September 11th: Conspiracies & Cover-ups - Original Version

[Tesha Dodge]

A hundred tons of metal were mostly vaporized but "parts of uniforms" and "body parts" survived? Puh-leaze!




It's true there was some debris — scraps of metal and other stuff — on the Pentagon lawn. Not surprising, considering that a huge explosion occurred. But the presence of scraps of metal shows only that something metallic was destroyed. It could have been anything — a plane (other than a 757), a cruise missile, maybe even a Global Hawk (pictured at left) dressed up in American Airlines livery (these things are remotely controlled; more details in Carol Valentine's Operation 911: NO SUICIDE PILOTS). Leonard Spencer has suggested that what approached the Pentagon was a missile with a 757-mock-up superstructure (what some witnesses saw as a 757), which superstructure was wired to explode into small fragments just before the missile struck the Pentagon (see his The Attack on the Pentagon).

Or maybe it was an AGM-86C cruise missile, or perhaps a Predator (pictured at left) painted up in AA colors. Both of these are remote-controlled, and either of them could have been programmed to hit the Pentagon exactly where it was hit. But whatever it was that hit the Pentagon it was definitely not a Boeing 757 jetliner, and so it was not AA 77 (assuming that flight ever existed), and so the official story is false.

[Tesha Dodge]

"Melted" Steel

CLAIM: "We have been lied to," announces the Web site AttackOnAmerica.net. "The first lie was that the load of fuel from the aircraft was the cause of structural failure. No kerosene fire can burn hot enough to melt steel." The posting is entitled "Proof Of Controlled Demolition At The WTC."

FACT: Jet fuel burns at 800° to 1500°F, not hot enough to melt steel (2750°F). However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their steel frames didn't need to melt, they just had to lose some of their structural strength--and that required exposure to much less heat. "I have never seen melted steel in a building fire," says retired New York deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn, author of The Collapse Of Burning Buildings: A Guide To Fireground Safety. "But I've seen a lot of twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel. What happens is that the steel tries to expand at both ends, but when it can no longer expand, it sags and the surrounding concrete cracks."

"Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100°F," notes senior engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel Construction. "And at 1800° it is probably at less than 10 percent." NIST also believes that a great deal of the spray-on fireproofing insulation was likely knocked off the steel beams that were in the path of the crashing jets, leaving the metal more vulnerable to the heat.

But jet fuel wasn't the only thing burning, notes Forman Williams, a professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and one of seven structural engineers and fire experts that PM consulted. He says that while the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires, the resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture and paper. NIST reports that pockets of fire hit 1832°F.

"The jet fuel was the ignition source," Williams tells PM. "It burned for maybe 10 minutes, and [the towers] were still standing in 10 minutes. It was the rest of the stuff burning afterward that was responsible for the heat transfer that eventually brought them down."
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http://forums.atlantisrising.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=14;t=000094;p=3

[Tesha Dodge]

The claim that the steel "melted" was not due to "conspiracy theorists" but rather was part of the initial version of the official story, rushed into print by the mainstream media. At How the World Trade Center fell, a page on the BBC's website, dated 2001-09-13, the following claims are made:
• Fire reaches 800°C - hot enough to melt steel floor supports.
• The columns would have melted, the floors would have melted and eventually they would have collapsed one on top of each other. (Chris Wise, UK structural engineer, quoted.)
• But steel melts, and 24,000 gallons (91,000 litres) of aviation fluid melted the steel. (Chris Wise again.)
• Once the steel frame on one floor had melted, it collapsed downwards ... The following appeared on a page of the website of Scientific American, a page (http://www.sciam.com/explorations/2001/100901wtc) which has since disappeared (but a copy of which may be found here):
Eduardo Kausel proposed an alternative failure explanation that he acknowledged was independently developed by Zdenek Bazant, a professor at Northwestern University. "I believe that the intense heat softened or melted the structural elements — floor trusses and columns — so that they became like chewing gum, and that was enough to trigger the collapse," he said.
Popular Mechanics states that "Jet fuel burns at 800° to 1500°F". Jet fuel is basically kerosene, and kerosene ignites at 444°F (229°C) according to the Journal of Australian Fire Investigators (see http://www.tcforensic.com.au/docs/article10.html). The temperature then reached depends on the combustion rate (which depends on the oxygen supply) and the rate at which the heat generated can be dispersed. Videos of the Twin Towers show that the fires were moderate (certainly not of the "raging inferno" type) and the large volumes of black, sooty, smoke show that the fires were oxygen-deprived, not the sort of combustion that will generate high temperatures. Moreover, the jet fuel burnt itself out in about ten minutes (see below), and both buildings stood for over forty minutes thereafter.
A fire never burns hot enough to melt steel except under exceptional and controlled conditions, such as (i) in a blast furnace, where preheated air is pumped into the fire under pressure, and (ii) in an oxyacetylene torch, where oxygen is mixed with acetylene. This is why you can cook food in a steel pot over a gas flame and why jet engines can be made of steel.
The question of whether the fires provided sufficient explanation for the collapse of the Twin Towers was addressed by several people soon after the event, and it was shown that this was not a sufficient explanation, but Popular Mechanics ignored these analyses (if it was ever aware of them). For example, over three years ago, on 2001-11-25 Carol Valentine published J. McMichael's Muslims Suspend Laws of Physics (also available on this website: Part I and Part II). Popular Mechanics' "experts" were apparently unaware of the points to which J. McMichael drew attention (or perhaps they were aware but Popular Mechanics chose to ignore things like this):
• The fires in the Twin Towers were not raging infernos. They gave off lots of black, sooty smoke, indicating an oxygen-poor fire. Oxygen-poor fires do not produce high temperatures.
• The Boeings which allegedly hit the Twin Towers had both taken off with enough fuel for a transcontinental flight, but most of the jet fuel in the South Tower impact was consumed in the spectacular fireball, so presumably much more fuel was available for the fire in the North Tower. If the fires were the cause of the collapse then we would expect the North Tower to have collapsed more quickly than the South Tower. But the opposite happened: the North Tower collapsed 104 minutes after impact whereas the South Tower collapsed after only 56 minutes.
• Steel is an excellent conductor of heat, so when you apply heat to a steel structure the heat spreads quickly. So the heat from the fires would have spread through the entire steel structure of each tower. The Twin Towers contained 200,000 tons of steel. Are we expected to believe that the fires from two loads of jet fuel provided sufficient heat to raise 200,000 tons of steel to the point where it became critically weak?
• Based on data provided by Corus Construction Centre, and assuming that the WTC architects followed the usual safety margins for load-bearing steel structures, we may conclude that even if the fire had heated the steel to 1022°F (550°C) that would not have been sufficient to cause the towers to collapse.
• Fire tests in open sided car parks in four countries revealed that the maximum temperature reached was 680°F (360°C), far below that needed to cause steel to weaken significantly.
However we do not have to establish exactly what temperature was reached, or could have been reached, by the burning jet fuel, since Dr. Shyam Sunder, Chief of the NIST Materials and Construction Systems Division, has stated:
Now, several of you have heard about or thought about the fact that the jet fuel would have burned, caused the building to burn, and probably think the jet fuel played the sole role in the fires. The jet fuel acted much like a matchstick. It was something that spread throughout the building in those affected floors and caused ignition of the fires. But the jet fuel itself burnt in a matter of minutes, within less than ten minutes. So what burned over the next hour, or hour and a half, was really the contents of the buildings, the everyday contents of the buildings. — Transcript of NIST Public Meeting in New York City — February 12, 2004 (381 Kb PDF file)
So the jet fuel burned for maybe ten minutes, and thereafter it was not jet fuel that was burning but rather, as Popular Mechanics' "Fact" says, "the combustible material inside the buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture and paper". Since both WTC 1 and WTC 2 were still standing 50 minutes after the impacts, the alleged weakening of the steel had to be due to the previous 40 minutes of burning of "rugs, curtains, furniture and paper". Popular Mechanics states (erroneously, and completely ignoring the safety margins that architects use when designing buildings) that "Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100°F". So we are expected to believe that burning "rugs, curtains, furniture and paper" can produce temperatures of 1100°F. But according to the Journal of Australian Fire Investigators (see http://www.tcforensic.com.au/docs/article10.html) paper, wood and leather ignite at 475°F (246°C) or less, far below the temperature required to weaken steel significantly. It is thus ludicrous to attempt to attribute the collapse of the Twin Towers to the weakening of its steel supports due to the combustion of "rugs, curtains, furniture and paper".
An interesting message was sent by Kevin Ryan (site manager of the Environmental Health Laboratories, owned by Underwriters Laboratories, the company who certified the steel used in the Twin Towers) to NIST regarding the temperature reached by the burning jet fuel, stating that
The results of your recently published metallurgical tests seem to clear things up ... Your comments suggest that the steel was probably exposed to temperatures of only about 500F (250C), which is what one might expect from a thermodynamic analysis of the situation.
However the summary of the new NIST report seems to ignore your findings, as it suggests that these low temperatures caused exposed bits of the building's steel core to "soften and buckle." Additionally this summary states that the perimeter columns softened, yet your findings make clear that "most perimeter panels (157 of 160) saw no temperature above 250C." ... If steel from those buildings did soften or melt, I'm sure we can all agree that this was certainly not due to jet fuel fires of any kind, let alone the briefly burning fires in those towers.
There are only three cases of a steel-structure high-rise building collapsing (allegedly) as a result of fires, namely, WTC 1, WTC 2 and WTC 7, all on the same day, 9/11. A strange coincidence, no? In all other cases of fires in high-rise steel-structure buildings the buildings did not collapse. For details see Other Fires in Steel-Structure Buildings.

[Tesha Dodge]

Puffs Of Dust

CLAIM: As each tower collapsed, clearly visible puffs of dust and debris were ejected from the sides of the buildings. An advertisement in The New York Times for the book Painful Questions: An Analysis Of The September 11th Attack made this claim: "The concrete clouds shooting out of the buildings are not possible from a mere collapse. They do occur from explosions." Numerous conspiracy theorists cite Van Romero, an explosives expert and vice president of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, who was quoted on 9/11 by the Albuquerque Journal as saying "there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse." The article continues, "Romero said the collapse of the structures resembled those of controlled implosions used to demolish old structures."

FACT: Once each tower began to collapse, the weight of all the floors above the collapsed zone bore down with pulverizing force on the highest intact floor. Unable to absorb the massive energy, that floor would fail, transmitting the forces to the floor below, allowing the collapse to progress downward through the building in a chain reaction. Engineers call the process "pancaking," and it does not require an explosion to begin, according to David Biggs, a structural engineer at Ryan-Biggs Associates and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) team that worked on the FEMA report.

Like all office buildings, the WTC towers contained a huge volume of air. As they pancaked, all that air--along with the concrete and other debris pulverized by the force of the collapse--was ejected with enormous energy. "When you have a significant portion of a floor collapsing, it's going to shoot air and concrete dust out the window," NIST lead investigator Shyam Sunder tells PM. Those clouds of dust may create the impression of a controlled demolition, Sunder adds, "but it is the floor pancaking that leads to that perception."

Demolition expert Romero regrets that his comments to the Albuquerque Journal became fodder for conspiracy theorists. "I was misquoted in saying that I thought it was explosives that brought down the building," he tells PM. "I only said that that's what it looked like."

Romero, who agrees with the scientific conclusion that fire triggered the collapses, demanded a retraction from the Journal. It was printed Sept. 22, 2001. "I felt like my scientific reputation was on the line." But emperors-clothes.com saw something else: "The paymaster of Romero's research institute is the Pentagon. Directly or indirectly, pressure was brought to bear, forcing Romero to retract his original statement." Romero responds: "Conspiracy theorists came out saying that the government got to me. That is the farthest thing from the truth. This has been an albatross around my neck for three years."
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In 1994 Dr. Van D. Romero, with strong ties to the the defense establishment, became director of the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center (prior to 1991 named TERA, the Terminal Effects Research and Analysis group) at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (NMTech). In 1999 he was appointed (and remains) NMTech's Vice President for Research.

According to PsyOpNews (in a web page which appeared on 2001-10-04, but disappeared a few weeks later):


On the morning of the attacks, Romero and Tech's finance vice president Denny Peterson, were near the Pentagon.
They had come to Washington to discuss defense-funded research programs at Tech, leaving them very conveniently located to grab NMTech's slice of the imminent cleanup operation. Because New Mexico Tech offers counter-terrorism training of police and fire first responders to terrorism attacks in the United States!

Within hours Romero was telling the Albuquerque Journal that the collapse of the twin towers could have been caused by a small amount of explosive put in more than two points in each of the towers.

You can read the rest of the PsyopNews story here. Rather than pursue this, let's stay with what Van Romero is reported to have told the Albuquerque Journal. You can read the entire text of the original article here. Here are some extracts:


"My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after the airplanes hit the World Trade Center there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse," Romero said. ...
Romero said the collapse of the structures resembled those of controlled implosions used to demolish old structures.

"It would be difficult for something from the plane to trigger an event like that," Romero said in a phone interview from Washington, D.C. ...

If explosions did cause the towers to collapse, the detonations could have been caused by a small amount of explosive, he said.

"It could have been a relatively small amount of explosives placed in strategic points," Romero said.

Whether Van Romero "was misquoted in saying that [he] thought it was explosives that brought down the building" is known only by himself and the journalist, but it sure reads as if he said exactly that.

No doubt the publication of his views was not received well in certain circles in Washington D.C., nor at NMTech, heavily dependent upon funding from the Pentagon. It is not surprising that within two weeks he had publicly renounced his former views, and continues to do so.

Now let us turn to a consideration of what Popular Mechanics calls the "pancake theory". This theory was examined already over three years ago in the article by J. McMichael mentioned above. This article should be read for the full examination, but here are some extracts:


I think of the floors of each tower like a stack of LP (33-1/3 RPM) records, except that the floors were square instead of circular. They were stacked around a central spindle that consisted of multiple steel columns interspersed with dozens of elevator shafts.
The outside shape of the towers was almost square, but the inner core was more rectangular. With the central core bearing the weight of the building, the platters were tied together and stabilized by another set of steel columns at the outside rim, closely spaced and completely surrounding the structure.

Where the radial trusses connected with the central columns, I imagine the joints looked like the big bolted flanges where girders meet on a bridge — inches thick bolts tying the beams into the columns. In order to weaken those joints, a fire would have to heat the bolts or the flanges to the point where the bolts fell apart or tore through the steel. But ... all the joints between the platter and the central columns would have to be heated at the same rate in order to collapse at the same time.

But there were no irregularities in the fall of those buildings. They fell almost as perfectly as a deck of cards in the hands of a magician doing an aerial shuffle.

This is particularly worrisome since the first plane struck one side of the north tower, causing (you would think) a weakening on that side where the exterior columns were struck, and a more intense fire on that side than on the other side. And the second plane struck near the corner of the south tower at an angle that caused much of the fuel to spew out the windows on the adjacent side. Yet the south tower also collapsed in perfect symmetry, spewing dust in all directions like a Fourth of July sparkler burning to the ground.

I would like to find a picture of all those platters piled up on the ground, just as they fell ... I am told it was cumulative weight of those platters falling on each other that caused the collapse, but I don't see the platters piled up like flapjacks on the ground floor. Instead, the satellite pictures show the WTC ruins like an ash pit.

I have just one other point I need help with — the steel columns in the center. When the platters fell, those quarter-mile high central steel columns (at least from the ground to the fire) should have been left standing naked and unsupported in the air, and then they should have fallen intact or in sections to the ground below, clobbering buildings hundreds of feet from the WTC site like giant trees falling in the forest. But I haven't seen any pictures showing those columns standing, falling, or lying on the ground.

[Tesha Dodge]

The "pancake" (or "domino" or "flapjack") theory has it that the towers collapsed because (a) the only connection between the outer perimeter wall and the central core were flimsy lightweight trusses, (b) the plane impact weakened these trusses and the heat of the fires caused them to buckle until (c) the trusses at the impact floors gave way and (d) the floors above lost their support and fell upon the lower floors causing all floors to pancake. That this theory is false has been demonstrated (by an anonymous author) in The World Trade Center Demolition. For more on this see this part of The Official Story: The Twin Towers.

As regards what Popular Mechanics calls the "puffs of dust", the most interesting ones are those that are very similar to ones that occur in controlled demolitions. For more on this see this part of Evidence for Explosives in the Twin Towers.


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Seismic Spikes

CLAIM: Seismographs at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., 21 miles north of the WTC, recorded the events of 9/11. "The strongest jolts were all registered at the beginning of the collapses, well before falling debris struck the earth," reports the Web site WhatReallyHappened.com.

[Tesha Dodge]

A columnist on Prisonplanet.com, a Web site run by radio talk show host Alex Jones, claims the seismic spikes (boxed area on Graph 1) are "indisputable proof that massive explosions brought down" the towers. The Web site says its findings are supported by two seismologists at the observatory, Won-Young Kim and Arthur Lerner-Lam. Each "sharp spike of short duration," says Prisonplanet.com, was consistent with a "demolition-style implosion."

FACT: "There is no scientific basis for the conclusion that explosions brought down the towers," Lerner-Lam tells PM. "That representation of our work is categorically incorrect and not in context."

The report issued by Lamont-Doherty includes various graphs showing the seismic readings produced by the planes crashing into the two towers as well as the later collapse of both buildings. WhatReallyHappened.com chooses to display only one graph (Graph 1), which shows the readings over a 30-minute time span.

On that graph, the 8- and 10-second collapses appear--misleadingly--as a pair of sudden spikes. Lamont-Doherty's 40-second plot of the same data (Graph 2) gives a much more detailed picture: The seismic waves--blue for the South Tower, red for the North Tower--start small and then escalate as the buildings rumble to the ground. Translation: no bombs.
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[Tesha Dodge]

seismographic record simply records the degree of earth-shaking over some period of time. It does not in itself reveal the cause of that earth-shaking. The question here is, what caused the seismic events recorded at Lamont-Doherty. The authors of the report beg the question in the very title of the paper, assuming that the major events were caused wholly and solely by "Aircraft Impacts and Building Collapses". Nowhere in their report is any other possibility considered, and especially not the possibility that explosions at the WTC might have been, at least in part, the cause of the seismographic readings.

Christopher Bollyn was one of the first (perhaps the first) person to point out that the seismic readings suggest that explosives were used to bring down the Twin Towers. See his Seismic Evidence Points to Underground Explosions Causing WTC Collapse for more details.

Bollyn also drew attention to the fact that pockets of extremely hot material, in excess of 1292°F (700°C), persisted beneath the rubble of the WTC for weeks after 9/11. Such extreme temperatures cannot have been produced simply as the effects of steel falling from great heights, but rather suggests that explosions occurred in the basement of the WTC. High temperatures such as this can result from the use of thermite (see Thermite and the WTC Collapses). Christopher Bollyn suggested that perhaps small nuclear devices were employed — not the type that produce mushroom clouds, but small nuclear devices of the kind that the Pentagon has developed in recent decades for "bunker busting". The use of high-explosives at the base of the central steel columns supporting the Twin Towers, combined with explosives at various levels in the towers, would explain the nature of the collapse: as if all the rigidity normally provided by steel supporting structure within the towers was suddenly removed.

But to return to the actual seismic record ... The question is, what sort of event best explains the readings: Explosions? Or the impact upon the ground of debris falling from great height (steel girders mostly, since the concrete was pulverized and dissipated in great clouds)? In the latter case we might expect a fairly uniform earth-shaking over a period of ten seconds or so as the steel hit the ground. This is what appears in the "expanded view" of "the first collapse" in the Lamont-Doherty image (the second red graph in the image above). But this is not what appears in the black graph, which shows spikes occurring toward the start of the seismic events. This is indicative of explosions, in which there is a sudden release of energy at the start of the events followed by residual effects, tapering off to zero (or rather, to the usual

[Tesha Dodge]

background noise).

Some might say that the "spikes" do not show the effects of explosions because their amplitude (in the black graph) is the result simply of the scale used, an expanded scale on the vertical axis which allows the large maximum amplitude of the event to be compared visually to the small amplitude of the background noise), so the appearance of massive spikes is an artefact of the graphical representation. But while it is true that the amplitude of the spikes is a result of the vertical scale used, and a compression of the vertical axis scale would bring the maximum amplitude down to what is seen in the red graph, this objection misses the point, which is the position of the spikes in the context of the entire seismic event.

Lamont-Doherty's red graph for "the first collapse" shows no spike. But what part of the total "first collapse" event have the authors of the article chosen to expand to produce their red graph? Could it be that they have chosen just a part of the overall event in such a way that the position of the spike in the context of the total event is concealed?

See also Steve Davis's Forensic Seismology of 911 — Update.


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WTC 7 Collapse

CLAIM: Seven hours after the two towers fell, the 47-story WTC 7 collapsed. According to 911review.org: "The video clearly shows that it was not a collapse subsequent to a fire, but rather a controlled demolition: amongst the Internet investigators, the jury is in on this one."

FACT: Many conspiracy theorists point to FEMA's preliminary report, which said there was relatively light damage to WTC 7 prior to its collapse. With the benefit of more time and resources, NIST researchers now support the working hypothesis that WTC 7 was far more compromised by falling debris than the FEMA report indicated. "The most important thing we found was that there was, in fact, physical damage to the south face of building 7," NIST's Sunder tells PM. "On about a third of the face to the center and to the bottom--approximately 10 stories--about 25 percent of the depth of the building was scooped out." NIST also discovered previously undocumented damage to WTC 7's upper stories and its southwest corner.

NIST investigators believe a combination of intense fire and severe structural damage contributed to the collapse, though assigning the exact proportion requires more research. But NIST's analysis suggests the fall of WTC 7 was an example of "progressive collapse," a process in which the failure of parts of a structure ultimately creates strains that cause the entire building to come down. Videos of the fall of WTC 7 show cracks, or "kinks," in the building's facade just before the two penthouses disappeared into the structure, one after the other. The entire building fell in on itself, with the slumping east side of the structure pulling down the west side in a diagonal collapse.

According to NIST, there was one primary reason for the building's failure: In an unusual design, the columns near the visible kinks were carrying exceptionally large loads, roughly 2000 sq. ft. of floor area for each floor. "What our preliminary analysis has shown is that if you take out just one column on one of the lower floors," Sunder notes, "it could cause a vertical progression of collapse so that the entire section comes down."

There are two other possible contributing factors still under investigation: First, trusses on the fifth and seventh floors were designed to transfer loads from one set of columns to another. With columns on the south face apparently damaged, high stresses would likely have been communicated to columns on the building's other faces, thereby exceeding their load-bearing capacities.

Second, a fifth-floor fire burned for up to 7 hours. "There was no firefighting in WTC 7," Sunder says. Investigators believe the fire was fed by tanks of diesel fuel that many tenants used to run emergency generators. Most tanks throughout the building were fairly small, but a generator on the fifth floor was connected to a large tank in the basement via a pressurized line. Says Sunder: "Our current working hypothesis is that this pressurized line was supplying fuel [to the fire] for a long period of time."

WTC 7 might have withstood the physical damage it received, or the fire that burned for hours, but those combined factors--along with the building's unusual construction--were enough to set off the chain-reaction collapse.
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[Tesha Dodge]

The mini-video below has been borrowed from the website of What Really Happened, which says:
 


Take a close look at the manner in which WTC 7 collapses straight down. For the building to collapse in this fashion, all of the load bearing supports would have had to fail at exactly the same time.
The claim that the collapse was the result of a fire requires the fire be equally distributed throughout the entire floor of the building, providing equal heat for an equal amount of time, so that all the load bearings members would fail at the exact same moment.

Do you find this plausible?


This is the same point that was made in connection with WTC 1 and WTC 2. All three steel-structure buildings collapsed in the manner of a controlled demolition. WTC 7, however, did not collapse until about six hours after the Twin Towers came down, during which time only minor fires within the building were visible. Popular Mechanics quotes chief WTC 7 investigator Shyam Sunder: "There was no firefighting in WTC 7". Why not? Were firefighters ordered to stay out of the building?

The FEMA report on the collapse of WTC 7, together with a critical commentary, may be found at The FEMA Report on World Trade Center 7 Collapse is a Total Joke. The commentary reveals that the report is full of holes. FEMA could only make vague guesses at why the building collapsed (but, of course, demolition was not one of their guesses).

Popular Mechanics says: "With the benefit of more time and resources, NIST researchers now support the working hypothesis that WTC 7 was far more compromised by falling debris than the FEMA report indicated." Since the building was totally destroyed (and the debris removed and shipped overseas to blast furnaces), what evidence is available to NIST that was not available to FEMA? Or does NIST really mean that it has now had time to fabricate the "evidence" that it needs? And note that NIST researchers do not say that "WTC 7 was far more compromised by falling debris than the FEMA report indicated", merely that this is a "working hypothesis" that they "support" (by means of their fabricated evidence?). That WTC 7 was brought down in a controlled demolition is obviously not a hypothesis, working or otherwise, that those who pay their salaries could "support".


"What our preliminary analysis has shown is that if you take out just one column on one of the lower floors," Sunder notes, "it could cause a vertical progression of collapse so that the entire section comes down."
Oh, really? So the architects of WTC 7 designed it like a house of cards. Goodness gracious! Did they never consider the possibility of "a vertical progression of collapse"? Such idiots! But how convenient for NIST.

The Mayor of New York on 9/11, Rudolph Giuliani, had created a "disaster control center" on the 23rd floor of WTC 7 (it was completed in 1997). Some say that this was the place from which the disaster of 9/11 was controlled. If so, all physical evidence relating to it was destroyed as a result of the collapse of the building. Giuliani was there on the morning of 9/11, but left after the South Tower collapsed.

Larry Silverstein, the owner of WTC 7 (and insurance beneficiary) is reported to have admitted in a PBS video that a decision was made to "pull" (demolish?) the building (see Silverstein, FDNY Razed WTC 7).

Also see Other WTC Building "Collapses": WTC 6 and WTC 7 and its links to other web pages concerning the destruction of WTC 7 .

[Tesha Dodge]

The White Jet

CLAIM: At least six eyewitnesses say they saw a small white jet flying low over the crash area almost immediately after Flight 93 went down. BlogD.com theorizes that the aircraft was downed by "either a missile fired from an Air Force jet, or via an electronic assault made by a U.S. Customs airplane reported to have been seen near the site minutes after Flight 93 crashed." WorldNetDaily.com weighs in: "Witnesses to this low-flying jet ... told their story to journalists. Shortly thereafter, the FBI began to attack the witnesses with perhaps the most inane disinformation ever--alleging the witnesses actually observed a private jet at 34,000 ft. The FBI says the jet was asked to come down to 5000 ft. and try to find the crash site. This would require about 20 minutes to descend."

FACT: There was such a jet in the vicinity--a Dassault Falcon 20 business jet owned by the VF Corp. of Greensboro, N.C., an apparel company that markets Wrangler jeans and other brands. The VF plane was flying into Johnstown-Cambria airport, 20 miles north of Shanksville. According to David Newell, VF's director of aviation and travel, the FAA's Cleveland Center contacted copilot Yates Gladwell when the Falcon was at an altitude "in the neighborhood of 3000 to 4000 ft."--not 34,000 ft. "They were in a descent already going into Johnstown," Newell adds. "The FAA asked them to investigate and they did. They got down within 1500 ft. of the ground when they circled. They saw a hole in the ground with smoke coming out of it. They pinpointed the location and then continued on." Reached by PM, Gladwell confirmed this account but, concerned about ongoing harassment by conspiracy theorists, asked not to be quoted directly.
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But nevertheless Popular Mechanics quoted him directly. Perhaps wishing that he would then be "harassed" by "conspiracy theorists"? Popular Mechanics is as amusing as a trashy dime novel, and (if we can judge by its "Debunking the Myths") just as reliable.

So what exactly is Popular Mechanics saying here? That the pilot of a private jet (possibly white) was asked by the FAA to investigate? And even assuming that the FAA requested a private jet to investigate something, rather than asking the National Military Command Center to investigate (in accordance with DoD Directive Number 3610.01A, as noted above), what relevance has this to the question of whether some other jet might have shot down UA 175?


The explanation furnished by the FBI for the mystery plane, whose existence it initially denied, serves less to reassure than to reinforce suspicions that a cover-up of sorts is under way, that the government is manipulating the truth in a manner it considers to be palatable to the broader US public. The FBI has said, on the record, that the plane was a civilian business jet, a Falcon, that had been flying within 20 miles of Flight 93 and was asked by the authorities to descend from 37,000ft to 5,000ft to survey and transmit the co-ordinates of the crash site "for responding emergency crews". The reason, as numerous people have observed, why this seems so implausible is that, first, by 10.06am on 11 September, all non-military aircraft in US airspace had received loud and clear orders more than half an hour earlier to land at the nearest airport; second, such was the density of 911 phone calls from people on the ground, in the Shanksville area, as to the location of the crash site that aerial co-ordinates would have been completely unnecessary; and, third, with F-16s supposedly in the vicinity, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that, at a time of tremendous national uncertainty when no one knew for sure whether there might be any more hijacked aircraft still in the sky, the military would ask a civilian aircraft that just happened to be in the area for help. — John Carlin: Unanswered Questions: The Mystery of Flight 93
Much of the witness evidence concerning the Shanksville crash (allegedly the crash of United Airlines Flight 93) was reported in an article by Richard Wallace entitled What Did Happen to Flight 93?, published in September 2002. This mentions a white jet, seen by Susan Mcelwain: "It came right over me ... It was so low I ducked instinctively. It was travelling real fast ..." Wallace writes: "The FBI's later explanation for the white jet was that a passing civilian Fairchild Falcon 20 jet was asked to descend from 34,000ft to 5,000ft some minutes after the crash to give co-ordinates for the site. ... Susan Mcelwain says a Falcon 20 was not the plane she saw."

So what was the white jet? Susan Mcelwain said:


The plane I saw was heading right to the point where Flight 93 crashed and must have been there at the very moment it came down.
There's no way I imagined this plane — it was so low it was virtually on top of me. It was white with no markings but it was definitely military, it just had that look.

It had two rear engines, a big fin on the back like a spoiler on the back of a car and with two upright fins at the side.

Lessee now ... here's a picture of a U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt. More or less white, with two rear engines and two upright fins at the side. Hmmm ...

[Tesha Dodge]

On a BBC web page we read that the A-10 Thunderbolt

has a seven-barrel, 30 mm Gatling gun under its nose that can fire 65 rounds per second ... Slung beneath the fuselage and wings it can also carry up to 16,000 lbs (7,200 kg) of other weapons, including high explosive and cluster bombs, laser-guided bombs and Maverick missiles, rockets and air-to-air missiles.
Hmmm ... But we can't conclude that the plane seen by Susan Mcelwain shot down UA 93. It has been reported that at least one USAF F-16 fighter jet was close to the plane when it fell from the sky. And, since it has also been reported that (except for the engines) the plane disintegrated into small pieces, the possible presence of a huge bomb on board (detonated by one of the nearby USAF jets?) must also be considered.


quote:
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Roving Engine

CLAIM: One of Flight 93's engines was found "at a considerable distance from the crash site," according to Lyle Szupinka, a state police officer on the scene who was quoted in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Offering no evidence, a posting on Rense.com claimed: "The main body of the engine ... was found miles away from the main wreckage site with damage comparable to that which a heat-seeking missile would do to an airliner."

FACT: Experts on the scene tell PM that a fan from one of the engines was recovered in a catchment basin, downhill from the crash site. Jeff Reinbold, the National Park Service representative responsible for the Flight 93 National Memorial, confirms the direction and distance from the crash site to the basin: just over 300 yards south, which means the fan landed in the direction the jet was traveling. "It's not unusual for an engine to move or tumble across the ground," says Michael K. Hynes, an airline accident expert who investigated the crash of TWA Flight 800 out of New York City in 1996. "When you have very high velocities, 500 mph or more," Hynes says, "you are talking about 700 to 800 ft. per second. For something to hit the ground with that kind of energy, it would only take a few seconds to bounce up and travel 300 yards." Numerous crash analysts contacted by PM concur.
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The Pittsburg Tribune-Review for 2001-09-14 had an article by Richard Gazarik and Robin Acton entitled Black box recovered at Shanksville site, in which we read:


State police Maj. Lyle Szupinka said ... searchers found one of the large engines from the aircraft "at a considerable distance from the crash site."
"It appears to be the whole engine," he added.

Szupinka said most of the remaining debris, scattered over a perimeter that stretches for several miles, are in pieces no bigger than a "briefcase."

Popular Mechanics quotes someone else saying that "a fan from one of the engines" was found 300 yards from the crash site. So what are we expected to conclude from this? That UA 93 did not explode in mid-air and was not shot down? That does not follow. We certainly cannot conclude that the engine that Lyle Szupinka mentions was not found at least a mile from the crash site. Popular Mechanics' "Fact" provides absolutely no evidence to counter the hypothesis that UA 93 disintegrated in mid-air.

Actually, the more you look into the story of UA 93 allegedly crashing at Shanksville the stranger it gets.

Two German filmmakers visited Shanksville and interviewed the mayor. Here's a translation from their German-language documentary:

However, the testimony of the earliest witnesses of flight 93's crash is still a mystery today.



Ernie Stull, mayor of the nearby village of Shanksville recalls   

[Ernie Stull:] Yes — my sister and a good friend of mine were the first ones here. They were standing on a street corner in Shanksville talking. Their car was nearby, so they were the first here — and the fire department came. Everyone was puzzled, because the call had been that a plane had crashed. But there was no plane ...

[Question] They had been sent here because of a crash but there was no plane?

[Ernie Stull:] No. Nothing. Only this hole.


As at the Pentagon, the amount of debris seems inconsistent with the crash of a Boeing 757. The picture at right shows no evidence of any large chunks of fuselage, such as pictured above. The picture under it shows the "impact crater" — looks more like what you'd get if you buried a bomb ten feet under and exploded it. Moreover, there are reports stating, along with Lyle Szupinka's observation quoted above, that, apart from one engine, none of the debris was more than about 2 ft in size. So either UA 93 disintegrated into small parts — hardly possible even if an on-board explosion is posited — or UA 93 did not in fact crash at Shanksville (but rather some other plane did, for the purpose of providing some kind of plane wreckage which could be passed off as the remains of UA 93).

[Tesha Dodge]

If UA 93 did not crash at Shanksville, what happened to it? The article entitled The Cleveland Airport Mystery presents evidence that an unidentified plane landed between 10 and 11 a.m. and that its passengers were taken to a NASA facility located next to the airport, after which nothing more is heard of them. The evidence, however, is inconclusive. But in the confusion and chaos reigning on the morning of 9/11 it might not have been difficult to make UA 93 disappear. Could it be that the event at Shanksville was a hoax? It is not beyond the realm of possibility that no Boeing passenger jet crashed at Shanksville and that the appearance of a crash was fabricated so as to support a concocted story about doomed passengers making cellphone calls and plucky passengers overpowering evil Arab hijackers and sacrificing themselves, thereby becoming American heroes — at least within the official 9/11 myth.

http://forums.atlantisrising.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=14;t=000094;p=3

[Tesha Dodge]

Indian Lake

CLAIM: "Residents and workers at businesses outside Shanksville, Somerset County, reported discovering clothing, books, papers and what appeared to be human remains," states a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article dated Sept. 13, 2001. "Others reported what appeared to be crash debris floating in Indian Lake, nearly 6 miles from the immediate crash scene." Commenting on reports that Indian Lake residents collected debris, ThinkAndAsk.com speculates: "On Sept. 10, 2001, a strong cold front pushed through the area, and behind it--winds blew northerly. Since Flight 93 crashed west-southwest of Indian Lake, it was impossible for debris to fly perpendicular to wind direction. ... The FBI lied." And the significance of widespread debris? Theorists claim the plane was breaking up before it crashed. TheForbiddenKnowledge.com states bluntly: "Without a doubt, Flight 93 was shot down."

FACT: Wallace Miller, Somerset County coroner, tells PM no body parts were found in Indian Lake. Human remains were confined to a 70-acre area directly surrounding the crash site. Paper and tiny scraps of sheetmetal, however, did land in the lake. "Very light debris will fly into the air, because of the concussion," says former National Transportation Safety Board investigator Matthew McCormick. Indian Lake is less than 1.5 miles southeast of the impact crater--not 6 miles--easily within range of debris blasted skyward by the heat of the explosion from the crash. And the wind that day was northwesterly, at 9 to 12 mph, which means it was blowing from the northwest--toward Indian Lake.
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It was reported by the Post-Gazette that "workers at Indian Lake Marina said that they saw a cloud of confetti-like debris descend on the lake and nearby farms minutes after hearing the explosion that signaled the crash at 10:06 a.m. Tuesday." Indian Lake town is about three miles from the crash site, but the Marina is closer, about two miles from the crash site.

[Tesha Dodge]

On the web page at Official story of UA 93 is a big lie we read:

And watching the video from webfairy one realizes that also the direction of the wind wasn't east, southeast as officially claimed (and as necessary to somehow explain the raining debris). Watch this video. The forest behind the crater is west. The camera is east of the crater. Does the smoke blow towards the camera or slightly left of the camera??


The video referred to is at http://thewebfairy.com/911/93/emptyhole.htm. If it is true that the video was filmed from the east then the wind is blowing more-or-less south. Thus it could not have blown debris to the Indian Lake Marina, which is east of the crash site.


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F-16 Pilot

CLAIM: In February 2004, retired Army Col. Donn de Grand-Pre said on "The Alex Jones Show," a radio talk show broadcast on 42 stations: "It [Flight 93] was taken out by the North Dakota Air Guard. I know the pilot who fired those two missiles to take down 93." LetsRoll911.org, citing de Grand-Pre, identifies the pilot: "Major Rick Gibney fired two Sidewinder missiles at the aircraft and destroyed it in midflight at precisely 0958."

FACT: Saying he was reluctant to fuel debate by responding to unsubstantiated charges, Gibney (a lieutenant colonel, not a major) declined to comment. According to Air National Guard spokesman Master Sgt. David Somdahl, Gibney flew an F-16 that morning--but nowhere near Shanksville. He took off from Fargo, N.D., and flew to Bozeman, Mont., to pick up Ed Jacoby Jr., the director of the New York State Emergency Management Office. Gibney then flew Jacoby from Montana to Albany, N.Y., so Jacoby could coordinate 17,000 rescue workers engaged in the state's response to 9/11. Jacoby confirms the day's events. "I was in Big Sky for an emergency managers meeting. Someone called to say an F-16 was landing in Bozeman. From there we flew to Albany." Jacoby is outraged by the claim that Gibney shot down Flight 93. "I summarily dismiss that because Lt. Col. Gibney was with me at that time. It disgusts me to see this because the public is being misled. More than anything else it disgusts me because it brings up fears. It brings up hopes--it brings up all sorts of feelings, not only to the victims' families but to all the individuals throughout the country, and the world for that matter. I get angry at the misinformation out there."
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A transcript of the Alex Jones interview (2004-02-25) with Col. Donn de Grand-Pre is here. The Colonel does not mention Rick Gibney, but says:


DGP: ... the aircraft [UA 93], you see, had totally unconscious people on board. There were no hijackers. At 9:35, the Happy Hooligans, the [North Dakota] Air [National] Guard flying the F-16s, were ordered to take that plane out. And they took it out from 9:35 to 10:00. ... They came off base in Langley and it was just a few minutes out from Langley to the intercept over Pennsylvania. It was just a matter of minutes.
AJ: Colonel, how did you get in touch with the pilot who shot the plane down?

DGP: It turned out to be an old friend of mine from the Air National Guard and this is my home state of North Dakota. And I attended the ceremony in North Dakota and watched ... the pilot being decorated a year later for this activity that happened on 911 with Flight 93.

On 2004-06-28 LetsRoll911.org claimed to reveal the name of the F-16 pilot:


At precisely 0938 hours, an alarm was sounded at Langely Air Force Base, and those whom were on call, drinking coffee, were scrambled. Thus the 119th Fighter Wing was off for an intercept.
They, the Happy Hooligans, a unit of 3 F-16 aircraft, were ordered to head toward Pennsylvania. At 0957 they spotted their target; After confirmation orders were received, A one Major Rick Gibney fired two sidewinder missiles at the aircraft and destroyed it in mid flight at precisely 0958.

He was awarded a medal from the Governor one year later for his heroic actions. As well as Decorated by Congress on 9/13/2001.

Letsroll911.org does not mention which particular congressional decoration was awarded to the Major two days after 9/11.

It's true that a 9/11 commemoration ceremony took place on 2002-09-11 at the North Dakota state capital, Bismark, presided over by the Governor, and that representatives of the Happy Hooligans were present. But if Rick Gibney were present, how likely is it that, in chatting with the Colonel, he would have informed him that he had shot down UA 93? Imagine the conversation:


DGP: You guys did a great job on 9/11. Oh, by the way, I suppose you've heard the rumors that UA 93 was shot down?
RG: Sure! Did it myself. Two sidewinder missiles up the kazoo. Blam! Man, ya shoulda seen that big jet go straight down!

So maybe Popular Mechanics is quite correct that this Rick Gibney story is false. It would not be the first time that a false claim relating to 9/11 has been made. False claims were made right from the beginning, when the corporate-controlled mainstream media began putting out the story that jetliners had been hijacked and flown into the Twin Towers, and that the most likely culprit was someone most Americans had never heard of before — Arab terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden.

The various contentions that UA 93 was shot down, disintegrated in mid-air as the result of an on-board explosion, had its electronics jammed by a nearby AWACS or C-130 aircraft or (as the official story has it) plummeted to the ground as a result of a fight between the "hijackers" and the "heroes" all have one thing in common: that the plane scheduled as UA 93 out of Newark was in the skies over Shanksville at around 10 a.m. on 9/11, and somehow was destroyed. As noted above, this seems not to have been the case, and the purpose of all the debate in the internet forums, as regards how UA 93 met its end at Shanksville, may simply be intended to distract attention from this.


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[Tesha Dodge]

Summary

Let's briefly run over the matters that Popular Mechanics raised in its "debunking":
1. Where's The Pod?
Popular Mechanics presents a carefully-selected picture where the anomaly, visible in other pictures, is not visible, then asks "Where is it?". The anomaly is interesting, but is not required to show that 9/11 was an inside job.
2. No Stand-Down Order
Popular Mechanics attempts to relieve NORAD and the US Air Force of any responsibility for protecting the airspace over the continental US, and does not explain how AA 77 could fly around the country for an hour (after first going off course at 08:46) without any action on the part of the USAF.
3. Flight 175's Windows
Whether or not the South Tower was struck by a plane which had windows is of interest, but the video evidence may be unreliable, and the case for 9/11's being an inside job does not depend on demonstrating exactly what sort of objects hit the Twin Towers.
4. Intercepts Not Routine
Popular Mechanics falsely claims that intercepts of planes suspected of being hijacked and of planes entering no-fly zones (such as around the WTC and the Pentagon) were not standard practice.
5. Widespread Damage
Popular Mechanics claims that lower stories of the Twin Towers were damaged by burning jet fuel (part of which somehow remained liquid and unignited while flowing down elevator shafts even though the rest ignited to produce huge explosions) and ignores evidence that damage to lower stories, and the collapse of the Twin Towers, was caused by bombs planted in the buildings.
6. "Melted" Steel
Popular Mechanics repeats the official story that the towers collapsed because the fires heated the steel so that it became like hot toffee, whereas it is demonstrable that the fires never burned hot enough to cause the steel to get anywhere near the point of failure.
7. Puffs Of Dust
Popular Mechanics repeats the official story that the towers collapsed because one floor collapsed on to a lower floor, producing a "pancake" (or "flapjack" or "domino") effect, but this theory does not stand up to critical examination.
8. Seismic Spikes
Popular Mechanics repeats the claim put out by members of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory that recorded earth-shaking was due to steel from the Twin Towers hitting the ground, and ignores the possibility that these seismic effects were at least in part due to massive underground explosions.
9. WTC 7 Collapse
Popular Mechanics (citing recent, possibly fabricated, NIST studies) claims that the collapse of WTC 7, which looks very much like a controlled demolition, was due to fires and flaws in the architectural design of the building, but ignores the holes in FEMA's report on this matter.
10. Big Plane, Small Holes
Popular Mechanics repeats the official story that a Boeing 757, flying a few feet above the ground, smashed into the Pentagon, a story which has been shown to be false by consideration of the available evidence.
11. Intact Windows
Popular Mechanics makes the ridiculous claim that intact windows near the main damage to the outer wall of the Pentagon are consistent with an impact by a 757 jetliner.
12. Flight 77 Debris
Popular Mechanics displays a photo of false, planted, evidence, claiming that this is proof that a passenger plane hit the Pentagon.
13. The White Jet
Popular Mechanics attempts to explain witness reports of a "white jet" in the skies over Shanksville by claiming that this was a private plane investigating the crash of UA 93 at the request of the FAA, whereas that jet was likely a USAF A-10 Thunderbolt.
14. Roving Engine
Popular Mechanics dismisses reports of an engine (from UA 93?) said to have been found a mile from the crash site — suggesting that UA 93 exploded in mid-air, but ignores the nature of the crash site itself, which appears to be a crater caused by a bomb buried underground and then detonated so as to provide fabricated evidence of a "crash site".
15. Indian Lake
Popular Mechanics attempts to explain debris raining down on Indian Lake Marina as consisting of "paper and tiny scraps of sheetmetal" wafted by the breeze, but it seems that the wind at the crash site was blowing south, not east, as would be required to carry debris to Indian Lake Marina.
16. F-16 Pilot
Popular Mechanics makes one valid claim, out of sixteen, that the story that a pilot with the Happy Hooligans shot down UA 93 is very likely false, yet it implicitly supports the official story (probably false) that a Boeing 757 (said to be UA 93) was in fact in the skies above Shanksville on the morning of 9/11.
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