User:Cs32en/911/Overview/Sources/G-M

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.

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.

"MONTREAL – Richard Gage, an American architect who has been pushing for a fresh, independent, science-based investigation of the three 9/11 building collapses in New York City in September 2001, is scheduled to lay out his case for an audience in this city during a lecture Saturday evening. [...]"

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.

[...] 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." [...]

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.

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."

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.

"[...] "We don't believe that 19 hijackers and a few others in a cave in Afghanistan pulled this off acting alone," says Jones. "We challenge this official conspiracy theory and, by God, we're going to get to the bottom of this."

While this sinister spin strikes most American academics as absurd, Jones, a physics professor, is not alone. He is a member of 9/11 Scholars for Truth, a recently formed group of around 75 US professors determined to prove 9/11 was a hoax. In essays and journals, they are using their association with prominent universities to give a scholarly stamp to conspiracy theories long believed in parts of Europe and the Arab world, and gaining ground among Americans due to frustration with the Iraq war and opposition to President Bush's heavily hyped "war on terror".

Their iconoclastic positions have drawn wrath from rightwing radio shows and caused upheaval on campuses, triggering letters to newspapers, phone calls from parents and TV cameras in lecture halls.

In the Midwest, 61 legislators signed a petition calling for the dismissal of a University of Wisconsin assistant professor, Kevin Barrett, after he joined the 9/11 Scholars for Truth. Citing academic freedom, the university provost defended Barrett, albeit reluctantly.

A Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll taken during the summer indicates that Americans are increasingly suspicious of the government's explanation of the events of 9/11: 36% said it was "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, or took no action to stop them, "because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East". [...]

It is impossible, says Jones, for the towers to have collapsed from the collision of two aeroplanes, as jet fuel doesn't burn at temperatures hot enough to melt steel beams. The horizontal puffs of smoke - squibs - emitted during the collapse of the towers are indicative of controlled implosions on lower floors. The scholars have collected eyewitness accounts of flashes and loud explosions immediately before the fall. [...]

What's more, the nearby World Trade Centre 7 also collapsed later that afternoon. The building had not been hit by a plane, only damaged by fire. WTC 7 housed a clandestine CIA station, which the scholars believe was the command centre for the planning of 9/11. [...]

"The planes were just a distraction," says Professor James Fetzer, 65, a recently retired philosopher of science at the University of Minnesota. "The evidence is so overwhelming, but most Americans don't have time to take a look at this." [...]

"We're academics and we're rational, and we really believe Congress or someone should investigate this," says David Gabbard, an East Carolina education professor and 9/11 scholar. "But there are a lot of crazies out there who purport that UFOs were involved. We don't want to be lumped in with those folks.""

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.'"

[...] Prof Griffin is a founder member of the 9/11 Scholars for Truth movement in the US. He is joined by 75 academics who write in books, journals and essays that they have overwhelming evidence that shatters the official version of events on that September morning.

And it seems that a growing number of people are listening to them. A recent poll in the US found that 36% of Americans believed it "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that their government was involved in allowing the attacks or had carried them out itself. There are many people in the UK who agree with them. [...]

"[...] This is the bedroom of Dylan Avery, the director and creator of Loose Change, the most successful movie to emerge from what followers call the 9/11 Truth Movement. More commonly, they are referred to as conspiracy theorists. They believe - or rather, they insist they can prove - that the attacks in New York and Washington on September 11 2001 were not the work of Osama bin Laden, but of elements within the US government itself. They reject the term "conspiracy theorists", arguing that if you accept the official line on 9/11 you have in any case signed up to a theory about a conspiracy - an al-Qaida conspiracy. [...]

The movement of 9/11 sceptics has had an astonishing success in sowing doubt across the US. Recent polls suggest more than a third of Americans believe that either the official version of events never happened, or that US officials knew the attacks were imminent, but did nothing to stop them.

That's an impressive statistic in itself. Now look at the success Loose Change has had. Google Video acts as a portal for the movie, where you can also see the running tally of the number of times it has been viewed since last August. As I write, it stands at 4,048,990. By the time you read this, it will have risen considerably higher. On top of that, the movie was shown on television to up to 50 million people in 12 countries on September 11 last year; 100,000 DVDs have been sold and 50,000 more given away free. Then there are many more who have watched the film but are never counted, as a result of the active encouragement the film-makers give their supporters to burn the movie and distribute it to their friends. Avery says 100 million people - "easy" - have seen it. That may be an exaggeration, but it's fair to say that something extraordinary is going on. [...]

And so to the message. The Twin Towers in New York didn't fall as a direct result of the planes hitting them and the fire that ensued; they were brought them down in a series of controlled explosions. George Bush's brother, Marvin, sat on the board of a company that insured the towers. [...]

The exponential growth of Loose Change is gradually forcing the film on the mainstream media. Though it began as an internet phenomenon, its biggest spikes have come, significantly, after the film gained airplay on old media platforms such as Air America and Pacifica radio stations, local Fox TV outlets and on stations around the world, including state outlets in Belgium, Ireland and Portugal. So far though, no British channel has been rash - or as the film-makers would see it, brave - enough to bite. [...]"

Quintiere said NIST wasted time employing outside experts to consider it.

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."

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.

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".

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?"

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."

"[...] D’ailleurs, nombreux sont ceux qui ont émis des hypothèses sur la vraisemblable implication de la CIA (agence de contre-espionnage américaine) et du Mossad israélien (connu pour être le premier à avoir inventé le système des voitures piégées utilisées contre les dirigeants et les militants de la cause palestinienne dans les années 70/80) dans cette tragique comédie, qui a coûté quand même la vie à 3000 Américains et étrangers de passage aux USA. Ce postulat reprend toute son actualité et son crédit après les récentes déclarations de l’ancien président italien Francisco Cossiga, qui n’a pas hésité à briser l’omerta autour de cette affaire en affirmant qu’«il est connu au sein des services secrets italiens que les attentats du 11 septembre ont été préparés et organisés par la CIA» confirmant ainsi les soupçons sur l’impossibilité pour une organisation ne disposant pas du savoir-faire nécessaire d’accomplir cette extraordinaire prouesse technique et scientifique qu’a été la destruction ou la «démolition» du World Trade Center. [...]"

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.

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.

"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:

I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, “We’ve had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.” And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse.[14]

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:

In the afternoon of September 11, Mr. Silverstein spoke to the Fire Department Commander on site at Seven World Trade Center. The Commander told Mr. Silverstein that there were several firefighters 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 firefighters, including, if necessary, to have them withdraw from the building.

Later in the day, the Fire Commander ordered his firefighters out of the building and at 5:20 p.m. the building collapsed. No lives were lost at Seven World Trade Center 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 firefighters remaining in the building [emphasis added].[17] [...]

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

1. 2005. “9/11: Debunking the Myths.” Popular Mechanics. March, 2005.
2. Heller, David. 2005. “Taking a Closer Look: Hard Science and the Collapse of the World Trade Center.” Garlic & Grass, Issue 6. Available at www.garlicandgrass.org/issue6/Dave_Heller.cfm
3. This is clearly visible in the PBS NOVA Documentary Why The Towers Fell.
4. 2005. “9/11: Debunking the Myths.” Popular Mechanics. March, 2005.
5. Eager, Thomas and Musso, Christopher. 2001. “Why Did the World Trade Center Collapse: Science, Engineering and Speculation.” JOM, 53(12), 8–11.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Jones, Steven. 2006. “Why Indeed did the WTC Buildings Collapse?” Available at www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html
9. A good discussion of this issue can be found at http://911myths.com/html/wtc_molten_steel.html
10. This claim can be found at http://wtc7.net/b7fires.html
11. “World Trade Center Task Force Interview: Richard Banaciski.” Interview conducted on December 6, 2001. Transcribed by Elisabeth F. Nason. Available at graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/ 20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110253.PDF
12. Ibid.
13. www.loosechangeguide.com
14. “America Rebuilds,” PBS Home Video, ISBN 0-7806-4006-3, is available from shop.pbs.org/products/AREB901/
15. www.prisonplanet.com/011904wtc7.html
16. A discussion of the “pull it” phrase by professional demolition workers is at web.archive.org/web/ 20050327052408/http://home.planet.nl/~reijd050/ 911_my_own_review.htm#222
17. See “9/11 Revealed? A New Book Repeats False Con-spiracy Theories.” At usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Sep/16-241966.html
18. “World Trade Center Task Force Interview: Daniel Nigrois.” Interview conducted on October 24, 2001. The text of the interview is available at www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/ 20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/ Nigro_Daniel.txt
19. “World Trade Center Task Force Interview: Richard Banaciski.” Interview conducted on December 6, 2001. Transcribed by Elisabeth F. Nason. Available at graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/ 20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/ 9110253.PDF
20. Read almost anything at www.prisonplanet.com for this idea
21. The FEMA report on WTC 7 is available at usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Sep/16-241966.html
22. Meyssan, Thierry. 2002. Pentagate. New York: USA Books.
23. www.loosechangeguide.com
24. The transcript: transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/11/bn.35.html
25. 2005. “9/11: Debunking the Myths.” Popular Mechanics. March, 2005.
26. transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/11/bn.35.html
27. Ibid.
28. www.loosechangeguide.com
29. The claim that Flight 93 landed safely is at www.rense.com/general56/flfight.htm. The claim that it was shot by a missile can be found at www.serendipity.li/wot/pop_mech/shanksville.htm
30. A description of the confusion between the planes is in Kropko, M.R. 2002. “September 11 Tension Vivid to Controller.” Associated Press, August 15, 2002. The story is also available online at www.enquirer.com/editions/2002/08/15/loc_sept_11_tension.html
31. 2005. “9/11: Debunking the Myths.” Popular Mechanics. March, 2005.
32. One such claim can be found at 911research.wtc7.net/essays/pm/
33. 2005. “9/11: Debunking the Myths.” Popular Mechanics. March, 2005.
34. See “AMR Corp Issues 3Q’ 2001 Profit Warning.” Airline Industry Information, September 11, 2001. Available at www.highbeam.com/library/docFree.asp?DOCID=1G1:78127985. For a general contemporary assessment of the viability of airline industry in the months before 9/11, see Hamilton, Adam. 2001. “Plummeting Profits.” Zeal Speculation and Investment. June 22, 2001, available at www.zealllc.com/2001/plummet.htm
35. Schorow, Stephanie. 2002. “Independent Research.” Boston Herald. 5 September (Arts & Life). A sound recording of Kenney’s statement can be heard at www.snopes.com/rumors/sound/kenney.ram
36. Ibid.
37. This list is based on information in Strasser, Steven (ed.). 2004. The 9/11 Investigations: Staff Reports of the 9/11 Commission. New York: Public Affairs Books. More information about radical Islam can be found in Rashid, Ahmed. 2001. Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. New York: Yale University Press.
38. This quote can be found in many sources, including Strasser, Steven (ed.). 2004. The 9/11 Investigations: Staff Reports of the 9/11 Commission. New York: Public Affairs Books.
39. Bamer, David. 2001. “Bin Laden: Yes, I Did It.” The Telegraph. November 11.
40. One source among many possible for this information is Alterman, Eric and Green, Mark. 2004. The Book on Bush: How George W. (Mis)leads America. New York: Penguin.
41. This hilarious article is at www.theonion.com/content/node/28079
42. Pynchon, Thomas. 1973. Gravity’s Rainbow. New York: Viking Press.
43. See, for instance, “Absent Without Leave” at the Urban Legends Reference Pages: www.snopes.com/rumors/israel.htm"

Video

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."