indeed Did the World Trade Center Buildings Collapse?"[1] in a book called 9/11 and the American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, edited by Peter Dale Scott and David Ray Griffin. |
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A story in the Guardian said that "police and fire officials were carrying out the first wave of evacuations when the first of the World Trade Centre towers collapsed. Some eyewitnesses reported hearing another explosion just before the structure crumbled. Police said that it looked almost like a 'planned implosion.'" |
"World Trade Centre building seven not destroyed by explosives, says US study". The Guardian. Retrieved 2009-04-24. ·
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Quintiere said NIST wasted time employing outside experts to consider it. |
Hagen, Susan; Carouba, Mary (2002). Women at Ground Zero: Stories of Courage and Compassion. Indianapolis: Alpha Books. ·
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Sue Keane, an officer in the New Jersey Fire Police Department who was previously a sergeant in the U.S. Army, said in her account of the onset of the collapse of the south tower: "[I]t sounded like bombs going off. That's when the explosions happened. [...] I knew something was going to happen. [...] It started to get dark, then all of a sudden there was this massive explosion." Then, discussing her experiences during the collapse of the north tower, she said: "[There was] another explosion. That sent me and the two firefighters down the stairs. [...] I can't tell you how many times I got banged around. Each one of those explosions picked me up and threw me. [...] There was another explosion, and I got thrown with two firefighters out onto the street." |
- Hamilton, Lee (Sep. 10, 2006). "Lee Hamilton interview". CBC News. Retrieved May 4, 2009.
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Harrit, Niels H (March 2009). "Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe". Open Chemical Physics Journal. Retrieved 2009-04-03. ·
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In April 2009, Danish chemist Niels H. Harrit, of the University of Copenhagen, and 8 other authors, published a paper in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, titled, 'Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe'. The paper concludes that super-thermite chips were discovered in the dust. Four major Danish newspapers, as well as the Danish scientific journal Videnskab, reported on the publication. |
"Learning From 9/11-Understanding the Collapse of the World Trade Center". Commdocs.house.gov. Retrieved 2008-10-30. ·
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Robert F. Shea of FEMA testified to the House of Representatives that, "Because of the importance of the rescue effort at the World Trade Center complex, it was clear that information would have to be gathered without interfering with response and rescue activities. Based on this fact, the FEMA-ASCE team first visited the site on October 6, [2001] but gathered information from others who had been on-site before this date." [...] However, allegations against a "speedy removal" of the steel hampering the engineering investigations appear to be unfounded, according to Dr. Gene Corley, head of the BPAT team and one of the lead engineers for the investigation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which began in September 2002. He testified to the House of Representatives in March 2002 that, "There has been some concern expressed by others that the work of the team has been hampered because debris was removed from the site and has subsequently been processed for recycling. This is not the case. The team has had full access to the scrap yards and to the site and has been able to obtain numerous samples. At this point there is no indication that having access to each piece of steel from the World Trade Center would make a significant difference to understanding the performance of the structures". |
- Hufschmid, Eric (September 2002). Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack. Endpoint Software. ISBN 1-931947-05-8.
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"Statement and Questions Regarding the 9/11 Commission Interview of Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Members of his Administration". 2004-05-11. Retrieved 2007-11-07. ·
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The 9/11 Family Steering Committee also asked what happened to WTC 7 in their 'Questions Regarding the 9/11 Commission Interview of Mayor Rudy Giuliani,' asking, "On 9/11, no aircraft hit WTC 7. Why did the building fall at 5:20 PM that evening?" |
- Mark Jacobson (March 2006). "The Ground Zero Grassy Knoll". New York Magazine.
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The day after 9/11, a story in the Los Angeles Times, referring to the south tower, said: "There were reports of an explosion right before the tower fell, then a strange sucking sound, and finally the sound of floors collapsing." |
- Lederman, Gorden (Oct. 2, 2003), Memos on Minders' conduct by Kevin Scheid, Lorry Fenner, and Gordon Lederman, retrieved April 30, 2009 (as recorded by the National Archives and uploaded to Scribd by HistoryCommons)
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{{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help) · "Request for Correction from Bob McIlvaine et al dated April 12, 2007" (PDF). Office of the Chief Information Officer. Retrieved 2009-04-06.
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Members of the 9/11 Truth movement have filed Requests for Correction to the NIST report. Only one of their requests resulted in a change to correct an inconsistency between two parts of the NIST report. An unsuccessful appeal was then filed. |
McIlvaine; et al. "Communication re Information Quality Request #07-06" (PDF). Office of the Chief Information Officer. Retrieved 2009-04-06.
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Members of the 9/11 Truth movement have filed Requests for Correction to the NIST report. Only one of their requests resulted in a change to correct an inconsistency between two parts of the NIST report. An unsuccessful appeal was then filed. |
- Meigs, Jim (Sep. 10, 2006). "Jim Meigs interview". CBC News. Retrieved May 4, 2009.
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Molé, Phil (2006). "9/11 Conspiracy Theories: The 9/11 Truth Movement Perspective". Skeptic. 12 (4). ·
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"Not surprisingly, their collapse is also a central issue for the 9/11 Truth Movement. [...] Why do they think this? A primary reason seems to be that the collapse of the towers looks like the result of a controlled demolition. Since there is no structural resistance to gravity in a controlled demolition, the building collapses straight into its own footprint, with each floor “pancaking” onto the floors below at or near the speed of a free fall. Many of the presenters at the Hyatt Conference compared videos of the collapse of the towers with videos of known controlled demolitions, noting the similarity in both the appearance and speed of collapse. 911truth.org maintains that if actually hit by an airplane, the steel structure of the WTC buildings should have provided at least some resistance to the weight of the floors above, causing the falling structure to pitch over to one side rather than pancake straight down. They further argue that fires caused by burning jet fuel from the crashed planes could not have caused the collapse, since jet fuel burns at a temperature of no more than 1500° Fahrenheit,1 while a temperature of approximately 2800° is needed to melt steel. [...] Finally, many of the leaders of the movement claim that demolition “squibs” can be seen in videos of the WTC collapse just before and during the time the towers began to fall. In professional demolition lingo, a “squib” is an explosive device used to weaken building structure during a controlled demolition. [...] What about the “melted steel” that 9/11 conspiracy theorists claim was at Ground Zero? Dr. Steven Jones’ popular article cites several anecdotal sources speaking about flowing or pooled samples of melted steel found at Ground Zero.[8] However, the sources in question are informal observations of “steel” at Ground Zero, not laboratory results.[9] [...] The conspiracy theorists assume that damage sustained by WTC 7 during the attack was not sufficient to trigger its collapse. The site wtc7.net claims that “fires were observed in Building 7 prior to its collapse, but they were isolated in small parts of the building, and were puny by comparison to other building fires.” They further claim that any damage from falling debris from WTC 1 and WTC 2 would have needed to be symmetrical to trigger the pancaking collapse of WTC 7.[10] For those who believe that Building 7 fell due to controlled demolition, some of the most powerful “evidence” seemingly comes from WTC leaseholder Larry Silverstein’s alleged “confession” that he authorized the tower’s destruction. The quote in question comes from a September, 2002 PBS Special called America Rebuilds, in which Silverstein says:
To conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones at prisonplanet.com, this quote seems to be a “smoking gun” because they interpret the phrase “pull it” to be “industry jargon for taking a building down with explosives.”[15] [...] But if Silverstein wasn’t describing a decision to destroy WTC 7, what could the words “pull it” mean? A good place to seek the answer is this September 9, 2005 statement by Mr. Dara McQuillan, a spokesperson for Larry Silverstein:
Many people in the 9/11 Truth Movement believe that the Pentagon was not actually struck by Flight 77, as the “official story” claims. Instead, they believe that the United States government somehow staged the damage, perhaps through the use of a bomb or strategically fired missile. This claim first attracted attention in French author Thierry Meyssan’s book, Pentagate, which claims that the damage done to the Pentagon was too limited to have resulted from the crash of a Boeing 757.[22] The documentary “Loose Change” claims that the hole left in the Pentagon by the alleged airplane was “a single hole, no more than 16 feet in diameter,” and that no remains whatsoever of Flight 77 were found at the crash site.[23] To dramatically support this last point, conspiracy theorists cite CNN correspondent Jamie McIntyre’s report from the crash site on 9/11, which says, “From my close-up inspection, there’s no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon.”[24] [...] In an excellent article about 9/11 conspiracy theories in Popular Mechanics, blast expert Allyn E. Kilsheimer describes his own observations as the first structural engineer to arrive at the Pentagon after Flight 77 crashed [...] On April 5, 2006, the creators of the 9/11 conspiracy documentary “Loose Change” and their supporters decided to attend the premiere of the film “United 93,” about the hijacked airplane that crashed on 9/11. [...] References & Notes
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- Molé, Phil (2006). "What Demolition Experts Say About 9/11". Skeptic. 12 (4). ·
Murphy, Dean E. (2002). September 11: An Oral History. New York: Doubleday. ·
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Multiple explosions were also reported by Teresa Veliz, who worked for a software development company in the north tower. She was on the 47th floor, she reported, when suddenly "the whole building shook. [...] [Shortly thereafter] the building shook again, this time even more violently." Then, while Veliz was making her way downstairs and outside: "There were explosions going off everywhere. I was convinced that there were bombs planted all over the place and someone was sitting at a control panel pushing detonator buttons. [...] There was another explosion. And another. I didn't know where to run." |
- Gross, John L. (September 2005). "NIST NCSTAR 1-6: Structural Fire Response and Probable Collapse Sequence of the World Trade Center Towers". Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster. National Institute of Standards and Technology. Retrieved 2008-03-20.
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NIST (2007). "Response to McIlvaine Request" (PDF). Office of the Chief Information Officer. Retrieved 2009-04-06. ·
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Members of the 9/11 Truth movement have filed Requests for Correction to the NIST report. Only one of their requests resulted in a change to correct an inconsistency between two parts of the NIST report. An unsuccessful appeal was then filed. |
- "NIST NCSTAR 1A: Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7". National Institute of Standards and Technology. November 2008. Retrieved 2009-04-25. ·
NIST (Nov. 20, 2008). "NIST press release for final report of collapse of WTC7".
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For the final report in "response to comments from the building community" NIST ran additional analysis to "see if the loss of WTC 7’s Column 79—the structural component identified as the one whose failure on 9/11 started the progressive collapse—would still have led to a complete loss of the building if fire or damage from the falling debris of the nearby WTC 1 tower were not factors. The investigation team concluded that the column’s failure under any circumstance would have initiated the destructive sequence of events." |
- NIST (Nov. 2008). Structural Analysis of the Response and of World Trade Center Building 7 to fires and Debris Impact Damage (NCSTAR 1-9A) (PDF). Retrieved May 4, 2009.
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NIST (2008). Structural Fire Response and Probable Collapse Sequence of World Trade Center Building 7 (NCSTAR 1-9) (PDF). Vol. 2. Retrieved May 4, 2009. ·
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Preliminary investigations did not include the mechanics of the actual collapse, concentrating instead on the events leading up to it. However, the final draft report on the collapse of WTC7 by NIST provides a detailed investigation into the collapse timeline, starting with the failure of a critical column, Column 79 (initial failure event). 6 seconds later, the collapse of the East Penthouse on the roof was visible. The collapse of the core columns progressed from east to west for another 6.9 seconds (12.9 seconds total since the initial failure event). At this point, the report says, "all the interior columns had buckled" and "the remaining exterior structure above began to fall vertically as a single unit." To calculate the timeline of the collapse of the rest of the building, NIST focused on the time between the initial collapse of the roofline and the last position that the complete roofline could be observed before portions of it started to become obscured by dust, at the top of Floor 29. NIST calculated the timeline for this observable descent as 5.4 seconds and calculated the theoretical free-fall time for the same portion of the building as 3.9 seconds, and concluded that, "The actual collapse time of the upper 18 floors of the north face of WTC7 (the floors clearly visible in the video evidence) was 40 percent greater than the computed free fall time. This was consistent with physical principles." |
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Members of the 9/11 Truth movement have filed Requests for Correction to the NIST report. Only one of their requests resulted in a change to correct an inconsistency between two parts of the NIST report. An unsuccessful appeal was then filed. |
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Following the NIST final draft on Building 7 in August 2008, a group of demolition proponents submitted a response challenging several points of the draft. |
- "The Sept. 11 Records". New York Times. Aug. 12, 2005. Retrieved May 4, 2009.
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Jim Dwyer (September 2, 2006). "2 U.S. Reports Seek to Counter Conspiracy Theories About 9/11". New York Times. Retrieved April 30, 2009. ·
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Proponents of the controlled demolition have questioned the "pancake collapse" theory originally suggested by FEMA. |
Feuer, Alan (June 5, 2006). "500 Conspiracy Buffs Meet to Seek the Truth of 9/11". New York Times. Retrieved May 5, 2009. ·
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"[...] The controlled-demolition theory is the sine qua non of the 9/11 movement — its basic claim and, in some sense, the one upon which all others rest. It is, of course, directly contradicted by the 10,000-page investigation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which held that jet-fuel fires distressed the towers' structure, which eventually collapsed. The movement's answer to that report was written by Steven E. Jones, a professor of physics at Brigham Young University and the movement's expert in the matter of collapse. Dr. Jones, unlike Alex Jones, is a soft-spoken man who lets his writing do the talking. He composed an account of the destruction of the towers (www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html) that holds that "pre-positioned cutter-charges" brought the buildings down. [...] It would even seem the Truthers are not alone in believing the whole truth has not come out. A poll released last month by Zogby International found that 42 percent of all Americans believe the 9/11 Commission "concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence" in the attacks. This is in addition to the Zogby poll two years ago that found that 49 percent of New York City residents agreed with the idea that some leaders "knew in advance" that the attacks were planned and failed to act. [...]" |
Eric Lipton (Aug. 22, 2008). "Fire, Not Explosives, Felled 3rd Tower on 9/11, Report Says". New York Times. Retrieved May 23, 2009.
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GAITHERSBURG, Md. — [...] But the collapse of 7 World Trade Center — home at the time to branch offices of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Secret Service and the Giuliani administration’s emergency operations center — is cited in hundreds of Web sites and books as perhaps the most compelling evidence that an insider secretly planted explosives, intentionally destroying the tower. [...] But S. Shyam Sunder, the lead investigator from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, based here in the suburbs of Washington, also rejected that theory on Thursday, even as he acknowledged that the collapse had been something of a puzzle. “Our take-home message today is the reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery,” Dr. Sunder said at a news conference at the institute’s headquarters. “It did not collapse from explosives or fuel oil fires.” [...] Conspiracy theorists have pointed to the fact that the building fell straight down, instead of tumbling, as proof that explosives were used to topple it, as well as to bring down the twin towers. Sixteen percent of the respondents in a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll said it was very likely or somewhat likely that explosives were planted. During the last four decades, other towers in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles have remained standing through catastrophic blazes that burned out of control for hours because of malfunctioning or nonexistent sprinkler systems. But 7 World Trade Center, which was not struck by a plane, is the first skyscraper in modern times to collapse primarily as a result of a fire. Adding to the suspicion is the fact that in the rush to clean up the site, almost all of the steel remains of the tower were disposed of, leaving investigators in later years with little forensic evidence. [...] The investigators determined that debris from the falling twin towers damaged structural columns and ignited fires on at least 10 floors at 7 World Trade Center, which stood about 400 feet north of the twin towers. But the structural damage from the falling debris was not significant enough to threaten the tower’s stability, Dr. Sunder said. Normally, fireproofing on a skyscraper should have been sufficient to allow such a blaze to burn itself out and leave the building damaged but still standing. But investigators determined that the heat from the fire caused girders in the steel floor of 7 World Trade Center to expand. As a result, steel beams underneath the floors that provided lateral support for the tower’s structural columns began to buckle or put pressure against the vertical structural columns. These fires might have been fed partly by the diesel from tanks and a pressurized fuel line, which were on the fifth to the ninth floors, Dr. Sunder said. But the analysis showed that even in the worst case, the diesel fuel-fed fire would not have burned hot enough or long enough to have played a major role in weakening the structure. The investigators determined that the fire that day was fed mainly by office paper and furnishings. [...] Skeptics have questioned whether explosives were planted at the three towers at ground zero, and at the Pentagon as well, often contending that the Bush administration had planned the catastrophes to provide a justification to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. What started as a small number of such conspiracy theorists ballooned into a movement of sorts, largely fed by Internet sites and homemade videos. Dr. Sunder said the investigators considered the possibility that explosives were used, but ruled it out because the noise associated with such an explosion would have been 10 times louder than being in front of the speakers at a rock concert, he said, and detectable from as far as a half a mile away. He said that interviews with eyewitnesses and a review of video taken that day provided no evidence of a sound that loud just before the collapse. The skeptics — including several who attended Thursday’s news conference — were unimpressed. They have long argued that an incendiary material called thermite, made of aluminum powder and a metal oxide, was used to take down the trade center towers, an approach that would not necessarily result in an explosive boom. They also have argued that a sulfur residue found at the World Trade Center site is evidence of an inside job. Dr. Sunder said the investigators chose not to use the computer model to evaluate whether a thermite-fueled fire might have brought down the tower, since 100 pounds of it would have had to have been stacked directly against the critical column that gave way, which he said they did not believe had occurred. To the skeptics, it was a glaring omission. “It is very difficult to find what you are not looking for,” said Shane Geiger, who contributes to a Web site that follows the topic and who had come to Maryland from Texas to quiz Dr. Sunder about his findings, with a bumper sticker on his laptop computer that says, “9-11 was an inside job.” [...] Within moments after the news conference ended, leaders of a group called Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth held their own telephone conference briefing, dismissing the investigation as flawed. “How much longer do we have to endure the coverup of how Building 7 was destroyed?” said Richard Gage, a California architect and leader of the group. [...] |
- Oliver, Anthony (2005-06-30). "Lasting lessons of WTC". New Civil Engineer.Ol ·
{{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help) · {{cite journal}}: |author= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link)Popu · Kevin R. Ryan, James R. Gourley, Steven E. Jones (2008-08). "Environmental anomalies at the World Trade Center: evidence for energetic materials". The Environmentalist. Online First. Retrieved 2008-08-08.
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Physicist Steven Jones and theologian David Ray Griffin have published accounts of the theory. Proponents argue that the aircraft impacts and resulting fires could not have weakened the buildings sufficiently to initiate collapse and that the buildings would in any case not have collapsed as completely, and quickly as they did without an additional source of destructive energy to undermine their structure. Various sources of this energy have been proposed; a number of notable proponents suggest that thermite, explosives, or some combination thereof, has been used.[1][2][3]
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- Hargrove, Thomas (2006-08-02). "Anti-government anger spurs 9/11 conspiracy belief". Scripps Howard News Service. Retrieved 2007-03-09.
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Another Wall Street Journal reporter said that after seeing what appeared to be "individual floors, one after the other exploding outward," he thought: "'My God, they're going to bring the building down.' And they, whoever they are, had set charges. [...] I saw the explosions." |
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Following the NIST final draft on Building 7 in August 2008, a group of demolition proponents submitted a response challenging several points of the draft. |
Ganser, Daniele (2006-09-09). "The embittered controversy over September 11". Tages Anzeiger. Retrieved 2006-09-20. ·
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Hugo Bachmann and Jörg Schneider, professors emeritus of structural engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, believe that WTC 7 was intentionally demolished based on video footage. |
Tarpley, Webster Griffin (2007-05-07). "Chapter VI: The Collapse of World Trade Center 1, 2, and 7". 9/11 Synthetic Terror (4th ed.). Joshua Tree, CA: Progressive Press. ISBN 0930852370. ·
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Some of the steel from the Twin Towers was removed and sent to scrap yards before engineers were allowed access to the site on October 6, 2001. Webster Griffin Tarpley, an author, has criticized the official response to the crime scene, saying that the cleanup process resulted in the destruction of most of the evidence, identifying the New York City Mayor's office as a key player in this regard. |
- "The Weekend's TV: The Conspiracy Files: 9/11 – The Third Tower". The Independent. July 6, 2008. ·
"AZ legislator wants McCain to hear Sept. 11 suspicions". Tucson Citizen. June 3, 2008. ·
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In June 2008, Arizona State Senator Karen Johnson delivered a letter to the office of U.S. Senator John McCain asking him to meet with a group of professionals to discuss the events of 9/11. |
- Sullivan, Will (September 11, 2006). "BYU takes on a 9/11 conspiracy professor". U.S. News & World Report. www.usnews.com. Retrieved April 26, 2009. ·
"Identifying Misinformation: 9/11 Revealed?". usinfo.state.gov (as recorded by www.archive.org). 2005-09-16. Retrieved 2009-04-30. ·
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In the PBS documentary America Rebuilds, which aired in September 2002, Larry Silverstein, the owner of WTC 7 and leaseholder and insurance policy holder for the remainder of the WTC Complex, recalled a discussion with the fire department in which doubts about containing the fires were expressed. Silverstein recalled saying, "We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it". "They made that decision to pull", he recalled, "and we watched the building collapse." Silverstein issued a statement that it was the firefighting team, not the building, that was to be pulled. |
Bussey, John (Sept. 12, 2001). "Eye of the Storm: One Journey Through Desperation and Chaos". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved May 4, 2009.
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"Unknown to the dozens of firefighters on the street, and those of us still in offices in the neighborhood, the South Tower was weakening structurally. Off the phone, and collecting my thoughts for the next report, I heard metalic crashes and looked up out of the office window to see what seemed like perfectly synchronized explosions coming from each floor, spewing glass and metal outward. One after the other, from top to bottom, with a fraction of a second between, the floors blew to pieces. It was the building apparently collapsing in on itself, pancaking to the earth." |
"Zogby Poll: 51% of Americans Want Congress to Probe Bush/Cheney Regarding 9/11 Attacks; Over 30% Seek Immediate Impeachment". 2007-09-06. Retrieved 2007-09-15. ·
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In 2007, a representative poll by Zogby International, commissioned by 911truth.org, found that 67% of Americans fault the 9/11 Commission for not investigating the collapse of World Trade Center 7. |