THE CUNNING REALIST: Another Year

CR:

Why worry about the terrorist who attacked us when we can rest on our laurels for taking down the dictator that didn't?

Yes, it's an absolute f*cking outrage. And the fact that Monkey Boy can say "I don't think about him, I don't worry about him" makes my blood boil.

Ditto

My feelings lie with all those who perished innocently in 9/11 and the march into totalitarianism since.
These people would be served best by an investigation into the fact how the attackers managed to melt steel (between 1,325 and 1,530 centigrades) with jet fuel that burns at only 980 centigrades.
These physical facts leave me wondering about the real cause that caused the first collapses of skyscarpers by fire in history.
Ad BTW, what happened to the black boxes, designed to withstand much higher forces?

With apologies to Bill Griffith:

Bush. Well we couldn’t go fully after Al Qeada because we needed to go after Saddam!

Zippy: But Al Qeada weren’t in Iraq, nor were they working with Saddam.

Bush: They are in Iraq right now!

Zippy: But they weren’t then, and intelligence seems to indicate they - meaning the “al qeada” that attacked the US - are still in Afghanistan and Pakistan, who you send billions to every year.

Bush: Sigh...ok, ok, I understand we all can’t agree on the minor details. So rather than waste time discussing such things, we all must agree that if we leave Iraq Al Qeada will follow us home and topple the US.

Zippy: Ok, i get it! Leave the soldiers there or we all may die. Makes sense. Plus if the soldiers didn’t want to go to Iraq they should have got their daddy to weasel them into a stateside job. Right?

Bush: Exactly!! And Iran is tied to Al Qeada

Zippy: I knew it! The Shiite/Sunni divide is just a ruse. Like they say, fool me once and I’m a fool, fool me twice and I’m a Republican dancing with the guy who brung me.

Prudent investor. Uhm, why must the steel melt in order to bring down the building.

It only needs to weaken to the point where it's structural integrity is compromised enough to bring the building down.

I'm sick to death of these clueless consiracy theories.

I saw a report that the steel was not fireproved as required by building code. So at critical junctions of support the fire managed to weaken the structure so that gravity was allowed to do its thing.

Therefore the building collapsed, and we got what we wanted, an excuse to invade Iraq and steal their oil.
Now that is quite an achievement. That as a result we managed in addition to kill and maime over 25,000 soldiers does not matter. And if we are lucky that number will double before we are forced to leave because we will have destroyed our armed forces and bankrupt our country.
That is ok as our soldiers should not have been stupid enough to join the military.
Just ask Cheney and all those other superhawks that knew better.

Up to know it has been easy to find patriotic idiots who fall for our spiel so that they become cannon futter and leave me and my family and friends alone.

That Al Qeada was not there is only detail and of no importance.

It was fire proofed, but the force of impact blew a lot of the fire proofing off.

This piece debunks most of the idiotic conspiracy myths.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1227842.html

Bwaaahahahahahahahahaa. Popular Mechanics doesn't debunk anything but straw-man theories. The fireproofing was blown off? Know how NIST arrived at that conclusion? They took a shotgun and fired a total of 15 rounds at an unrepresentative flat piece of steel and used that to jump to the conclusion that on any floor in which the OFFICE FURNITURE was damaged that the fireproofing disappeared. Here's a question for the sheep who believe everything they see on the teevee: How the fuck does the uppermost portion of a skyscraper fall into and THROUGH the remaining solid vast majority of the skyscraper as quickly, meaning as effortlessly, as falling through air?? Any ideas??? There is no way in this world that that could happen without SOMETHING (demolition charges) reducing the remainder of the building to such a state of offering no more resistance than air. Come on people, this is very VERY basic logic, common sense.

Take a couple days and read this over:

Let's turn to the "collapses" of the Twin Towers and the usually-forgotten WTC # 7 building. Let's start with the Towers. This matter is explored in great detail by among others, Prof. Steven Jones, Prof. Kevin Ryan and Prof. David Griffin who do an excellent job of debunking the official story's prostituted junk science. http://web.archive.org/web/20060105101348/http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html Something important to consider is, as Dr. David Griffin mentions, "the simple fact that fire has never---prior to or after 9/11---caused steel-frame high-rise buildings to collapse. Defenders of the official story seldom if ever mention this simple fact." http://911review.com/articles/griffin/nyc1.html#noprior
First of all, the impact damage combined with the fires present would not have been sufficient to have initiated a collapse in either of them. For one thing, the NIST greatly overemphasizes the significance of the impact damage. Kevin Ryan of Underwriters Laboratories who has thoroughly debunked the NIST theories mentions comments by the design engineer of the Twin Towers' construction, John Skilling and the construction manager Frank DeMartini: "The real question here is, since the WTC tower’s design engineer, John Skilling, said that he took airliner crashes and jet fuel fires in to account and then stated clearly that “the building structure would still be there”, why was NIST so sure from the start that fires brought down the buildings? Then, when NIST started to use Mr. Skilling’s words in their later presentations, why did they suggest this was only an anonymous view? Finally, in what places did NIST look for Skilling’s aircraft impact analysis? For Mr. Skilling’s comments, see Glanz and Lipton, City in the Sky, p138. Also seen in an article in the Seattle Times which has the whole quote: "Concerned because of a case where an airplane hit the Empire State Building, Skilling's people did an analysis that showed the towers would withstand the impact of a Boeing 707. "Our analysis indicated the biggest problem would be the fact that all the fuel (from the airplane) would dump into the building. There would be a horrendous fire. A lot of people would be killed," he said. "The building structure would still be there." http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=1687698&date=19930227 As Professor Fetzer notes, the WTC’s Construction manager, Frank DeMartini, was the last person known to have made the comments about the building’s potential to withstand multiple impacts and he said the effect would have been similar to "sticking a pencil through mosquito netting". But NIST fails to recognize Mr. Martini’s remarks at all." http://stj911.org/ryan/NIST_Responses.html Wow, I wonder why? The quote was from an interview with DeMartini in 1993 in which he said "The building was designed to have a fully loaded 707 crash into it. That was the largest plane at the time. I believe that the building probably could sustain multiple impacts of jetliners because this structure is like the mosquito netting on your screen door -- this intense grid -- and the jet plane is just a pencil puncturing that screen netting. It really does nothing to the screen netting." http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/design.html#ref6 Bear in mind a FULLY (fuel) LOADED Boeing 707, not the half-empty 767s accused of crashing into them on 9/11. In fact, the Towers were each designed to withstand the impact of at least one Boeing 707, with Chicago engineer Joseph Burns saying "I designed it for a (Boeing) 707 to hit it." http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/wtc/analysis/medserv_collapseshocks.html Before anyone says "But they were hit by -767s" it must be mentioned that the -707 is only slightly smaller than a -767, and travels considerably faster, the length being 153 feet versus 159 and the wingspan being 146 feet instead of 156. The speed of the -707 is 607 mph versus the slower -767 at 530 mph. http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/design.html (The information there was lifted directly from FEMA's report at): http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_ch1.pdf So common sense tells you that a 707 going 607 mph is going to do somewhat more damage than a 767 going 530 mph. If it would have easily withstood fully-loaded 707s then it would have easily withstood 767s with half-empty tanks. The Towers were highly redundant structures and an MIT scientist even is quoted as saying: "the World Trade Center was probably one of the more resistant tall building structures," McNamara said, adding that "nowadays, they just don't build them as tough as the World Trade Center." http://www.public-action.com/911/jmcm/sciam/ The Engineering News Record stated in 1964 that: "A design procedure that will be used for structural framing of the 1,350-ft high twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City gives the exterior columns tremendous reserve strength. Live loads on these columns can be increased more than 2,000% before failure occurs." http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/guardian2/wtc/eng-news-record.htm So it's safe to say they were highly redundant. They had 240 perimeter columns and 47 massive core columns; the NIST Final Report claims (based on its computer modelling) that the damage to the North Tower from the impact was 35 perimeter columns severed, 2 heavily damaged; 6 core columns severed, 3 heavily damaged; 43 core columns allegedly "stripped of insulation". So out of 47 core columns 41 were intact and out of 240 perimeter columns 205 were intact. For the South Tower, which was struck almost at the corner of the building, avoiding all or almost all of the building's core, they make the astounding claim that 33 perimeter columns were severed, 1 heavily damaged; 10 core columns severed, 1 heavily damaged; 39 core columns allegedly "stripped of insulation". So they claim out of 47 core columns 37 were intact; out of 240 perimeter columns, 201 were still intact. Now how exactly did an airplane hitting almost the corner of the South Tower allegedly sever MORE core columns than the one hitting the North Tower which hit it squarely in the center? Of course, since their "estimates" are based entirely upon their computer model, they could say it severed however many they want and it's not independently verifiable. In fact, they state that in coming up with their damage estimates, they would start with "a 'base case' based on the best estimate of all input parameters". Then they would choose the most severe estimates because they were the ones that produced the desired outcome. http://wtc.nist.gov/reports_october05.htm But just in looking at the video footage of the South Tower crash one can easily see that it hit almost the corner and at such a trajectory as to carry it through without much interference with the core area, perhaps removing one core column at most. Regardless, even if their specious claims were true this is not the "massive damage" the NIST makes it out to be when considering what it was designed to withstand and how redundant it was. Their claims regarding the "fireproofing" being knocked off core columns are even more speculative. The method they claim to have used was to shoot a total of fifteen rounds from a shotgun at flat steel plates (instead of column samples) covered in fireproofing, in a plywood box. That they weren't proud of this method is evident by them slipping its description into the appendix to the Final Report. http://wtc.nist.gov/NISTNCSTAR1-6A.pdf
Then, the NIST decided that if the debris from the aircraft damaged any room furnishings on a given floor, it assumed that the fireproofing for all columns and trusses in the entire floor was dislodged. http://wtc.nist.gov/WTC_Conf_Sep13-15/session6/6McAllister.pdf And the "fireproofing" matter is supposed to be the critical new angle to their "investigation" that so much hinges upon? Please. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28318-2005Apr5.html
So much for the relatively insignificant impact damage. Now let's turn to the fires themselves. One prevalent myth is that the "jet fuel fires" raged on and on until "collapse" of the Towers, but even the official story apologists at NIST admit that the jet fuel burned out in a matter of a few minutes: "Dr. Frank Gayle, Metals Expert: "Your gut reaction would be the jet fuel is what made the fire so very intense, a lot of people figured that's what melted the steel. Indeed it didn't, the steel did not melt." Dr. Shyam Sunder, [NIST] Lead Investigator: "The jet fuel probably burned out in less than 10 minutes. And what did burn over the next hour, or hour and a half, was much of the contents of the buildings." http://cms.firehouse.com/content/article/article.jsp?sectionId=46&id=25807
Something interesting to note is that there is video footage and still photos from the footage, used in FEMA's own report on 9/11, showing a woman standing and waving in the impact hole in the North Tower. Needless to say, she isn't on fire, or smoking or anything of that nature. Granted, this is at an undetermined time obviously sometime between impact and "collapse" of the North Tower, but it shows that at least at some time people were able to stand in the impact hole itself without being burned. She has been tentatively identified as Edna Cintron who worked in that Tower. A copy of the relevant video can be downloaded about four-fifths of the way down this web page: http://911review.org/Wget/members.fortunecity.com/911/wtc/tower-explosions.htm Or here: http://video.aol.com/video-detail/id/186440916# Still photos: http://www.erichufschmid.net/Woman_in_NorthTower_3views.JPG http://italy.indymedia.org/uploads/2005/04/still-alive.jpg http://www.2bnb4.com/wtc-woman-hanging-photo-06.htm On a similar note, right after the "collapse" of the South Tower, a reporter named Rose Arce on CNN says [regarding the South Tower]: "This must have been about five minutes ago, and prior to that, you could see heads popping out of windows right beneath where that big, gaping hole is, so there appeared to be people alive right below where the crash point was and were trying to find some way out of there." http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/11/bn.05.html

As Dr. David Griffin points out on page 152 in his book "Debunking 9/11 Debunking", steel is an excellent conductor of heat. Because of this property it diffuses heat, thus in holding a blowtorch's flame at the center of a steel I beam, the heat spreads out toward both ends and the place on the beam where the flame is held, though hotter than the rest of the beam, will not reach the temperature of the flame itself for a while, until the heat cannot diffuse any more throughout the beam. When that beam is connected to other steel beams, it diffuses to them as well, and so on making the process take even longer. This is an important point, as it means that in order for a part of the steel structure to be heated up to the temperature of the heat source (the fire), it would have to be quite a large fire affecting a significant portion of the steel structure simultaneously, over a long enough period of time. But each Tower burned for far too short a time to do what is claimed. The North Tower, hit first, burned for 104 minutes and the South Tower burned for only 62 minutes. http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/World_Trade_Center.html The South Tower was hit second (and at a more oblique, less-damaging trajectory regarding the core), yet "collapsed" first!

The NIST claims that the fires, though not melting the steel outright, heated enough of it to the point where it lost its structural integrity, thus "softening and buckling", inducing collapse. This is where the NIST tries to play on the average person's misconception about jet fuel burning incredibly hot. This is not the case, as pointed out by (defender of the official version and author of the now-disowned "pancake theory") Thomas Eager: "The temperature of the fire at the WTC was not unusual... In combustion science, there are three basic types of flames, namely, a jet burner, a pre-mixed flame, and a diffuse flame... In a diffuse flame, the fuel and the oxidant are not mixed before ignition, but flow together in an uncontrolled manner and combust when the fuel/oxidant ratios reach values within the flammable range. A fireplace flame is a diffuse flame burning in air, as was the WTC fire. Diffuse flames generate the lowest heat intensities of the three flame types... The maximum flame temperature increase for burning hydrocarbons (jet fuel) in air is, thus, about 1,000°C... But it is very difficult to reach this maximum temperature with a diffuse flame. There is nothing to ensure that the fuel and air in a diffuse flame are mixed in the best ratio. Typically, diffuse flames are fuel rich, meaning that the excess fuel molecules, which are unburned, must also be heated. It is known that most diffuse fires are fuel rich because blowing on a campfire or using a blacksmith’s bellows increases the rate of combustion by adding more oxygen. This fuel-rich diffuse flame can drop the temperature by up to a factor of two again. This is why the temperatures in a residential fire are usually in the 500°C to 650°C range. It is known that the WTC fire was a fuel-rich, diffuse flame as evidenced by the copious black smoke. Soot is generated by incompletely burned fuel; hence, the WTC fire was fuel rich—hardly surprising.. It is highly unlikely that the steel at the WTC experienced temperatures above the 750–800°C range." http://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/JOM/0112/Eagar/Eagar-0112.html As Eager mentioned, the dark colored smoke is indicative of a fuel-rich, diffuse fire, and as many people know, dark smoke indicates an oxygen-starved fire, meaning, as fires go, a not-very-hot fire. NIST in its section on "frequently asked questions" even admits to this phenomenon in saying "at the locations where the actual burning [was] taking place, the oxygen [was] severely depleted." http://wtc.nist.gov/reports_october05.htm

The NIST nevertheless claims that the fires were burning at 1,000º C, and that the steel "softened and buckled". As Underwriters Laboratories, among other tasks, certifies steel used in construction, Kevin Ryan called them out on the "soften and buckle" nonsense in a letter: "The results of your recently published metallurgical tests seem to clear things up, and support your team's August 2003 update as detailed by the Associated Press, in which you were ready to "rule out weak steel as a contributing factor in the collapse." The evaluation of paint deformation and spheroidization seem very straightforward, and you noted that the samples available were adequate for the investigation. 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." To soften steel for the purposes of forging, normally temperatures need to be above1100C. However, this new summary report suggests that much lower temperatures were able to not only soften the steel in a matter of minutes, but lead to rapid structural collapse. This story just does not add up. 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." http://www.septembereleventh.org/newsarchive/2004-11-11-ryan.php Then consider, the NIST itself admits in its Final Report that "only three columns had evidence that the steel reached temperatures above 250ºC" and also found no evidence that any of the CORE columns even reached THAT temperature. http://wtc.nist.gov/reports_october05.htm

In fact, the tapes of the radio conversations of the firemen reveal that the supposed raging inferno simply was not nearly that bad as the official myth would have it. An article in the New York Times called "Fire Department Tape Reveals No Awareness of Imminent Doom" reveals important, damning clues from the people closest to the action: "The voices, captured on a tape of Fire Department radio transmissions, betray no fear. The words are matter-of-fact. Two hose lines are needed, Chief Orio Palmer says from an upper floor of the badly damaged south tower at the World Trade Center. Just two hose lines to attack two isolated pockets of fire. "We should be able to knock it down with two lines," he tells the firefighters of Ladder Company 15 who were following him up the stairs of the doomed tower. Lt. Joseph G. Leavey is heard responding: "Orio, we're on 78, but we're in the B stairway. Trapped in here. We got to put some fire out to get to you." Ladder 15 had finally found the fire after an arduous climb to the 78th floor, according to the tape. They were in the B stairwell. On the other side of the fire were hundreds of people, blocked from fleeing by smoke and flame on the stairs. Chief Palmer was facing similar fires in the A stairwell, across the floor. "We're gonna knock down some fire here in the B Stair," Lieutenant Leavey is heard telling one of his firefighters. "We'll meet up with you. You get over to the A Stair and help out Chief Palmer." The time was 9:56 a.m... At several points in the tape, fire commanders can be heard speaking with urgency. A commander alerts a colleague that he needs more companies to handle what he is facing in the south tower. The chiefs discuss the need to get more elevators into service, to carry firefighters up and to transport the injured back down. But nowhere on the tape is there any indication that firefighters had the slightest indication that the tower had become unstable or that it could fall... [there was an] effort to create a medical staging area for the wounded on the 40th floor [nobody in their right mind would suggest a medical staging area in a building that is supposedly ready to "collapse"]... "Chief, I'm going to stop on 44," Stephen Belson, an aide to Chief Palmer, tells him at 9:25 as he ascends. "Take your time," the chief responds." http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/wtc/evidence/nyt_fdtape1.html They were on the 78th floor, at or near where the worst of it should have been, two isolated pockets of fire, should be able to knock it down with two hoses, going to make a medical staging area on the 40th floor, no indication of Tower being unstable, take your time. That sure doesn't sound like the situation the official story wants us to believe. No wonder, as mentioned in that same article (and elsewhere), the New York Times had to literally sue the Fire Department to get them to release the radio tapes, and it ended up being a court battle for over a year before they finally made the tapes public: "The 78-minute tape, which was found in a room at 5 World Trade Center where radio transmissions were monitored, is the only known audiotape of firefighters at the scene. In recent months, officials of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which maintained the recording system, have allowed fire officials and family members to listen to it. It was not publicly released, however, until this week. The release came after federal prosecutors, responding to a court motion by The New York Times, said that making it public would not interfere with the prosecution of terrorists." Yeah. And how exactly would tapes of firemen's radio conversations have interfered with prosecuting "terrorists" again? By showing the official story's fire scenario is bullshit?

The NIST's "computer modelling" was tweaked until they got the result they wanted, a collapse. That they are insecure about the validity of their findings is evident in them refusing to publicly show the computer visualizations of the "collapse mechanism" as they call it: "World Trade Center disaster investigators are refusing to show computer visualisations of the collapse of the Twin Towers despite calls from leading structural and fire engineers, NCE has learned... University of Manchester professor of structural engineering Colin Bailey said there was a lot to be gained from visualising the structural response. "NIST should really show the visualisations; otherwise the opportunity to correlate them back to the video evidence and identify any errors in the modelling will be lost, " he said." http://www.nceplus.co.uk/fastsearch/ArchiveArticleAssetPT/?AID=22081 Something tells me NIST isn't concerned in the least with "identifying errors in the modelling" or "correlating them back to the video evidence".

So in knowing the diffuse nature of the fires, their oxygen-starved, meaning relatively cooler nature, the redundancy built into the design of the Towers, the short duration of the fires (and the wrong Tower falling first!), the woman waving from the impact hole where one would consider the fire to be its worst, and the accounts of sadly now-deceased firemen in the thick of the action, we can safely say that the fires, and relatively insignificant impact damage discussed above, were not nearly enough to induce collapses.

But for the sake of argument, let's assume for a moment that the "collapses" were possible to have begun as per the official story. Is it possible for the Towers to have "collapsed" in the manner seen in video footage via a gravity-driven collapse? With this matter as well the answer is a resounding no, and is even more readily apparant than the matter of them not being able to begin "collapsing".

Prof. Steven Jones probably states it best in describing several features of the "collapses" that aren't possible within the confines of the official myth but instead could only realistically be occuring if involving controlled demolitions using explosives to bring down the Towers and WTC # 7 [which we will address shortly].

One of these features is the phenomenon of squibs, a term appropriated to mean puffs of smoke/concrete dust etc. being ejected from windows not near where the "collapse" is at that moment. Sometimes also referred to as streamers. These are seen on every controlled demolition as a result of the explosions necessary as part of it. NIST tries to explain this away in its "frequently asked questions" section to its Final Report, as: "the falling mass of the building compressed the air ahead of it—much like the action of a piston—forcing smoke and debris out the windows as the stories below failed sequentially." As Jim Hoffman notes, this "piston theory" implies acceptance of the "pancake theory" which NIST explicitly disowned elsewhere in its same report, stating "NIST's findings do not support the "pancake theory" of collapse...[The] floors did not fail progressively to cause a pancaking phenomenon". http://wtc.nist.gov/reports_october05.htm Hoffman's response is: "The piston theory that NIST advances here implies acceptance of the floor pancaking scenario, since the dust jets emerge from parts of the tower whose perimeter walls are still intact. Thus NIST contradicts its own theory, which explicitly rejects the floor pancaking scenario." http://www.911research.wtc7.net/reviews/nist/WTC_FAQ_reply.html#4 NIST goes on to "answer" this question saying: "These puffs were observed at many locations as the towers collapsed. In all cases, they had the appearance of jets of gas being pushed from the building through windows or between columns on the mechanical floors. Such jets are expected since the air inside the building is compressed as the tower falls and must flow somewhere as the pressure builds." Aha. But what they ignore is the fact that the squibs we are talking about were well below the "collapsing area" at that moment, localized, and in some cases symmetrically occurring on different faces of the building, good examples being shown in photographs as shooting out exactly equidistant from either side of the building, on two faces of the building at the same time, at the same or almost the same floor level. Thus one centrally-located on a particular floor on one side of the building while simultaneously another one at its counterpart location on a different side. In addition to being visible in video footage, some photos of squibs on the North and South Towers can be seen here: http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/photos/wtc1exp7.html http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/photos/wtc1exp18.html http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/photos/wtc2exp2.html http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/collapses/squibs.html A great photo showing the above-mentioned phenomenon of squibs emerging simultaneously at comparable locations on more than one face of a Tower is seen here: http://9-11.meetup.com/279/boards/view/viewthread?thread=3126456 Among many other places, a closeup video clip of the North Tower squibs can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqOnxRvKKL0 Another video clip shows them here: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/351574/demolition_squibs_at_north_tower/ The guys at NIST would have to be on a constant morphine drip to think these squibs are a naturally-occurring phenomenon and not caused by demo charges.

Another phenomenon unexplainable by a gravity-driven collapse is the existence of the massive, roiling clouds of dust, frequently referred to as a pyroclastic cloud, which emerges immediately upon initiation of "collapse" in both Towers. http://www.wvsd.k12.pa.us/Teacher%20Webpages/Shuey/running.jpg http://www.wvsd.k12.pa.us/Teacher%20Webpages/Shuey/tower1.secondcolpse1.jpg Calling it a pyroclastic cloud is an allusion to its strong resemblance to pyroclastic clouds seen in volcanic eruptions. This would require an enormous amount of energy to instantaneously convert solid concrete to dust, considerably more energy than allowed per the official gravity-driven collapse scenario, as well as the energy used up in the expansion of said dust cloud, as noted by Jim Hoffman: "the dust clouds were multiple times the sizes of the buildings, and the only way that expansion could have occurred is through the input of vast amounts of heat energy to convert water to steam and expand gases. How much heat energy was required? I calculate that at least 1.5 million kWH was required to produce the expansion of the dust cloud of the North Tower to the 30-second mark. That compares with the gravitational potential energy -- the supposed source of all the energy according to the official theory for all this destruction -- of only about 100,000 kilowatt-hours. So basically we have an over ten-fold energy imbalance just looking at the energy required to produce the dust cloud expansion. That doesn't even account for other energy sinks, such as the vast energy sink required to pulverize all that concrete." http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/towers/text/index.html David Griffin quotes Jeff King in adding: "[A great amount of] very fine concrete dust is ejected from the top of the building very early in the collapse. . . [when] concrete slabs [would have been] bumping into each other at [only] 20 or 30 mph.” http://911review.com/articles/griffin/nyc1.html#_edn31 The matter of the pyroclastic cloud is explored in detail, including photos of the phenomenon, at this webpage: http://st12.startlogic.com/~xenonpup/physics/ Here it is noted that: "The floors themselves are quite robust. Each one is 39" thick; the top 4" is a poured concrete slab, with interlocking vertical steel trusses (or spandrel members) underneath. This steel would absorb a lot of kinetic energy by crumpling as one floor fell onto another, at most pulverizing a small amount of concrete where the narrow edges of the trusses strike the floor below. And yet we see a very fine dust being blown very energetically out to the sides as if the entire mass of concrete (about 400,000 cubic yards for the whole building) were being converted to dust. Remember too that the tower fell at almost the speed of
a gravitational free-fall, meaning that little energy was expended doing anything other than accelerating the floor slabs. Considering the amount of concrete in a single floor (~1 acre x 4") and the chemical bond energy to be overcome in order to reduce it to a fine powder, it appears that a very large energy input would be needed. The only source for this, excluding for now external inputs or explosives, is the gravitational potential energy of the building. Any extraction of this energy for the disaggregation of the concrete would decrease the amount available for conversion to kinetic energy, slowing the speed of the falls. Yet we know that
the buildings actually fell in about 9 seconds, only slightly less than an unimpeded free-fall from the same height. This means that very little of the gravitational energy can have gone toward pulverizing the concrete. Even beyond the question of the energy needed, what possible mechanism exists for pulverizing these vast sheets of concrete? Remember that dust begins to appear in quantity in the very earliest stages of the collapses, when nothing is moving fast relative to anything else in the structure. How then is reinforced
concrete turned into dust and ejected laterally from the building at high speed?" How indeed. The only plausible explanation is that it was blown into dust by explosives.

And another feature of controlled demolitions exhibited by the Twin Tower "collapses" was the horizontal ejection of debris, including steel beams weighing tons, a great distance away from the building. Dr. Griffin writes that: "Another common feature of controlled demolition is the horizontal ejection of other materials, besides dust, from those areas of the building in which explosives are set off. In the case of the Twin Towers, photos and videos reveal that “heavy pieces of steel were ejected in all directions for distances up to 500 feet, while aluminum cladding was blown up to 700 feet away from the towers” (Paul and Hoffman, 2004, p. 7). But gravitational energy is, of course, vertical, so it cannot even begin to explain these horizontal ejections." http://911review.com/articles/griffin/nyc1.html#_edn31 As he stated, these horizontal ejections of beams etc. are visible in any video footage of the "collapses" and in countless photos. Hoffman notes that: "Some pieces of the perimeter were thrown laterally as far as 500 feet. Here's a gash in 3 World Financial Center, about 400 feet away from the North Tower, and it's several hundred feet up... The aluminum cladding was blown 500 feet in all directions, littering surrounding buildings for considerable distances." http://911research.wtc7.net/talks/towers/text/index.html Dr. Steven Jones states: "The horizontal ejection of steel beams for hundreds of feet and the pulverization of concrete to flour-like powder, observed clearly in the collapses of the WTC towers, provides further evidence for the use of explosives" http://web.archive.org/web/20060105101348/http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html NIST did not even attempt to explain away this phenomenon, presumably hoping people will ignore it.

Still another matter that is inexplicable for the official gravity-driven collapse scenario but fits with them being controlled demolitions is the existence of molten steel found under the pile of rubble at Ground Zero. Since it's been proven that the fires in the buildings were not hot enough to melt the steel and even the NIST has admitted it (see above), pre-"collapse" melting is ruled out. That there actually was molten steel present has been attested to by many eyewitnesses and has been commonly mentioned in many mainstream "news" articles. An article by the University of Pennsylvania's magazine says: "Fires burned and molten steel flowed in the pile of ruins still settling beneath her feet." http://www.sas.upenn.edu/sasalum/newsltr/summer2002/k911.html The National Environmental Health Association has an article that mentions it as well as mentioning the heat emanating from the rubble pile: "A veteran of disasters from the Mississippi floods Mt. St. Helens, Burger said it reminded him most of the volcano, if he forgot he was in downtown Manhattan. “Feeling the heat, seeing the molten steel, the layers upon layers of ash, like lava, it reminded me of Mt. St. Helen’s and the thousands who fled that disaster,” he said." http://www.neha.org/9-11%20report/index-The.html Johns Hopkins Public Health has an article about the molten steel and fires still burning, saying: "Fires are still actively burning and the smoke is very intense," reports Alison Geyh, PhD. "In some pockets now being uncovered, they are finding molten steel." http://www.jhsph.edu/Publications/Special/Welch.htm A chaplain named Herb Trimpe describes being at Ground Zero months later helping in the clean up: "It looked like an enormous junkyard. A scrap metal yard, very similar to that. Except this was still burning. There was still fire. On the cold days, even in January, there was a noticeable difference between the temperature in the middle of the site than there was when you walked two blocks over on Broadway. You could actually feel the heat. It took me a long time to realize it and I found myself actually one day wanting to get back. Why? Because I felt more comfortable. I realized it was actually warmer on site... I talked to many contractors and they said they actually saw molten metal trapped, beams had just totally had been melted" http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/wtc/evidence/recordonline_chaplain.html An article from the National Guard called "Serving on Sacred Ground" says: "Smoke constantly poured from the peaks. One fireman told us that there was still molten steel at the heart of the towers' remains. Firemen sprayed water to cool the debris down but the heat remained intense enough at the surface to melt their boots." http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3731/is_200112/ai_n9015802 An article from one of Knight Ridder's newspapers says: "Underground fires raged for months. O'Toole remembers in February seeing a crane lift a steel beam vertically from deep within the catacombs of Ground Zero. "It was dripping from the molten steel," he said." http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/wtc/evidence/messengerinquirer_recoveryworker.html An article in New Scientist.com from December 3rd, 2001, called "Ground Zero's Fires Still Burning" states that: "Almost 12 weeks after the terrorist atrocity at New York's World Trade Center, there is at least one fire still burning in the rubble - it is the longest-burning structural fire in history. Deputy Chief Charles Blaich of the New York City Fire Department would not predict when the last fire might be extinguished. But compared to the situation at the end of September, when aerial thermal images showed the whole of Ground Zero to be a hot spot, conditions today are much safer for the workers clearing the rubble." http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1634 In addition to all the mentions from eyewitnesses of molten steel and heat remaining at Ground Zero, there's also evidence of the hot spots from the U.S. Geological Survey using thermal imaging from NASA satellites, taken on September 16th and 23rd. These images and descriptions can be found here: http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0405/ofr-01-0405.html In its "frequently asked questions", NIST tries to explain away this phenomenon using some pretty bizarre thinking, saying: "Under certain circumstances it is conceivable for some of the steel in the wreckage to have melted after the buildings collapsed. Any molten steel in the wreckage was more likely due to the high temperature resulting from long exposure to combustion within the pile than to short exposure to fires or explosions while the buildings were standing." Uhh, what?? How on earth would it be possible for fires existing in small pockets of space underneath a rubble pile, basically cut off from outside oxygen, to not only continue burning at all but to burn for weeks and to burn so hot as to melt steel, burning hotter than the fires when the building was standing and the fires were at least exposed to at least some oxygen?? This makes no sense whatsoever and once again shows NIST isn't interested in finding out WHY the Twin Towers "collapsed" but instead interested only in propping up the official scenario at all costs. Certainly more than one type of explosive were used in the demolishing of the Twin Towers (and WTC # 7), with high explosives necessary for the aforementioned disintegration of concrete into dust, but as Dr. Steven Jones describes, this matter of molten steel and hot spots still hot weeks and months later, making no sense per the official story, is indicative of the explosive thermite (or thermate, thermite + sulfur) being used as cutting charges to sever columns: "I maintain that these observations are consistent with the use of the high-temperature thermite reaction or some variation thereof such as thermate, used to cut or demolish steel. Thermite is a mixture of iron oxide and aluminum powder. The end products of the thermite reaction are aluminum oxide and molten iron. So the thermite reaction generates molten iron directly, and is hot enough to melt and even evaporate steel which it contacts while reacting. Thermite contains its own supply of oxygen and so the reaction cannot be smothered, even with water. Use of sulfur in conjunction with the thermite will accelerate the destructive effect on steel, and sulfidation of structural steel was indeed observed in some of the few recovered members from the WTC rubble, as reported in Appendix C of the FEMA report. On the other hand, falling buildings (absent explosives) have insufficient directed energy to result in melting of large quantities of metal." http://web.archive.org/web/20060105101348/http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html And as Dr. Jones notes, the sulfidation of the steel is inexplicable without use of the explosive cutting charges.

Then you have the eyewitnesses, many first responders who survived 9/11 in Manhattan and they talk of seeing, hearing and feeling multiple explosions before and at the time of the disintegration of each Tower. Here's a sampling: An article in People magazine from September 12th, 2001 has an interesting quote by Louie Cacchioli, a firefighter of Engine 51 in Harlem, saying: "We were the first ones in the second tower after the plane struck. I was taking firefighters up in the elevator to the 24th floor to get in position to evacuate workers. On the last trip up a bomb went off. We think there was bombs set in the building." http://web.archive.org/web/20010914235843/people.aol.com/people/special/0,11859,174592-3,00.html Fireman Paul Isaac who watched the Towers demolished from a block away says they "strangely came down like a house of cards, in their own footprints' in what he called a perfect demolition job." http://www.911truthla.us/news/inside_job.htm Fireman Ed Cachia of Engine 53 states in an interview with an officer of the safety division of NYFD (appearing in the New York Times) that: "As I¹m standing with my officer, the people are continuing to jump. Ganci is still on the radio trying desperately to get some information concerning, this third plane in the air. As my officer and I were looking at the south tower, it just gave. It actually gave at a lower floor, not the floor where the plane hit, because we originally had thought there was like an internal detonation explosives because it went in succession, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then the tower came down." http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/Cachia_Edward.txt Also appearing in the New York Times was an interview with Commissioner of their Bureau of Communications Steven Gregory who says: "I know I was with an officer from Ladder 146, a Lieutenant Evangelista, who ultimately called me up a couple of days later just to find out how I was. We both for whatever reason -- again, I don't know how valid this is with everything that was going on at that particular point in time, but for some reason I thought that when I looked in the direction of the Trade Center before it came down, before No. 2 came down, that I saw low-level flashes. In my conversation with Lieutenant Evangelista, never mentioning this to him, he questioned me and asked me if I saw low-level flashes in front of the building, and I agreed with him because I thought -- at that time I didn't know what it was. I mean, it could have been as a result of the building collapsing, things exploding, but I saw a flash flash flash and then it looked like the building came down." Q. Was that on the lower level of the building or up where the fire was? A. "No, the lower level of the building. You know like when they demolish a building, how when they blow up a building, when it falls down? That's what I thought I saw. And I didn't broach the topic to him, but he asked me. He said I don't know if I'm crazy, but I just wanted to ask you because you were standing right next to me. He said did you see anything by the building? And I said what do you mean by see anything? He said did you see any flashes? I said, yes, well, I thought it was just me. He said no, I saw them, too.I don't know if that means anything. I mean, I equate it to the building cowing down and pushing things down, it could have been electrical explosions, it could have been whatever. But it's just strange that two people sort of say the same thing and neither one of us talked to each other about it. I mean, I don't know this guy from a hole in the wall. I was just standing next to him. I never met the man before in my life. He knew who was I guess by my name on my coat and he called me up, you know, how are you doing? How's everything? And, oh, by the way did you... It was just a little strange." Q. On the television pictures it appeared as well, before the first collapse, that there was an explosion up on the upper floors. A. "I know about the explosion on the upper floors. This was like eye level. I didn't have to go like this. Because I was looking this way. I'm not going to say it was on the first floor or the second floor, but somewhere in that area I saw to me what appeared to be flashes. I don't know how far down this was already. I mean, we had heard the noise but, you know, I don't know." http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/Gregory_Stephen.txt In excerpts from 9/11 oral histories, Chief Salvatore Cassano mentions what would be the overpressure wave when he says: ''When the South Tower collapsed, what we did was we either ran, got blown or fell down." http://cms.firehouse.com/content/article/article.jsp?sectionId=46&id=43988 In the same article is a quote regarding the North Tower "collapse" from Deputy Commissioner Thomas Fitzpatrick: "'It was evident that we weren't going to be able to get to people above the fire. Based on the number of jumpers, we could only assume that hundreds of people were trapped. ... Then the building started to come down. My initial reaction was that this was exactly the way it looks when they show you those implosions on TV." Assistant Fire Commissioner James Drury says: “People in the street and myself included thought that the roar was so loud that the explosive—bombs were going off inside the building.” http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110098.PDF Firefighter James Curran says: “I heard like every floor went chu-chu-chu. Looked back and from the pressure everything was getting blown out of the floors before it actually collapsed.” http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110412.PDF Fire Captain Dennis Tardio says on page 18 of the book "Report From Ground Zero" by Dennis Smith: “I hear an explosion and I look up. It is as if the building is being imploded, from the top floor down, one after another, boom, boom, boom.” In the New York Times oral histories of 9/11 are plenty of other quotes from firefighters and EMS personnel that describe the same phenomenon. http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/met_WTC_histories_full_01.html Rich Banaciski, Firefighter (F.D.N.Y.) [Ladder 22] says: "... and then I just remember there was just an explosion. It seemed like on television they blow up these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way around like a belt, all these explosions." Greg Brady, E.M.T. (E.M.S.) [Battalion 6] says: "We were standing underneath and Captain Stone was speaking again. We heard -- I heard 3 loud explosions. I look up and the North Tower is coming down now, 1 World Trade Center." Timothy Burke, Firefighter (F.D.N.Y.) [Engine 202] says: "But it seemed like I was going oh, my God, there is a secondary device because the way the building popped. I thought it was an explosion." Frank Campagna, Firefighter (F.D.N.Y.) [Ladder 11] says: "You see three explosions and then the whole thing coming down." Craig Carlsen, Firefighter (F.D.N.Y.) [Ladder 8] says: "... you just heard explosions coming from building two, the south tower. It seemed like it took forever, but there were about ten explosions. At the time I didn't realize what it was." Jason Charles, E.M.T. (E.M.S.) says: "... and then I heard an explosion from up, from up above, and I froze and I was like, oh, s___, I'm dead because I thought the debris was going to hit me in the head and that was it.
... I look over my shoulder and I says, oh, s___, and then I turned around and looked up and that's when I saw the tower coming down." Frank Cruthers,Chief (F.D.N.Y.) [Citywide Tour Commander] says: ".. there was what appeared to be at first an explosion. It appeared at the very top, simultaneously from all four sides, materials shot out horizontally. And then there seemed to be a momentary delay before you could see the beginning of the collapse." Dominick Derubbio, Battalion Chief (F.D.N.Y.) [Division 8] says: "It was weird how it started to come down. It looked like it was a timed explosion..." Brian Dixon, Battalion Chief (F.D.N.Y.) says: "... the lowest floor of fire in the south tower actually looked like someone had planted explosives around it because the whole bottom I could see -- I could see two sides of it and the other side -- it just looked like that floor blew out. I looked up and you could actually see everything blew out on the one floor. I thought, geez, this looks like an explosion up there, it blew out." Michael Donovan, Captain (F.D.N.Y.) says: "I thought there had been an explosion or a bomb that they had blown up there." Gary Gates, Lieutenant (F.D.N.Y.) says: "So the explosion, what I realized later, had to be the start of the collapse. It was the way the building appeared to blow out from both sides. I'm looking at the face of it, and all we see is the two sides of the building just blowing out and coming apart like this, as I said, like the top of a volcano." Gregg Hansson, Lieutenant (F.D.N.Y.) says: "Then a large explosion took place. In my estimation that was the tower coming down, but at that time I did not know what that was. I thought some type of bomb had gone off." John Malley, Firefighter (F.D.N.Y.) [Ladder 22] says: "I felt the rumbling, and then I felt the force coming at me. I was like, what the hell is that? In my mind it was a bomb going off." James McKinley, E.M.T. (E.M.S.) says: "After that I heard this huge explosion, I thought it was a boiler exploding or something. Next thing you know this huge cloud of smoke is coming at us, so we're running." Kevin Murray, Firefighter (F.D.N.Y.) [Ladder 18] says: "When the tower started -- there was a big explosion that I heard and someone screamed that it was coming down and I looked away and I saw all the windows domino." Janice Olszewski, Captain (E.M.S.) says: "I thought it was an explosion or a secondary device, a bomb, the jet -- plane exploding, whatever." Daniel Rivera, Paramedic (E.M.S.) [Battalion 31] says: "At first I thought it was -- do you ever see professional demolition where they set the charges on certain floors and then you hear "Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop"? That's exactly what -- because I thought it was that." Angel Rivera, Firefighter (F.D.N.Y.) says: "That's when hell came down. It was like a huge, enormous explosion. I still can hear it. Everything shook." Kennith Rogers, Firefighter (F.D.N.Y.) says: "I figured it was a bomb, because it looked like a synchronized deliberate kind of thing. I was there in '93." Mark Steffens, Division Chief (E.M.S.) says: "Then there was another it sounded like an explosion and heavy white powder..." John Sudnik, Battalion Chief (F.D.N.Y.) says: "Then we heard a loud explosion or what sounded like a loud explosion and looked up and I saw tower two start coming down. Crazy." Jay Swithers, Captain (E.M.S.) says: "I took a quick glance at the building and while I didn't see it falling, I saw a large section of it blasting out, which led me to believe it was just an explosion. I thought it was a secondary device, but I knew that we had to go." David Timothy, E.M.T. (E.M.S.) says: "The next thing I knew, you started hearing more explosions. I guess this is when the second tower started coming down." Albert Turi, Deputy Assistant Chief (F.D.N.Y.) says: "And as my eyes traveled up the building, and I was looking at the south tower, somewhere about halfway up, my initial reaction was there was a secondary explosion, and the entire floor area, a ring right around the building blew out." Thomas Turilli, Firefighter (F.D.N.Y.) says: "... it almost actually that day sounded like bombs going off, like boom, boom, boom, like seven or eight, and then just a huge wind gust just came." Stephen Viola, Firefighter (F.D.N.Y.) says: "... that's when the south tower collapsed, and it sounded like a bunch of explosions." An EMS Captain, Karin DeShore states that: "My back was towards the building, trying to push everybody up. Grassy hill was there and up underneath that overpass, when somebody just simply shouted and I have no idea who it was, 'it's blowing'. I had no clue what was going on. I never turned around because a sound came from somewhere that I never heard before. Some people compared it with an airplane. It was the worst sound of a rolling sound, not a thunder. I can't explain it, what it was. All I know is-- and a force started to come hit me in my back. I can't explain it. You had to be there. All I know is I had to run beacuse I thought there was an explosion. I ran about 10, 12 feet up this little grassy hill and by then this force and this sound caught up with me already. I threw myself behind the last support column of the pedestrian overpass. It became pitch dark. The sound got worse, the force just kept passing me. At times I thought it was like an orange light maybe, coming past me. I was unaware what was happening. I thought it was just a major explosion. I didn't know the building was collapsing... worst thing I ever experienced in my life and not being able to breathe. There was no air. Whatever this explosion was simply sucked all the oxygen out of the air. You couldn't breathe and the feeling of suffocation, I can't explain no further on that... [then describing next the other Tower "collapsing"].. Somewhere around the middle of the World Trade Center, there was this orange and red flash coming out. Initially it was just one flash. Then this flash just kept popping all the way around the building, and that building had started to explode. The popping sound, and with each popping sound it was initially an orange and then a red flash came out of the building and then it would just go all around the building on both sides as far as I could see. These popping sounds and the explosions were getting bigger, going both up and down and then all around the building. I went inside and told everybody that the other building or there was an explosion occurring up there and I said I think we have another major explosion. I don't know if we are all going to be safe here... So these explosions are getting bigger and louder, and bigger and louder and I told everybody if this building totally explodes... I'm going in the water... knowing all of the explosions I thought here was another explosion coming and this sound again and this wave of this force again..." http://sfgate.com/gate/pictures/2005/09/10/ga_karin_deshore.pdf A tape of EMT dispatchers has an EMT officer calling in additional explosions at the Twin Towers: "Official: Battalion 3 to dispatch, we've just had another explosion. Official: Battalion 3 to dispatch, we've had additional explosion. Dispatcher: Received battalion command. Additional explosion." http://www.wnbc.com/news/1315651/detail.html A video clip of firefighters discussing the explosions can be found at the bottom of this page: http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/videos/#witnesses Teresa Veliz, facilities manager for a software company in the North Tower, says: "I was convinced that there were bombs planted all over the place and someone was sitting at a control panel pushing detonator buttons. I was afraid to go down Church Street toward Broadway, but I had to do it. I ended up on Vesey Street. There was another explosion. And another. I didn't know where to run." http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/veliz-bombs.htm Edmund McNally, a worker at Fiduciary Trust who was passed away on 9/11 said to his wife on the phone: "Liz, this was a terrorist attack. I can hear explosions below me.'' http://www.flcv.com/wtc2surv.html David Handschuh, a staff member New York's Daily News said: "Instinctively I lifted the camera up, and something took over that probably saved my life. And that was to run rather than take pictures. I got down to the end of the block and turned the corner when a wave — a hot, solid, black wave of heat threw me down the block. It literally picked me up off my feet, and I wound up about a block away." http://fotophile.com/news0009.html TCM news in Ireland referred to explosions: "There are reports that a part of the second tower has collapsed after the new explosion."
http://archives.tcm.ie/breakingnews/2001/09/11/story23302.asp CNN's live coverage of 9/11 has some interesting quotes, this excerpt from a few minutes after the South Tower was crashed into: "UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "I say the hole takes about -- we saw six, seven floors were taken out, and there's more explosions right now. Hold on, people are running! Hold on!" UNIDENTIFIED WABC REPORTER: "Hold on just a moment. We've got an explosion inside." UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "The building is exploding right now. You've got people running up the street. Hold on, I'll tell you what's going on." UNIDENTIFIED WABC REPORTER: "OK, just put Winston on pause there for just a moment." UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "The whole building just exploded some more, the whole top part. The building's still intact people are running up the street. Am I still connected?" UNIDENTIFIED WABC REPORTER: "Winston, this would support probably what Libby and you both said, that perhaps the fuselage was in the building that would cause a second explosion, such as that. That's what just happened then." UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "People are running out." UNIDENTIFIED WABC REPORTER: "We are getting word that perhaps..." UNIDENTIFIED MALE: "OK, hold the people here -- everybody here is panicking." [Then, of course, CNN cuts them off and goes to talk to someone else.] http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/11/bn.01.html Dan Rather, after the demolition of WTC # 7 building which we will address in a little while, after the Twin Towers, says that: "For the third time today-- Its reminiscent of those pictures weve all seen too much on television before when a building was deliberately destroyed by well placed dynamite." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvx904dAw0o Peter Jennings compares the Twin Towers' disintegration to controlled demolitions in an interesting conversation with a reporter on the scene Dan Dahler: "Dahler: "Yes, Peter, it's Dan Dahler here. I'm down here four blocks north of the World Trade Center. The second building that was hit by the plane has just completely collapsed. The entire building has just collapsed, as if a demolition team set off, when you see the old demolitions of these old buildings, it folded down on itself, and it is not there any more."... Jennings: "The southern .. tower ... 10 o'clock eastern time this morning, just collapsing on itself. This is a place where thousands of people work. We have no idea what caused this. Um .. If you wish to bring ah .. 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 .. at the under infrastructure of a building and bring it down." http://www.archive.org/details/abc200109110954-1036 NBC's live coverage of the 9/11 events in Manhattan was incriminating as well. Here are some excerpts: "[Ashleigh Banfield an MSNBC correspondant]: "We just heard one more explosion," continues Banfield, "That’s about the fifth one we’ve heard. Police are telling us they’re either car bombs or they’re simply cars that have overheated so much they are exploding."... [as a cop is clearing the area of press, saying only emergency workers are allowed nearby, Banfield questions him about the explosions]: "Do you know anything about those extra explosions we have heard?" [cop]: "No, I do not." [Banfield]: "Were they car bombs?" [cop]: "I have no idea, ma’am." [Banfield]: "What about the sewers? Are they looking for bombs in the sewers?" [cop ignores her and walks away, Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric make no comment about Banfield's report. About a half hour later is another on-the-ground report, this time by Pat Dawson, reporting on the conversation he had moments before with Albert Perry, chief of fire safety for NYFD]: "Perry told me that shortly after nine o’clock he had ten alarms, roughly 200 men, in the building trying to effect a rescue of the civilians who were in there. And, basically, he received word of some kind of secondary device, that is, another bomb going off. He tried to get his men out quickly as he could, but he said there was an explosion that took place. And an hour after the first hit, the first crash [that] took place, there was another explosion in one of the towers here. According to his theory, he thinks there were actually devices that were planted in the building. One may have been in the plane. A second device, he speculates, was probably planted in the building. So that’s what we’ve been told by Albert Perry, who is chief of Safety for the New York City Fire Department, just moments ago. Now we are continuing to hear explosions here downtown. The whole area is cordoned off and that rescue workers are waiting to get in. But the bottom line is that he, Albert Perry, said that he probably lost a great many men in those secondary explosions, and he said that there were literally hundreds, if not thousands, of people in those towers when the explosions took place." [Brokaw says nothing about Dawson's report either. Christian Martin, a producer for NBC's Dateline program who was near the "collapses" when they occurred, was interviewed and he mentions the]: "force of the blast coming down the canyon [between the buildings]". [At 12:42, NBC's Ann Thompson, who also escaped, says she was at Broadway and Fullerton when]: "we heard an explosion" [from the South Tower, and says that about 10:30 she came back into the street and says]: "We walked down Broadway toward Canal and we heard the second explosion" [and that a fireman told her to get out of the building] "because, if there was a third explosion, the building they were in would become dangerous." [Thompson is also interrupted by a cop telling her to leave. At 1:41 PM Tom Brokaw says the devastation is]: "as effective as if a bomb were dropped there. Airliners hitting buildings, which came down, we presume because of the initial explosion. There may have been secondary explosions detonated in the building placed there by these terrorists." [Brokaw would however never again mention these "secondary explosions", presumably having been quietly told to kill the talk of "bombs in buildings" as it contradicts the official myth, then starting to take hold]. http://www.teslapress.com/NBC%20html%20web%20version.htm And if you haven't yet watched the video footage of the "collapses" of the Twin Towers, I strongly urge you to do so; there's nothing quite like seeing it with your own eyes, especially when you can slow it down and watch it frame-by-frame if necessary. Among other places, the video footage can be found at: http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/videos/ http://www.plaguepuppy.net/public_html/video%20archive/ http://www.studyof911.com/video/

Another feature of the "collapses" that points to controlled demolition is the fact that both Towers' onset of "collapse" was sudden. Dr. David Griffin notes that: "In controlled demolition, the onset of the collapse is sudden. One moment, the building is perfectly motionless; the next moment, it suddenly begins to collapse. But steel, when heated, does not suddenly buckle or break. So in fire-induced collapses---if we had any examples of such---the onset would be gradual. Horizontal beams and trusses would begin to sag; vertical columns, if subjected to strong forces, would begin to bend. But as videos of the towers show, there were no signs of bending or sagging, even on the floors just above the damage caused by the impact of the planes. The buildings were perfectly motionless up to the moment they began their collapse." http://911review.com/articles/griffin/nyc1.html#suddenonset

Still another feature pointing in the same direction is the total destruction of the Towers. Again Griffin states it very well in saying: "The official theory is even more decisively ruled out by the fact that the collapses were total: These 110-story buildings collapsed into piles of rubble only a few stories high. How was that possible? The core of each tower contained 47 massive steel box columns. According to the pancake theory, the horizontal steel supports broke free from the vertical columns. But if that is what had happened, the 47 core columns would have still been standing. The 9/11 Commission came up with a bold solution to this problem. It simply denied the existence of the 47 core columns, saying: “The interior core of the buildings was a hollow steel shaft, in which elevators and stairwells were grouped” (Kean and Hamilton, 2004, 541 note 1). Voila! With no 47 core columns, the main problem is removed. The NIST Report handled this most difficult problem by claiming that when the floors collapsed, they pulled on the columns, causing the perimeter columns to become unstable. This instability then increased the gravity load on the core columns, which had been weakened by tremendously hot fires in the core, which, NIST claims, reached 1832°F, and this combination of factors somehow produced “global collapse” (NIST, 2005, pp. 28, 143). This theory faces two problems. First, NIST’s claim about tremendously hot fires in the core is completely unsupported by evidence. As we saw earlier, its own studies found no evidence that any of the core columns had reached temperatures of even 482°F (250˚C), so its theory involves a purely speculative addition of over 1350°F. Second, even if this sequence of events had occurred, NIST provides no explanation as to why it would have produced global—-that is, total--collapse. The NIST Report asserts that “column failure” occurred in the core as well as the perimeter columns. But this remains a bare assertion. There is no plausible explanation of why the columns would have broken or even buckled, so as to produce global collapse at virtually free-fall speed, even if they had reached such temperatures... [Dr. Griffin also quotes Jim Hoffman on the way the "collapses" chopped the steel up into small enough segments for much easier loading on trucks for removal]: "The collapses of the Twin Towers, it seems, somehow managed to mimic this feature of controlled demolitions as well. Jim Hoffman (2004), after studying various photos of the collapse site, said that much of the steel seemed to be “chopped up into . . . sections that could be easily loaded onto the equipment that was cleaning up Ground Zero." http://911review.com/articles/griffin/nyc1.html#totalcollapse

Two other things that seem to indicate controlled demolition would be, in the "collapse" of the North Tower, the radio antenna on the roof dropped part of a second before anything else, visible in any video footage of the North Tower "collapse" that shows the roof and the tipping of the top of the South Tower. Dr. Griffin describes how these are important: "Another problem noted by FEMA is that videos show that, in the words of the FEMA Report, “the transmission tower on top of the [north tower] began to move downward and laterally slightly before movement was evident at the exterior wall. This suggests that collapse began with one or more failures in the central core area of the building” (FEMA 2002, ch. 2). This drop was also mentioned in a New York Times story by James Glanz and Eric Lipton, which said: “Videos of the north tower's collapse appear to show that its television antenna began to drop a fraction of a second before the rest of the building. The observations suggest that the building's steel core somehow gave way first” (Glanz and Lipton, 2002). In the supposedly definitive NIST Report, however, we find no mention of this fact. This is another convenient omission, since the most plausible, and perhaps only possible, explanation would be that the core columns were cut by explosives---an explanation that would fit with the testimony of several witnesses. If the north tower’s antenna drop was anomalous (from the perspective of the official theory), the south tower’s collapse contained an even stranger anomaly. The uppermost floors---above the level struck by the airplane---began tipping toward the corner most damaged by the impact. http://www.wvsd.k12.pa.us/Teacher%20Webpages/Shuey/southtower.jpg According to conservation-of-momentum laws, this block of approximately 34 floors should have fallen to the ground far outside the building’s footprint. “However,” observe Paul and Hoffman, “as the top then began to fall, the rotation decelerated. Then it reversed direction [even though the] law of conservation of angular momentum states that a solid object in rotation will continue to rotate at the same speed unless acted on by a torque” (Paul and Hoffman, 2004, p. 34). And then, in the words of Steven Jones, a physics professor at BYU, “this block turned mostly to powder in mid-air!” This disintegration stopped the tipping and allowed the uppermost floors to fall straight down into, or at least close to, the building’s footprint. As Jones notes, this extremely strange behavior was one of many things that NIST was able to ignore by virtue of the fact that its analysis, in its own words, “does not actually include the structural behavior of the tower after the conditions for collapse initiation were reached” (NIST 2005, p. 80, n. 12). This is convenient because it means that NIST did not have to answer Jones’s question: “How can we understand this strange behavior, without explosives?” (Jones, 2006). This behavior is, however, not strange to experts in controlled demolition. Mark Loizeaux, the head of Controlled Demolition, Inc., has said: "[By] differentially controlling the velocity of failure in different parts of the structure, you can make it walk, you can make it spin, you can make it dance . . . . We'll have structures start facing north and end up going to the north-west." (Else, 2004) Once again, something that is inexplicable in terms of the official theory becomes a matter of course if the theory of controlled demolition is adopted." http://911review.com/articles/griffin/nyc1.html#antennadrop

Still another thing indicative of controlled demolition is that, aside from the above mentioned horizontal debris ejections, both Towers "collapsed" symmetrically straight down into their own footprints instead of toppling over like a tree in the direction of the weakest part. Since obviously the airplanes didn't hit the Towers in multiple directions at once, instead of course hitting from one direction, the damage and fire's worst area would be not spread out symmetrically but more on the side stricken by the plane, so this would be the weakest part and (barring explosives) if the impossible "collapses" would've started the building would have fallen over in the direction of the weakest part, not straight down into its own footprint. This is the most critical aspect of demolishing buildings in close urban areas, making sure that the building comes straight down instead of toppling over onto other nearby buildings; if either of the Twin Towers had toppled over the damage and loss of life would have been unimaginably worse than what occurred. Dr. Griffin states that: "The most important thing in a controlled demolition of a tall building close to other buildings is that it come straight down, into, or at least close to, its own footprint, so that it does not harm the other buildings. The whole art or science of controlled demolition is oriented primarily around this goal. As Mark Loizeaux, the president of Controlled Demolition, Inc., has explained, “to bring [a building] down as we want, so . . . no other structure is harmed,” the demolition must be “completely planned,” using “the right explosive [and] the right pattern of laying the charges” (Else, 2004). If the 110-story Twin Towers had fallen over, they would have caused an enormous amount of damage to buildings covering many city blocks. But the towers came straight down. Accordingly, the official theory, by implying that fire produced collapses that perfectly mimicked the collapses that have otherwise been produced only by precisely placed explosives, requires a miracle." http://911review.com/articles/griffin/nyc1.html#straightdown Dr. Steven Jones states that: "The occurrence of nearly symmetrical, straight-down and complete collapses of the WTC 7 and the Towers is particularly upsetting to the "official" theory that random fires plus damage caused all these collapses. Even with explosives, achieving such results requires a great deal of pre-planning and expertise. The main challenge in bringing a building down is controlling which way it falls. Ideally, a blasting crew will be able to tumble the building over on one side, into a parking lot or other open area. This sort of blast is the easiest to execute [favored by the Law of Increasing Entropy]. Tipping a building over is something like felling a tree. To topple the building to the north, the blasters detonate explosives on the north side of the building first. Sometimes, though, a building is surrounded by structures that must be preserved. In this case, the blasters proceed with a true implosion, demolishing the building so that it collapses straight down into its own footprint (the total area at the base of the building). This feat requires such skill that only a handful of demolition companies in the world will attempt it. [Again, consistent with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.] Blasters approach each project a little differently... [A good] option is to detonate the columns at the center of the building before the other columns so that the building's sides fall inward." (Harris, 2000) http://web.archive.org/web/20060105101348/http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html Asymmetrical damage and random fires are not going to cause a symmetrical, straight-down "collapse".

But among the most damning features of the "collapses" are their speed, at virtually freefall rate. Here the official "collapse" scenario most tries to turn common sense on its ear. The 9/11 Omission Commission admitted that the South Tower's "collapse" elapsed 10 seconds: "At 9:58:59, the South Tower collapsed in ten seconds" http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch9.htm The NIST report in its "frequently asked questions" segment admitted "collapse" times of: "only 11 seconds (WTC 1) and 9 seconds (WTC 2)—speeds that approximate that of a ball dropped from similar height in a vacuum (with no air resistance)" http://www.911research.wtc7.net/reviews/nist/WTC_FAQ_reply.html#6 It then tries to explain it away, hoping people don't use common sense: "NIST estimated the elapsed times for the first exterior panels to strike the ground after the collapse initiated in each of the towers to be approximately 11 seconds for WTC 1 and approximately 9 seconds for WTC 2. These elapsed times were based on: (1) precise timing of the initiation of collapse from video evidence, and (2) ground motion (seismic) signals recorded at Palisades, N.Y., that also were precisely time-calibrated for wave transmission times from lower Manhattan (see NCSTAR 1-5A). As documented in Section 6.14.4 of NIST NCSTAR 1, these collapse times show that:
“… the structure below the level of collapse initiation offered minimal resistance to the falling building mass at and above the impact zone. The potential energy released by the downward movement of the large building mass far exceeded the capacity of the intact structure below to absorb that energy through energy of deformation.
Since the stories below the level of collapse initiation provided little resistance to the tremendous energy released by the falling building mass, the building section above came down essentially in free fall, as seen in videos. As the stories below sequentially failed, the falling mass increased, further increasing the demand on the floors below, which were unable to arrest the moving mass.”
In other words, the momentum (which equals mass times velocity) of the 12 to 28 stories (WTC 1 and WTC 2, respectively) falling on the supporting structure below (which was designed to support only the static weight of the floors above and not any dynamic effects due to the downward momentum) so greatly exceeded the strength capacity of the structure below that it (the structure below) was unable to stop or even to slow the falling mass. The downward momentum felt by each successive lower floor was even larger due to the increasing mass."
Jim Hoffman answers this bizarre fantasy "theory" put forward by NIST saying: "NIST's assertion that the Tower's intact structure was "unable to stop or even to slow the falling mass" is absurd:
It requires us to believe that the massive steel frames of the towers provided no more resistance to falling rubble than air.
It ignores the fact that most of the rubble fell outside the towers' footprints, and hence could not contribute to crushing.
It is unsupported by any calculation or logical argument." http://www.911research.wtc7.net/reviews/nist/WTC_FAQ_reply.html#6
Dr. David Griffin on page 16 of his book "The New Pearl Harbor" states it well in saying: “For a 1,300-foot building, however, ten seconds is almost free-fall speed. But if each floor produced just a little resistance, so that breaking through each one took half a second, the collapse of all those floors—80 or 95 of them—would have taken 40 to 47 seconds. Can we really believe that the upper part of the buildings encountered virtually no resistance from the lower part?” This is of critical importance to understand, and it cannot be emphasized enough, the official myth requires us to believe that the uppermost floors of each Tower fell into and THROUGH the remaining vast majority of each, and in so doing met virtually no more resistance than falling through air? Solid majority of building? Air? See this diagram: http://www.ae911truth.net/ppt/ae911-154.php And this flies in the face of physics for the "collapses" to not slow themselves, as when it falls into and through each successive floor, it has to shed more and more energy in doing so, and will slow itself down, and wouldn't look like the demolition wave of explosions pulverizing concrete into dust moving down the building. But NIST expects us to believe that the remaining majority of each Tower provided no more resistance to the falling mass than air. They say "provided little resistance", but as Dr. Griffin pointed out even a little resistance per floor would quadruple the "collapse" time. This is simple common sense that that isn't possible in the real world without explosives for the uppermost portion of each to pass through the remaining majority virtually as quickly, meaning as effortlessly, as falling through air. The official scenario is asking you to ignore your common sense. Don't.

So what do we gather from all this? The official version of the "collapses" of the Twin Towers is provably impossible in several important ways. The damage and fires weren't nearly enough to get the "collapses" started, and the most likely reason why the South Tower, the wrong tower, "collapsed" first was because in the South Tower the firefighters had reached the floors where the fires were (see above radio transcripts) and would soon have them under control, and would deprive the official myth of its "fire-induced collapse" excuse, so it was demolished when it was, first. Furthermore, even if one grants the impossible starts to the "collapses", they have many features of controlled demolitions, while being physically impossible (think about it) per the official story to have collapsed anywhere near as quickly as they did, as completely as they did. Something had to have reduced the remainder of each Tower to a state of offering essentially no more resistance than air, instead of taking longer by several times as much; The Twin Towers were controlled demolitions. So was WTC # 7 building which we will cover next. WTC # 7 building. This is the building that the mainstream media and all other defenders of the official myth hope you either forget about or never hear about to begin with.

Now let's look into the matter of the WTC # 7 building, the third skyscraper to "collapse" on 9/11. At 47 stories tall, #7 was a skyscraper in its own right, and without the demolition of the Twin Towers earlier that day, the "collapse" of a 47-story high-rise would have been an enormous news story, but as it was empty, having been evacuated hours before, thankfully nobody was killed in its disintegration, making it much easier for the mainstream media to ignore it when mentioning 9/11, as they normally say "the attacks on the Twin Towers (or use World Trade Center as synonymous with "Twin Towers", ignoring the other buildings in the complex) and the Pentagon", sometimes throwing in "and Pennsylvania". Also, importantly, no airplane hit it (which also means the official myth's purveyors cannot lean on the mythological "ultra-hot jet fuel fires" crap this time), and it is extremely rare that WTC # 7 gets a mention in the corporate-owned mainstream prosti-press and mainstream internet blogs. And it's for good reason: They want you to forget about it or, better still from their perspective, never learn of it to begin with, as it is a story that quickly gets unexplainable for the official myth. Just one of those many things about 9/11 you "aren't supposed to think about". But it's time to take a look into its details. The official myth's proponents, if failing to dissuade you from being curious about WTC # 7, will then hope you will have only the foggiest perception of the scenario. But unfortunately for them, ample video and photographic evidence exists that can clear a lot of that up and put the lie to the idea of # 7 being some kind of raging inferno as they want you to believe. Furthermore, the video footage of its "collapse" is even more incriminating in a different way, appearing as a textbook controlled demolition which we will discuss shortly. As readily apparant as controlled demolitions the Twin Towers are from watching the video footage, if possible WTC # 7 is even MORE so.

First let's take a look at who some of the interesting tenants of this building were. For one, the mayor's emergency command center was located there, in a reinforced concrete bunker on the 23rd floor: "In a related move, in 1999, Giuliani opened a $15 million emergency management center at 7 World Trade Center. The city boasted that the command center's walls could withstand 200 miles per hour winds, and the ventilation system was designed to blow out chemicals or germs. Although it was on the 23rd floor, critics assailed the center as "Rudy's bunker." Michael Daly of the Daily News likened it to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's shelter. "Of course, the mayor's inner circle will not have the cozy security of the traditional underground setting. They will be in the first-ever aerie-style bunker, a 46,000-square-foot expanse on the 23rd floor of 7 World Trade Center." http://www.gothamgazette.com/iotw/terrorism/ For another, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was located there on the 11th, 12th and 13th floors, and as an article in the National Law Journal states, it lost a lot of confidential files on current cases: "Additional details emerged Friday about the effect of the collapse of 7 World Trade Center on investigations being conducted by the New York offices of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, both of which were housed in the building. The SEC has not quantified the number of active cases in which substantial files were destroyed. Reuters news service and the Los Angeles Times published reports estimating them at 3,000 to 4,000. They include the agency's major inquiry into the manner in which investment banks divvied up hot shares of initial public offerings during the high-tech boom...Court papers can largely be reconstituted, but work product has to be reconstructed," he said. "This will cause delays in court and will require significant reduplication of effort." Some data, he added, "won't be recreatable."... "Ongoing investigations at the New York SEC will be dramatically affected because so much of their work is paper-intensive," said Max Berger of New York's Bernstein Litowitz Berger & Grossmann. "This is a disaster for these cases." [Also harmed by the destruction of #7 building was the EEOC but the article states]: "The EEOC is in a better position than the SEC, because the SEC has a lot more confidential files." http://www.proxyowl.net/cgi-bin/cgiproxy/nph-proxy.pl/000000A/http/911research.wtc7.net/cache/wtc/analysis/wtc7/nyl_SECEEOCdelays.html Still another tenant was the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on floors 24 and 25. http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/tenants7.html The Department of Defense also was a tenant in # 7 building, sharing floor space with the IRS. http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_ch5.pdf On floors 9 and 10 were offices for the U.S. Secret Service. http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/tenants7.html Also located in # 7 building, like the DoD sharing floor space with the IRS, was the C.I.A.'s Manhattan office. CBS reports in an article called "Report: CIA Lost Office in WTC", that: "A secret office operated by the CIA was destroyed in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, seriously disrupting intelligence operations. The undercover station was in 7 World Trade Center, a smaller office tower that fell several hours after the collapse of the twin towers on Sept. 11, a U.S. government official said. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that immediately after the attack, a special CIA team scoured the rubble in search of secret documents and intelligence reports stored in the station, either on paper or in computers. It was not known whether the efforts were successful. A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the existence of the office, which was first reported in Sunday's editions of The New York Times. The New York station was behind the false front of another federal organization, which the Times did not identify. The station was a base of operations to spy on and recruit foreign diplomats stationed at the United Nations, while debriefing selected American business executives and others willing to talk to the CIA after returning from overseas. The agency's officers in New York often work undercover, posing as diplomats and business executives, among other things. They have been deeply involved in counter-terrorism efforts in the New York area, working jointly with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies. The CIA's main New York office was unaffected by the attacks, but agents have been sharing space at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, and have borrowed other federal government offices in the city. The agency is prohibited from conducting domestic espionage operations against Americans, but it maintains stations in a number of major United States cities, where CIA case officers try to meet and recruit students and other foreigners to return to their countries and spy for the United States. The New York station was believed to have been the largest and most important CIA domestic station outside the Washington area." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/11/05/archive/main316911.shtml The "[other] federal organization" with which it was co-located is the IRS, mentioned here: http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_ch5.pdf So that's an awful lot of important tenants having offices in a building that mysteriously "collapsed" later in the day on 9/11.

Let's now turn our attention to how # 7 is alleged by the official story to have ended up "collapsing". Much is made by defenders of the official myth of debris impacting # 7 from the "collapse" of the North Tower. First let's take a look at where # 7 was located in relation to the North and South Towers. Here is a diagram showing the WTC complex: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:WTC_Building_Arrangement_and_Site_Plan_%28building_7_highlighted%29.jpg As you can see, in between the North Tower (WTC # 1 building) and # 7 is another building, WTC # 6. Meaning any debris impacting # 7 building would have to first sail over the relatively low-slung WTC # 6, traveling about 350 feet to hit #7. Granted, debris from the Tower was ejected horizontally farther than that, as mentioned above, but bear in mind that while # 7 building is alleged by the official myth to have suffered such grievous damage that, combined with the [small] fires present in the building, caused it to "collapse", yet building # 6, which was in between WTC # 7 and the North Tower, and suffered far more debris damage, did NOT collapse and had to be demolished at a later date during the cleanup effort! This is something the official story apologists wish you would overlook, as they would prefer you to believe that WTC # 7 was located right next to the North Tower by constantly mentioning its proximity yet neglecting to mention the considerably closer building # 6 that took the brunt of the ejected North Tower debris damage in that direction yet remained standing.

So how extensive was this falling debris damage to WTC # 7 anyway? The official story would want you to believe it was terrible. Photos and video footage from that day however tell a different story altogether. The south face of WTC # 7 was the side facing the direction of the North Tower, and would have been the face that received any damage from the North Tower's demolition. NIST's Shyam Sunder has stated that: "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." No photos or video evidence exist to corroborate this of course, though here's a photo from a distance of the south face of WTC # 7 [the skyscraper in the upper right] that shows no visible damage (and no visible fires) to the south face, and this is after the "collapses" of both Twin Towers: http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/photos/wtc7fire3.html The best NIST can do is to release a couple of photos (never before seen!) of # 7 building which purport to show damage to the southwest corner, a gash going from the 18th floor down to the 8th floor; and very insignificant damage to the roof's parapet on the south side. These can be seen here: http://wtc7.net/damageclaims.html As Jim Hoffman notes: "The admittedly minor damage to the parapet wall appears to be the only evidentiary basis for NIST's claim of a huge gash in the middle of the south facade, since no photographs show this damage. The alleged southwest corner damage is interesting because there are no known photographs that show this corner of the building from the 18th story down. In fact, it is the only corner of the building whose 8- to 18th-floor span is not shown by other public photographs. See, for example, post-North-Tower-collapse photographs of the building archived on 9-11 Research [website]." Wow, what a coincidence that in this "never before seen" photo it shows this previously-unknown southwest corner gash, that is on the only corner unseen from the18th story down on any other photos of that day. For example, if NIST wanted to photoshop "damage" into a photo, this would be the corner to do it and the height (18th floor down) to do it. Regardless, as can be seen in the photo, the southwest corner damage if it is genuine is far from catastrophic. Want to see catastrophic damage? Look at this photo of WTC # 3 building, located right next to both of the Twin Towers on the west side [note diagram linked to above], taken after the "collapse" of the South Tower but before the North Tower: http://xenonpuppy.net/video%20archive/Biggart1836.jpg Funny how this enormous amount of debris damage didn't cause WTC # 3 to have a WTC # 7-style "collapse", as you can see where it isn't damaged it's still standing though the center of it has been carved out by massive debris impacting it from the South Tower. It wasn't until a half hour later when the North Tower was demolished that the precariously located WTC # 3 suffered enough damage to cause MOST of the rest of it to collapse. However a portion of its lower floors remained standing until demolished later. In fact, a fire company that was unfortunate enough to be in # 3 survived the "collapses" of both Twin Towers: "An FDNY fire company was in the building [WTC # 3] during the collapses of both WTC 1 and WTC 2 and survived. The firefighters were near the top of the building in the process of making sure that there were no civilians present in the building, when the south tower collapsed. Firefighter Heinz Kothe is quoted as saying, "We had no idea what had happened. It just rocked the building. It blew the door to the stairwell open, and it blew the guys up near the door halfway down a flight of stairs. I got knocked down to the landing. The building shook like buildings just don't shake." Subsequently, the firefighters were in the lower portion of the southwest corner of the building when the north tower collapsed (Court 2001)." ... "The structure was even capable of protecting occupants on lower floors after the collapse of WTC 1." http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/guardian2/wtc/WTC_ch3.htm I defy any official story numbskull to show me any photo of WTC # 7 [before # 7 was imploded in on itself of course!] that has anywhere remotely close to that degree of damage seen in that photo with the center portion carved out of WTC # 3.

And how bad were the fires going? Again, the official apologists would have you believe WTC # 7 was in dire straits, a raging inferno, "totally involved in fire" or "engulfed in flames". Again this is utter bullshit as photo and video evidence bear out. Here's a photo of the fire "raging" in WTC # 7 building, from a group of several photos from a rescue worker who shared them publicly in 2006: http://prisonplanet.tv/images/august2006/230806wtc8.jpg Some inferno, huh? Or check out these photos: http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/photos/wtc7.html#fires This one shows small fires burning on the north face of the building at some point in the afternoon: http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/photos/wtc7northface.html This one [from the rescue worker's set] which shows WTC # 7 in the right foreground, it's the massive building on the right of the picture, while in the background can be seen WTC # 5 building, which suffered debris damage, burning ferociously. http://prisonplanet.tv/images/august2006/230806wtc4.jpg Yet WTC # 5 building didn't "collapse" that day and had to be demolished at a later date. No photos or videos show WTC # 7 burning anywhere near like # 5 was. But we are expected to believe # 7 was a raging inferno and "collapsed". And # 5 didn't. It was damaged, and burned to a crisp, but here's a photo of it still standing two days after 9/11: http://prisonplanet.tv/images/august2006/230806wtc1.jpg WTC # 6, which in addition to also suffering debris damage, significantly moreso than # 7 did, from the looks of the building afterwards it also appears to have had fires raging to a similar extent as # 5 and can be seen here, about halfway down the page or the fifth photo from the bottom, in a photo taken at a later date: http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2006/230806wtccomplex.htm WTC # 6 and its damage and fires are discussed here: http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/attack/wtc6.html Yet # 6 also did not "collapse" that day, and had to be demolished months later. Furthermore, here are photos of # 7 a second before "collapse" and during, and they certainly do not show # 7 to be "engulfed in flames" or "totally involved in fire" and if at any time before "collapse" that one would think [per the official myth] that it would be, is the time just before "collapse" but the photos show the opposite: http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/photos/wtc7exp2.html And if you watch the video footage of the "collapse" of WTC # 7 you will also of course see that it certainly wasn't "engulfed in flames" or anything of that nature: http://www.wtc7.net/videos.html http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/videos/index.html#building7 So in addition to its relatively insignificant debris damage, it doesn't appear that WTC # 7 building was much of a towering inferno either.

So having seen that the debris damage and the small fires are not nearly sufficient to have caused # 7 to "collapse", let's look at the nature of the "collapse" itself and see what that tells us about what caused it. For one thing, if we overlook for a moment that it wasn't possible for the officialy story's "damage/fire-induced collapse" to have begun for the sake of argument so as to address the manner of its "collapse" itself, it is immediately noticed that the "collapse" was symmetrical as can be seen in any video footage of it [see above], meaning it went evenly straight down into its footprint instead of over onto one side; yet if the official story's "damage" and "fire" claims were to be believed this would not have happened, as any damage and fire were asymmetrical; thus, physics as well as common sense tell you that were it to collapse it would have instead toppled over in the direction of its weakest point, where the damage and fire are the worst. No amount of asymmetrical damage and asymmetrical fire are going to cause what is plainly seen in all video footage of it to be a perfectly symmetrical "collapse" right into its footprint. It would have toppled over to the south instead, as that would have been the face of it that received the most damage and what is claimed to be damage-induced fire and thus would have been most weakened. This is discussed by among others Dr. Griffin at: http://911review.com/articles/griffin/nyc1.html#building7 He states: "it certainly would not explain the particular nature of the collapse---that the building imploded and fell straight down rather than falling over in some direction, as purportedly expected by those who gave the order to create a large collapse zone. Battalion Chief John Norman, for example, said: “We expected it to fall to the south” (Norman 2002)." He goes on to say: " The building had 24 core columns and 57 perimeter columns. To hold that fire caused this building to collapse straight down would mean believing that the fire caused all 81 columns to fail at exactly the same time. To accept the official story is, in other words, to accept a miracle." He also quotes Prof. Steven Jones as saying: "The likelihood of near-symmetrical collapse of WTC7 due to random fires (the "official" theory)---requiring as it does near-simultaneous failure of many support columns---is infinitesimal. I conclude that the evidence for the 9/11 use of pre-positioned explosives in WTC 7 (also in Towers 1 and 2) is truly compelling." Prof. Jones goes on to describe WTC # 7's "collapse" in his own research paper in saying: "As you observed (above), WTC 7 collapsed rapidly and symmetrically -- even though fires were randomly scattered in the building. WTC 7 fell about seven hours after the Towers collapsed, even though no major persistent fires were visible. There were twenty-four huge steel support columns inside WTC 7 as well as huge trusses, arranged asymmetrically, along with approximately 57 perimeter columns. (FEMA, 2002, chapter 5.) A symmetrical collapse, as observed, evidently requires the simultaneous "pulling" of many of the support columns. The Second Law of Thermodynamics implies that the likelihood of complete and symmetrical collapse due to random fires as in the "official" theory is small, since asymmetrical failure is so much more likely. On the other hand, a major goal of controlled demolition using explosives is the complete and symmetrical collapse of buildings." http://web.archive.org/web/20060105101348/http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html Plus, just plain old common sense tells you that if it was to fall it would fall in the direction where it's weakest, not straight down into itself symmetrically.

Another feature of WTC # 7's "collapse" that doesn't make sense per the official myth but makes sense if it was a controlled demolition is the existence of squibs an instant before and during "collapse". This is very pronounced in the video footage as can be seen here among other places: http://www.wtc7.net/videos.html http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/videos/index.html#building7 As Prof. Steven Jones notes: "Horizontal puffs of smoke and debris are observed emerging from WTC-7 on upper floors, in regular sequence, just as the building starts to collapse. The upper floors have not moved relative to one another yet, as one can verify from the videos. In addition, the timing between the puffs is less than 0.2 seconds so air-expulsion due to collapsing floors is excluded." http://web.archive.org/web/20060105101348/http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html You see two neat, parallel rows of squib puffs going up the face of the building that's facing the viewer and it comes down elegantly. What on earth are these squibs doing there if it wasn't a controlled demolition? These are evidence of explosions blowing out the columns to enable the straight-down "collapse". These squibs don't fit with the official "damage/fire-induced collapse" scenario but are indicative of # 7 being a controlled demolition.

Something else to think about that's just like controlled demolition is that it "fell" right into a small rubble pile as seen in this photo of what's left of WTC # 7 building a few days after 9/11: http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/photos/wtc7pile.html http://www.wtc7.net/rubblepile.html

And just like the Twin Towers' rubble piles, there was molten metal and a thermal hot spot visible from some satellite, the hot spot seen here on the same webpage mentioned in the Twin Towers segment, from the USGS website: http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0429/thermal.r09.html

And just like the Twin Towers its "collapse" started suddenly as can be seen on any video footage of it.

Still another feature of # 7's "collapse" that is particularly damning is that it went at virtually freefall speed, just like the "collapses" of the Twin Towers. Again, aside from controlled demolition, this would involve the same impossible suspension of physics for the uppermost floors to fall into and through the remainder of building about as quickly and effortlessly as falling through air instead of taking longer by several times as much. Something would have had to have reduced it to a state of offering no more resistance than air, and what reduced it, as we can see from the squibs, were demolition charges. Its "collapse" time, as can be seen in the video footage, is estimated at 6 and a half seconds which comes out to on average 7 floors "collapsing" per second! Among many other places, this is analyzed here: http://11syyskuu.blogspot.com/2006/02/destruction-of-wtc-7.html At that site it mentions an accident analyst for the Finnish National Safety Technology Authority named Heikki Kurttila who agrees: "Heikki Kurttila, a Finnish Doctor of Engineering and accident researcher, has made detailed calculations about the collapse speed of WTC 7. He concludes that the short collapse time and low structural resistance "strongly suggest controlled demolition". Kurttila notes that an apple dropped from the height of WTC 7's roof would have taken about 0.5 seconds longer to reach the ground than it took the skyscraper to be completely destroyed." Kurttila's calculations can be seen here: http://www.saunalahti.fi/wtc2001/WTC7_collapse_examination.pdf The matter is also discussed here among other places: http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/wtc7/demolition.html Just like the Twin Towers, it's not even remotely possible that this could occur naturally in the manner seen in the video footage without massive use of pre-planted demolition charges.

That it looked like a controlled demolition (because it was) was also attested to by a man named Danny Jowenko who has been in the demolition industry for 27 years and owns his own demo company, in an interview on a t.v. program in the Netherlands. Dr. Griffin describes this on page 200 of "Debunking 9/11 Debunking", saying: "With the camera running, he was shown videos, from various angles, of the collapse of WTC # 7, but without being told what the building was (he had previously been unaware that any other building besides the Twin Towers had come down on 9/11). In commenting on the collapse, he said: "It starts from below... they have simply blown away columns... A team of experts did this... this is controlled demolition." When he was then told that this building collapsed on September 11, seven hours after the Twin Towers, he was incredulous, asking repeatedly whether the interviewer was sure. When Jowenko was finally convinced, he said: "This is professional work, without any doubt. These boys know very well what they do." A video clip of the interview can be seen here: http://www.911blogger.com/node/2807

The owner of WTC # 7, Larry Silverstein, who also leased the Twin Towers [since April 2001!], may have slipped up in an interview on PBS a few years ago; when asked about WTC # 7 he said it had been "pulled", which has been confirmed as a slang word meaning "demolished". Though we of course can't get inside his mind and can only speculate about the reason he revealed that, it would appear that he didn't realize the significance of admitting that the obvious controlled demolition of # 7 building was, in fact, a controlled demolition, perhaps because nobody was killed in its "collapse", who knows? The actual quote is: "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." The video clip can be seen here among many other places: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phl3-TRb7LI&mode=related&search= Of course when people started talking about it Silverstein tried to claim he didn't mean demolish it, but something else entirely, not saying what for 2 years until finally publicly saying he meant pull the firefighters out of the building; in trying to explain it away for him, the State Dept. issued a statement saying: "Seven World Trade Center collapsed at 5:20 p.m. on September 11, 2001, after burning for seven hours. There were no casualties, thanks to the heroism of the Fire Department and the work of Silverstein Properties employees who evacuated tenants from the building. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) conducted a thorough investigation of the collapse of all the World Trade Center buildings. The FEMA report concluded that the collapse of Seven World Trade Center was a direct result of fires triggered by debris from the collapse of WTC Tower 1. 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." http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Sep/16-241966.html First of all, the statement that "the FEMA report concluded that the collapse of Seven World Trade Center was a direct result of fires triggered by debris from the collapse of WTC Tower 1" is not correct, and deliberately misleading; as will be addressed in a moment, FEMA's report admitted that the best explanation they could come up with was unlikely to have occurred, saying "the best hypothesis has a low probability of occurrence." [By "best" hypothesis, they of course mean THEIR best hypothesis, which necessarily meant any consideration of explosives was off-limits.] http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_ch5.pdf http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_ch8.pdf Secondly, there were no firefighters in the building to be "pulled" out. As the FEMA report itself from which they are quoting states: "No manual firefighting actions were taken by FDNY." The Popular Mechanics pathetic official story apologist piece even states: "There was no firefighting in WTC 7." http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/1227842.html?page=5 Firefighters were not fighting the fire in WTC # 7, but some were in the surrounding area, however not after about 11:30 a.m. according to an article from December 2001 in the New York Times: "By 11:30 a.m., the fire commander in charge of that area, Assistant Chief Frank Fellini, ordered firefighters away from it for safety reasons" http://wtc7.net/cache/nyt_engineersbaffled.html Or what was said to be safety reasons, though it's inexplicable how anyone could see the relatively insignificant debris damage and small fires and assume the building is "gonna collapse", much more likely they were notified to stay away from the building because the person warning them had been told it was to be imploded later that day. "Safety reasons" being that it's unsafe to be near a building that is to be imploded at a time later that day when you don't know exactly what time. So nobody was anywhere near # 7 to BE "pulled" out for almost 6 hours before it "collapsed". Secondly, though it makes sense that the Fire Department would contact the building's owner regarding its imminent implosion by demolition charges (themselves probably being notified by O.E.M. or somebody that it was to be imploded later), it makes no sense for the Fire Department to defer to the building's owner in a decision whether to "pull" the firemen out of # 7 (which apparantly they weren't IN at all anyway) or away from its vicinity. What does Larry Silverstein know about fighting fires in high-rise buildings anyway? He's the building's owner, not a fire chief. "Pulling" out or "pulling" a firefighting unit away from the area is going to be a decision made by someone in the Fire Department's chain of command, since they are both one, most experienced/knowledgeable about the kind of situation in general and the particular situation at hand, and two, most affected by the decision to remain inside a particular burning building since they could lose their lives. Why would Larry Silverstein need to give his consent for firemen to move away from the building? What if he said "No, get in there and sacrifice your lives to keep my building from burning down"? Then would the Fire Department have to say "Oh, OK"? This is ridiculous. Then some people try to claim that "pull it" isn't an actual term in demolitions jargon, but this is contradicted by a video clip of a worker saying of the imminent demolition (months after 9/11) of WTC # 6 building: "Hello? Oh, we're getting ready to pull building six." http://www.prisonplanet.com/pullit2.mp3 Furthermore, Dr. Griffin states in the book "Debunking 9/11 Debunking" on page 260 that: "a member of the 9/11 truth movement took the initiative to call Loizeaux's company, Controlled Demolitions, Inc. Reaching the receptionist, the caller asked, "if you were in the demolition business and you said the, the term 'pull it', I was wondering what exactly would that mean?" After asking the caller to hold for a moment, the receptionist returned and said "'Pull it' is when they actually pull it down". http://www.pumpitout.com/audio/pull_it_mix.mp3 Why Silverstein said what he said I don't know, but what he meant wouldn't seem to make sense otherwise.

Recently, Sen. John Kerry appears to have fallen into a similar trap of admitting the obvious about WTC # 7 while unaware of the implications of saying it, as when he was in Austin, Texas he was asked questions about # 7 building by someone in the audience and he seemed to imply that he thinks # 7 was a controlled demolition: "I do know that that wall, I remember, was in danger and I think they made the decision based on the danger that it had in destroying other things-- that they did it in a controlled fashion." http://www.proxyowl.net/cgi-bin/cgiproxy/nph-proxy.pl/000000A/http/www.jonesreport.com/articles/220407_kerry_wtc7.html The video clip can be seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJsJjYwYOAA&mode=related&search=

Something else odd is that a BBC correspondent twice announced the "collapse" of WTC # 7 building about 23 minutes before it "collapsed": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mxFRigYD3s CNN also called the "collapse" early, but by over an hour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1LetB0z8_o Yet photos and video footage of # 7 show plainly that it wasn't in danger of collapsing as noted above, so how did they "know" in advance? If it was one network calling it early it might be passed off as a misunderstanding; two major networks both announcing early the "collapse" of a building that should have never "collapsed" in the first place, that sounds more scripted, like if CNN being a domestic network got notified first of the "imminent collapse" [demolition] of # 7 building sometime soon but mistakenly announced it when it got the news instead of being ready to report on it when it actually was demolished instead of beforehand, like such notification would have likely been intended for; and BBC being the largest major foreign network was notified later than CNN but still a while before it was imploded, and also announced it as soon as it got the "imminent" message like CNN apparantly did. Both networks probably accidentally read on the air a message that was intended just for their reporters so as to be ready to announce it when it happens but not intended to itself be read as "breaking news".

Still something else interesting is that the fire alarm system for WTC # 7 was placed on "test" mode earlier in the morning of 9/11, before anything appeared like it would be anything other than a normal Tuesday. The NIST June 2004 progress report in Chapter 1 states that: "The fire alarm system in WTC 7 sent only one signal (at 10:00:52 a.m. shortly after the collapse of WTC 2) to the monitoring company indicating a fire condition. The signal did not contain any specific information about the location of the fire within the building. Since the system was placed on TEST for a period of 8 h beginning at 6:47:03 a.m. on September 11, 2001, alarm signals would not have been shown on the operator’s display; instead, they would have to be recorded into the history file." http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wtc_keyfindings.htm Now I wonder why somebody would decide to "test" the fire alarm system on that particular morning?

That WTC # 7 presents a large problem for the official story is evident in its response to the issue. The 9/11 Commission solved the question of "how would we explain away THIS one?" by simply not mentioning WTC # 7 at all. FEMA was given responsibility for "investigating" the "collapse" of # 7 though FEMA isn't an investigative agency nor an engineering one, after the American Society of Civil Engineers was removed from the effort. And as mentioned briefly above, FEMA couldn't reasonably explain it away, whipping up a bizarre convoluted hypothesis then quietly admitting that its chances of being true are pretty slim. The best they could do was to come up with something that revolved around falling debris impacting and rupturing a diesel fuel oil pipe inside the building, the system continuing to pump diesel fuel out in a certain area and it catching fire from flaming debris, and the fire weakening part of the building in that one area, and this somehow producing a total collapse of the building as if all of its columns and trusses failed simultaneously and falling at virtually freefall rate. That this is beyond ridiculous goes without saying. This is from their summary of what they term the "probable collapse sequence": "This office building was built over an electrical substation and a power plant, comparable in size to that operated by a small commercial utility. It also stored a significant amount of diesel oil and had a structural system with numerous horizontal transfers for gravity and lateral loads. The loss of the east penthouse on the videotape suggests that the collapse event was initiated by the loss of structural integrity in one of the transfer systems. Loss of structural integrity was likely a result of weakening caused by fires on the 5th to 7th floors. The specifics of the fires in WTC 7 and how they caused the building to collapse remain unknown at this time. Although the total diesel fuel on the premises contained massive potential energy, the best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence. Further research, investigation, and analyses are needed to resolve this issue."
http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_ch5.pdf http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_ch8.pdf This chapter of FEMA's report is critiqued here: http://www.wtc7.net/articles/FEMA/WTC_ch5.htm#5.6.2 "A low probability of occurrence." And that's quite an understatement. So it certainly doesn't sound like FEMA has resolved the issue of "why did # 7 building "collapse"?", and they admitted as much. Anyone who tries to base their "explanation" for why # 7 "collapsed" around the FEMA report is choosing a very weak foundation. It's so funny too, I can't tell you how many times I've seen official story dufuses post a couple sentences from FEMA's conclusion yet they always stop right before "The specifics of the fires in WTC 7 and how they caused the building to collapse remain unknown at this time" and the following sentence that basically says you may as well disregard their hypothesis and really the whole report because they can't come close to explaining it. You know they probably read the rest of that paragraph at least and saw where FEMA made its huge understatement about the "low probability of occurrence". Still some douchebags will post a couple of FEMA's sentences and fold their arms smugly as if FEMA didn't admit that it can't explain it away. Just shows you the lengths some people will go to in trying to cling to an impossible fairy tale like the 9/11 official story. Kind of sad, really. Then you have the NIST, who didn't touch the matter of WTC # 7 building in their laughable turd that they call a Final Report, as that concerned itself with solely the Twin Towers (and solely the time before but not including the "collapse" itself), not WTC # 7 which it claims it is still writing its report on it, to be released "in early 2007". Well, it's past early 2007, into July, and they still aren't done getting their lies, obfuscations and nonsense together. They could be saved the trouble: It is not possible in this world for asymmetrical damage and asymmetrical fires to produce a symmetrical collapse straight into its footprint instead of toppling over, and it isn't possible for said damage and fires to cause all columns and trusses to fail simultaneously. There's no way around it you silly NIST guys, give it up. Nothing you say is going to change that. Certainly things of the nature of the FEMA report and NIST's report on the Twin Towers are not really meant for people who will use common sense, but to reassure people who already have their "mind", such as it is, made up but always like another pillow made of bullshit to rest their head on. Also probably meant for people who are too ignorant, intellectually lazy, and downright simpleminded to even think about the impossibility of solids passing through other solids with no more resistance than air. Not meant for anyone at or above average intelligence.

So what do we have with WTC # 7 building? Almost six years and no realistic explanation of the "collapse" from the government. A mainstream media that ignores the building because of its "unexplainable" "collapse". A "collapse" that looks exactly like a textbook controlled demolition and has features that without explosives wouldn't be physically possible. Existence of molten steel/hotspots like the Twin Towers rubble piles. Fires and damage extremely insufficient to cause a real collapse, let alone one at freefall rate, which is impossible without it being a controlled demolition. Logic tells you that the only feasible answer is that it was imploded with explosives in a controlled demolition. No other possibility fits the evidence. Watch the video footage and the official myth is left in the awkward position of Groucho Marx when he said "Who are you gonna believe? Me or your eyes?" http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/videos/index.html#building7 http://www.wtc7.net/videos.html About a quarter of the way down this page are over ten YouTube clips of it: http://www.911blogger.com/node/2807

So both Twin Towers and the WTC # 7 building were controlled demolitions. Here are a few more interesting facts that pertain to the Twin Towers and/or # 7 building. With the apparant exception of the exceedingly small amount that was retained by the paid-for NIST for "analysis", the steel debris from all three was removed as quickly as possible and shipped off to China and India to be melted down, destroying enormous amounts of what would have been critical evidence. CNN reported that: "Workers have been whittling away at the ruins since then, with hundreds of trucks carrying rubble out of the crater each day."..."China's biggest steel firm [Shanghai Baosteel Group Corp.] says it will receive its first shipment of scrap metal from the World Trade Center wreckage soon and turn it into steel plates -- not, as some newspaper reports had suggested, souvenirs." ..."It bought 50,000 tons of steel scrap at a price of "less than $120 per ton," the newspaper quoted Baosteel executives as saying."..."Indian scrap dealers have already ordered four steel consignments. Two 33,000-ton consignments have already arrived in the southern port of Madras, a third is on its way and a fourth would arrive soon at the west coast port of Kandla." http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/01/23/china.wtcsteel/ An article in China.org from 24 January 2002 states that: "A shipment of scrap steel from New York's collapsed World Trade Center will arrive in Shanghai tomorrow, according to media reports. The steel was bought by Shanghai Baosteel Group Corp. and several other domestic mills, which are always eager to buy scrap metal"... [This article by the way still incorrectly mentions the souvenir matter]..."Another shipment of 10,000 tons of scrap from the WTC arrived in India earlier this month, reported Shanghai Morning Post. The metal will be melted down and recycled into kitchenware and other household items, the paper said. India bought its lot at US$120 per ton from the New Jersey scrap processor Metal Management, which purchased 40,000 tons of the debris at an auction held by the New York City government." http://www.china.org.cn/english/2002/Jan/25776.htm CBS noted that: "The investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center has been hampered by the destruction of steel wreckage that could hold vital clues about why the twin towers fell, a fire expert says. Glenn Corbett, a fire science professor at John Jay College, criticized New York City's decision to melt down and recycle tons of charred and twisted steel from the trade center." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/03/06/national/main503116.shtml The magazine Fire Engineering has an article, located on the same page as its "Burning Questions... Need Answers" article, called "$elling Out the Investigation" where it takes issue with the destruction of the steel evidence: "Did they throw away the locked doors from the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire? Did they throw away the gas can used at the Happyland Social Club Fire? Did they cast aside the pressure-regulating valves at the Meridian Plaza Fire? Of course not. But essentially, that's what they're doing at the World Trade Center. For more than three months, structural steel from the World Trade Center has been and continues to be cut up and sold for scrap. Crucial evidence that could answer many questions about high-rise building design practices and performance under fire conditions is on the slow boat to China, perhaps never to be seen again in America until you buy your next car. Such destruction of evidence shows the astounding ignorance of government officials to the value of a thorough, scientific investigation of the largest fire-induced collapse in world history. I have combed through our national standard for fire investigation, NFPA 921, but nowhere in it does one find an exemption allowing the destruction of evidence for buildings over 10 stories tall. Hoping beyond hope, I have called experts to ask if the towers were the only high-rise buildings in America of lightweight, center-core construction. No such luck. I made other calls asking if these were the only buildings in America with light-density, sprayed-on fireproofing. Again, no luck-- they were two of thousands that fit the description. Comprehensive disaster investigations mean increased safety. They mean positive change. NASA knows it. The NTSB knows it. Does FEMA know it? No. Fire Engineering has good reason to believe that the "official investigation" blessed by FEMA and run by the American Society of Civil Engineers is a half-baked farce that may already have been commandeered by political forces whose primary interests, to put it mildly, lie far afield of full disclosure. Except for the marginal benefit obtained from a three-day, visual walk-through of evidence sites conducted by ASCE investigation committee members- described by one close source as a "tourist trip"-no one's checking the evidence for anything. Maybe we should live and work in planes. That way, if disaster strikes, we will at least be sure that a thorough investigation will help find ways to increase safety for our survivors. As things now stand and if they continue in such fashion, the investigation into the World Trade Center fire and collapse will amount to paper- and computer-generated hypotheticals... Some citizens are taking to the streets to protest the investigation sellout. Sally Regenhard, for one, wants to know why and how the building fell as it did upon her unfortunate son Christian, an FDNY probationary firefighter. And so do we... from a moral standpoint, for the safety of present and future generations who live and work in tall buildings-- and for firefighters, always first in and last out-- the lessons about the buildings' design and behavior in this extraordinary event must be learned and applied in the real world. To treat the September 11 incident any differently would be the height of stupidity and ignorance. The destruction and removal of evidence must stop immediately." http://www.fireengineering.com/articles/article_display.html?id=131225 So firemen know how important the steel debris evidence is, but its removal would nevertheless continue unabated as if it was unimportant scrap. Yet the trucks that carried the steel debris away from Ground Zero were each equipped with GPS locator tracking devices to make sure there was no deviation from their route to the authorized collection site and no stopping to unload a piece for a "souvenir", or, as the excuse they gave, because they had supposedly uncovered a "criminal scheme" to divert some of the steel debris to warehouses instead of their destination, allegedly finding 250 tons at unofficial dump sites or so they say. However, as this article states, even before this supposed "scheme" was "uncovered", the trucks were escorted by police and "other agencies": "In the weeks before launching the GPS system, the city relied on a paper-based system for tracking traffic and loading data. Police and several other agencies teamed up to monitor the trucks on their routes between Ground Zero through 20 to 30 miles of tunnels, bridges and highways to the dump on Staten Island."..."To get a GPS truck-monitoring system rolling right away, DDC-NYC and the New York Port Authority (NYPA) quickly identified several possible suppliers, viewed presentations from the candidates, and sent out a request for proposal. In the end, the contract went to IDC-Criticom, a large alarm system wholesaler based in Minneapolis, and its two subcontractors: GPS hardware maker PowerLoc; and implementation specialist Mobile Installation Technologies (MIT) of Marietta, Ga. Within three weeks, the system elements were in place, and nearly 200 trucks in New York City were being tracked in real time. Installed by MIT with assistance from PowerLoc and four trucking contractors, the solution revolved around PowerLoc's Vehicle Location Device (VLD). Each VLD unit costs about $1,000."..."The software recorded every trip and location, sending out alerts if the vehicle traveled off course, arrived late at its destination, or deviated from expectations in any other way." http://securitysolutions.com/ar/security_gps_job_massive/ So the trucks had GPS tracking devices, and before that escort by police and "other agencies". Yet this steel is so unimportant as to be discarded very quickly and sold to be melted down? But requires a police escort or GPS? Doesn't add up unless you figure that number one, the steel is evidence thus they are disposing of it as quickly as they can, and number two, they don't want anyone to be able to have a "souvenir" that they can give to someone for independent analysis, thus the tight security surrounding its transit. Could they possibly BE any more incriminating?
Then remember that the night of 9/11 Rudi Giuliani says no more volunteers are needed in the rescue efforts at Ground Zero, yet says there could be people alive under the rubble: "9:57 p.m.: Giuliani says New York City schools will be closed Wednesday and no more volunteers are needed for Tuesday evening's rescue efforts. He says there is hope that there are still people alive in rubble. He also says that power is out on the westside of Manhattan and that health department tests show there are no airborne chemical agents about which to worry." http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/chronology.attack/
Also interesting to say the least is the "hijacker's" passport supposedly "found" near Ground Zero on Saturday, Sept. 15th: "The passport of a suspected hijacker was discovered near the ruins of the World Trade Center, authorities said Saturday as exhausted rescue workers clawed through the wreckage, searching unsuccessfully for signs of life. FBI Assistant Director Barry Mawn did not disclose the name on the passport or other details, but the discovery prompted an intensive search for evidence blocks from the towers that were brought down in Tuesday's terrorist attacks by two hijacked planes. The find came as financial experts declared nearby Wall Street ready for at least a semblance of business Monday. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said a new ferry service carrying passengers between Brooklyn and Manhattan would help workers get to their offices." http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2001/Sep-16-Sun-2001/news/17011253.html "There are also claims that the passport of one of the hijackers has been pulled from the carnage. Barry Mawn, the FBI Assistant Director, did not reveal the name on the passport but said it had been found two blocks from the towers." http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20010917/ai_n14420483 CNN mentions it: "The searchers found several clues, he said, but would not elaborate. Last week, a passport belonging to one of the hijackers was found in the vicinity of Vesey Street, near the World Trade Center. "It was a significant piece of evidence for us," Mawn said." Yeah. I guess it was. I mean it wasn't planted for nothing. http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/17/inv.investigation.terrorism/ Though mistakenly reported as Atta's passport, as some other news outlets did, The Guardian in doubted the veracity of the passport matter: "We had all seen the blizzard of paper rain down from the towers, but the idea that Atta's [sic] passport had escaped from that inferno unsinged would have tested the credulity of the staunchest supporter of the FBI's crackdown on terrorism." http://www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0,11209,669961,00.html At least The Guardian had the guts enough to come out and say how laughably bizarre this "passport" story is but all the domestic mainstream media simply ate it up and didn't miss a beat. It was just hamfisted, B-movie "evidence" of the same sort as "Atta's" luggage, the boxcutter and maps in the motel room etc.
Something else is that naturally, the WTC's security camera tapes were destroyed, so that means the tapes that would be from the time when they were rigged with explosives (if such existed as opposed to the cameras being off), would have been destroyed in the demolition of the Twin Towers. http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/wtc/evidence/fortwayne_wtctapes.htm
An article on Wing TV, if true would certainly be connected to the emplacing of explosives in the Twin Towers, as it mentions an employee of Fiduciary, named Scott Forbes, who says that over the weekend just before 9/11 there was a shutdown of electricity to the tower in which he worked, the South Tower: "Forbes, who was hired by Fiduciary in 1999 and is now stationed at a U.K. branch office, was working on the weekend of September 8-9, 2001, and said that his company was given three weeks advance notice that New York’s Port Authority would take out power in the South Tower from the 48th floor up. The reason: the Port Authority was performing a cabling upgrade to increase the WTC’s computer bandwidth. Forbes stated that Fiduciary Trust was one of the WTC’s first occupants after it was erected, and that a “power-down” had never been initiated prior to this occasion. He also stated that his company put forth a huge investment in time and resources to take down their computer systems due to the deliberate power outage. This process, Forbes recalled, began early Saturday morning (September 8th) and continued until mid-Sunday afternoon (September 9th) – approximately 30 hours. As a result of having its electricity cut, the WTC’s security cameras were rendered inoperative, as were its I.D. systems, and elevators to the upper floors. Forbes did stress, though, that there was power to the WTC’s lower floors, and that there were plenty of engineers going in-and-out of the WTC who had free access throughout the building due to its security system being knocked out. In an e-mail to journalist John Kaminski, author of The Day America Died (Sisyphus Press) and America’s Autopsy Report (Dandelion Books), Forbes wrote: “Without power there were no security cameras, no security locks on doors, and many, many ‘engineers’ coming in and out of the tower.” http://69.28.73.17/thornarticles/powerdown.html If this is true it would be related to the emplacing of the charges there, and as he worked in only one of the Twin Towers of course, the same thing may have been occurring simultaneously in the North Tower and he just wasn't aware of it.
Then there was the controlled demolition of the KeySpan Energy twin tanks in Queens borough, New York City on 18 July, 2001, possibly as practice? http://www.qgazette.com/News/2001/0718/Front_Page/007.html
Here's something else noteworthy, aside from mentioning how the Cheney regime "slow-walked and stonewalled" the idea of investigating 9/11 [a quote from Sen. John McCain no less], found in this interesting article by UTNE Reader: "Such an investigation could reveal some embarrassing Bush family connections with a company “that intersected the weapons and targets on a day of national tragedy.” As Margie Burns reports in The American Reporter, an electronic daily newspaper, Marvin P. Bush, the president’s younger brother, was a principal in a company called Securacom that provided security for the World Trade Center, United Airlines, and Dulles International Airport. The company, Burns noted, was backed by KuwAm, a Kuwaiti-American investment firm on whose board Marvin Burns [sic; should read "Bush"] also served."..."According to Wayne Black, head of a Florida-based security firm, it is somewhat unusual for a single firm to handle security for both an airline and a airport. It’s also unusual for a firm linked so closely with a foreign-owned company to handle security on such a “sensitive” international airport as Dulles. “When you have a security contract, you know the inner workings of everything,” he said. “Somebody knew somebody,” he added, or the contract would have been scrutinized more carefully." http://www.utne.com/web_special/web_specials_2003-02/articles/10292-1.html Bear in mind that aside from the WTC matter, two of the alleged "hijacked airliners" took off from Dulles airport on 9/11. No wonder then that Marvin Bush, who though according to Margie Burns supposedly left Securacom sometime in 2000, wouldn't respond to repeated requests for an interview by The American Reporter. Securacom however didn't provide all of the security at the WTC, especially playing a smaller role since 1998, however another article by Ms. Burns states that: "According to its present CEO, Barry McDaniel, the company had an ongoing contract to handle security at the World Trade Center "up to the day the buildings fell down." It mentions how revenues from their WTC security contract declined and that at the time of 9/11 they had a just a "completion contract" ongoing there that wasn't finished, the details of which McDaniel declined to elaborate on: "Barry McDaniel, CEO of the company since January 2002, declines on security grounds to give specific details about work the company did at the World Trade Center. According to McDaniel, the contract was ongoing (a "completion contract"), and "not quite completed when the Center went down." http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0301/S00032.htm http://www.populist.com/03.02.burns.html It appears though that a company called Kroll Inc. took the lead in doing the heavy lifting so to speak regarding WTC security from 1998 to 9/11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kroll_Inc. Kroll is an interesting company. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald, called "Welcome to the murky world of Kroll Inc.-- the private C.I.A." it is stated that: "They helped track down billions of dollars of treasure looted from Kuwait by Saddam Hussein. They finally proved that "God's Banker", Roberto Calvi, found hanging under London's Blackfriars Bridge with bricks in his pockets, was murdered. They were hired by Prince Charles to find the "Princess Di tapes"... "Not for nothing did a former executive of the company describe Kroll as "like a private CIA"."... "In the process, inevitably for a company employing large numbers of former CIA, FBI and Special Forces people, the company has occasionally been accused of misconduct, the bugging scandal in Brazil is just the latest in which Kroll Inc has been embroiled."... "It has also worked for the US government."..."Although its bread and butter work was legal corporate intelligence, such as profiling takeover targets, in countries such as Brazil, and now Iraq, where kidnapping is rampant, Kroll also specialised in "close body work" - bodyguards, protection and ransom." http://www.smh.com.au/news/business/welcome-to-the-murky-world-of-kroll-inc--the-private-cia/2005/06/24/1119321904732.html So it sounds like Kroll is located in that gray area that's getting foggier all the time, where the boundaries between current, retired and "retired" intelligence officers get blurry. Sort of like a cross between Wackenhut and Blackwater Security. An article in the Washington Post recently said what has been said elsewhere before, that the C.I.A. is privatizing a lot of its functions more and more in recent years, subcontracting out a lot of tasks to entities in the private sector who just so happen to be made up of "former" intel personnel. Much of it operates like a revolving door, with agents coming in, serving in the C.I.A. and then going to the private sector to found security etc. companies, which then market their services out to the C.I.A. And besides, everyone who knows anything knows that the C.I.A. has for many decades been operating front companies, so-called cut-outs to shroud their activities under the veil of economic activity. It should come as no surprise that the company most in charge of security at the WTC was a company that is like two peas in a pod with the C.I.A.

And here's an interesting bit of information brought to us by Newsday.com in an article from September 12th, 2001: "The World Trade Center was destroyed just days after a heightened security alert was lifted at the landmark 110-story towers, security personnel said yesterday. Daria Coard, 37, a guard at Tower One, said the security detail had been working 12-hour shifts for the past two weeks because of numerous phone threats. But on Thursday, bomb-sniffing dogs were abruptly removed." That's pretty convenient. I wonder why the bomb-sniffing dogs were abruptly removed five days before the Twin Towers were demolished in obvious controlled demolitions? http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-nyaler122362178sep12,0,1255660.story Yet the week preceding 9/11, the FBI was all over the World Trade Center complex: "Ms. Terry added this: "Last week the FBI was all over the Trade Center. They were parked in our spot. They knew something was up." http://www.timesreview.com/nr09-13-01/stories/news3.htm Fiduciary Trust, on the 97th floor of the South Tower, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/waronterrorism/story/0,,776403,00.html had an "emergency drill" scheduled for that morning, an article from the New York Times and reprinted here in a victims' tribute site, where it says: "He was on the 97th floor where, by chance, an emergency drill had been scheduled for that day." http://www.mishalov.com/wtc-calling-for-help.html People magazine in an article quoted Ben Fountain, a financial analyst from the South Tower, as saying: "How could they let this happen? They knew this building was a target. Over the past few weeks we'd been evacuated a number of times, which is unusual. I think they had an inkling something was going on." http://web.archive.org/web/20010914230312/http:/people.aol.com/people/special/0,11859,174592-5,00.html

In summary regarding the Twin Towers and WTC # 7, as one can see from all the matters discussed above, it is impossible that they "collapsed" anywhere remotely like the official myth claims. Anecdotal evidence, eyewitness evidence, as well as physical evidence, the laws of physics as well as simple common sense all refute the official narrative. The evidence that the Twin Towers and WTC # 7 were brought down in controlled demolitions is overwhelming.

Now let's consider how in order for each "airliner" to get to its target, the most high-tech, professional, well-trained Air Force in the world would have to have been stood down. Otherwise, they would have followed well-practiced standard operating procedure and intercepted at least 3 out of the 4 if not all of them. Certainly they had plenty of time and just as certainly it was not a new, unheard-of procedure for them to scramble in response to aircraft deviating from their flight plans. Just the opposite; in the time between September 2000 and June 2001 the Air Force scrambled fighters to intercept deviant airliners (thankfully none required a shoot-down): "The military sent fighter jets to chase suspicious aircraft 462 times between Sept. 11 and June, nearly seven times as often as the 67 scrambles from the same period a year earlier." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/08/14/attack/main518632.shtml Yet on the most important day in its history the U.S. Air Force was completely impotent?
We all remember the case of the golfer Payne Stewart and when the FAA lost radio contact with his airplane, after trying for over 4 minutes to reestablish contact, had the Air Force scramble fighters to investigate. Within fifteen minutes of being given the request a fighter was in the air closing with Stewart's aircraft. http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/2000/AAB0001.htm Several other fighters were also scrambled throughout the course of Stewart's ill-fated journey.
However, 15 minutes isn't the quickest the Air Force could get fighters scrambled when necessary. The Air Force's own website has an interesting article that says: "Within minutes, the crew chiefs can launch the pilots and send them on their way to intercept “unknown riders,” whether they’re Cuban MiGs, drug traffickers, smugglers, hijackers, novice pilots who’ve filed faulty flight plans or crippled aircraft limping in on a wing and a prayer. “If needed, we could be killing things in five minutes or less,” said Capt. Tom “Pickle” Herring, a full-time alert pilot." http://www.af.mil/news/airman/1299/home2.htm
Another matter is Andrews Air Force Base, which the McLean VA-based "news"paper USA Today lied in saying: "Andrews Air Force Base, home to Air Force One, is only 15 miles away from the Pentagon, but it had no fighters assigned to it. Defense officials won't say whether that has changed." http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001/09/16/military-home-front.htm The truth is that Andrews had two fighter squadrons present, the Air Force's 121st Fighter Squadron (D.C. Air National Guard-- tasked with air defense of D.C. and its environs) and the Marine Corps' Fighter-Attack Squadron 321 [VMFA-321 for brevity]. The 121st flies F-16 Fighting Falcons and VMFA-321 flew F/A-18 Hornets. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/usaf/113wg.htm http://www.vmfa-321.com/history.html Since that information was and is readily available, the "no fighters at Andrews" crap didn't last long, quickly replaced with the excuse of "well there were fighter units there, but they weren't part of NORAD". Aha. Much is made of them being outside of NORAD's command structure, however this excuse doesn't hold water either; it would be a very simple thing for NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) to call Andrews and request fighters scrambled. In fact, that morning calls were coming in to NEADS from airbase commanders outside the NORAD command structure, offering assistance if needed. An example is from an article in Aviation Week magazine quoting the Air National Guard commander of Syracuse N.Y. airbase who offered assistance. The article states: "Calls from fighter units also started pouring into NORAD and sector operations centers, asking, "What can we do to help?" At Syracuse, N.Y., an ANG commander told Marr, "Give me 10 min. and I can give you hot guns." http://web.archive.org/web/20020917072642/http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20020603/avi_stor.htm So just because they aren't officially part of the NORAD structure does not mean they are useless lawn ornaments.
In trying to explain away its "failure" the Air Force makes some outlandish arguments. Another article in Aviation Week from June 2002, quoting several relevant Air Force officers, tries to do some explaining, lying about who has authority to launch fighters to intercept (investigate and be ready for further action against the airliner if needed): "On Sept. 11, the normal scramble-approval procedure was for an FAA official to contact the National Military Command Center (NMCC) and request Pentagon air support. Someone in the NMCC would call Norad's command center and ask about availability of aircraft, then seek approval from the Defense Secretary--Donald H. Rumsfeld--to launch fighters." This is absurd; permission from the SecDef is most certainly not necessary to scramble fighters. They are willfully conflating "scramble" and "permission to shoot down" which was held at vice presidential level since Cheney in summer 2001 had himself inserted into the process. NEADS could order scrambles without higher authority, as the same article states later: "NEADS instantly ordered the scramble, then called me to get CinC [NORAD commander-in-chief] approval for it," said Capt. Michael H. Jellinek". http://web.archive.org/web/20020917072642/http://www.aviationnow.com/content/publication/awst/20020603/avi_stor.htm Another article in Aviation Week gives further bizarre "explanations", first saying: "With Pentagon in flames and hijacked aircraft threatening Washington, White House scrambled fighters with little or no armament. Within minutes of American Airlines Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon on Sept. 11, Air National Guard F-16s took off from here in response to a plea from the White House to "Get in the air now!" Those fighters were flown by three pilots who had decided, on their own, to ram a hijacked airliner and force it to crash, if necessary. Such action almost certainly would have been fatal for them, but could have prevented another terrorism catastrophe in Washington. One of those F-16s launched with no armament--no missiles and no usable ammunition in its 20-mm. gun. The other two "Vipers" only had a full load of 20-mm. "ball" or training rounds, not the high-explosive incendiary (HEI) bullets required for combat, and no air-to-air missiles." This is an effort to make "ball" ammunition sound like it's of little use in shooting down aircraft, far from the truth; they are simply non-explosive, meaning they use their kinetic energy to put holes in whatever they're shooting at, plenty enough to down an aircraft especially a civilian airliner. It later makes the bizarre claim that the 511 rounds of 20mm ammunition carried by each of two F-16s might not be enough to shoot down an airliner, saying: "Sasseville and Lucky each had 511 rounds of ammo, but that only provided roughly a 5-sec. burst of the 20-mm. gun. And where should they shoot to ensure a hijacked aircraft would be stopped? Sasseville planned to fire from behind and "try to saw off one wing. I needed to disable it as soon as possible--immediately interrupt its aerodynamics and bring it down." He admits there was no assurance that a 5-sec. burst of lead slugs could slice an air transport's wing off, though." If 1,022 rounds of 20mm ammunition are not sufficient for these two pilots to be able to down a civilian airliner they have no business being fighter pilots. And "sawing off a wing" isn't necessary; put a one or two second burst into each engine and it will most assuredly go down in flames. Another pilot in the 121st Fighter Squadron is quoted as saying: "We really didn't know the intricacies of NORAD's mission--how it works," Thompson explained. "We've never been an air defense unit. We practice scrambles, we know how to do intercepts and other things, but there's a lot of protocol in the air defense business." Never been an air defense unit? Yet they practice scrambles, know how to do intercepts etc. but aren't in the air defense business?? Then what exactly do they think practicing scrambles, doing intercepts etc. constitutes? Close air support? Battlefield air interdiction? Reconnaissance? What? Scrambles and intercepts are the bread and butter of the air defense mission. This is a ridiculous attempt to dodge the issue. In this same Alice in Wonderland-style article it contradicts itself in two consecutive unbelievable sentences: "Billy had about 2,400 lb. of gas; the other two [F-16s] were too light," Thompson said. "I told Billy to take off, but don't use afterburner to save gas. He took off with nothing--no weapons." OK, so they're in such a big hurry to get fighters airborne that there's not enough time to even get them loaded with ammunition let alone missiles (!) but not in a big enough hurry to fly using afterburner?? This senseless, desperate article can be found at: http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=awst&id=news/aw090971.xml Not surprisingly, Gen. Eberhart's testimony to the 9/11 Commission under softball questioning from Sen. Thomas Kean on 17 June 2004 makes basically the same bizarre claim regarding fighters taking off completely unarmed from Andrews: "GEN. EBERHART: So, even though, for example, we talk about the aircraft that took off from Andrews that morning, they weren't armed. So, they were observers, is what they were. So they couldn't have shot down an airplane if need be. So, I think that's -- it's important to note that. So, we have lots of airplanes around there, but then to get them airborne and make a difference, that's the challenge. MR. KEAN: So, the first aircraft were unarmed, then you launched aircraft that were armed? GEN. EBERHART: No sir. NORAD's airplanes were launched armed. We were not running the F-16s out of Andrews. Those were not initially armed. And then they came back and armed." http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing12/9-11Commission_Hearing_2004-06-17.htm#two What Kean should have asked, and would have asked were the 9/11 Commission anything other than a complete whitewash, is: What the hell good are completely unarmed fighters? All they could do was ram the airliner. Why not take a few minutes and at least load their guns rather than send up fighters who are unable to do anything to influence the situation except ramming it? Are we supposed to believe nobody in NEADS has a brain in their head? But of course Kean didn't ask that.
Much is made of what time the military was informed by the FAA that "hijackings" were in progress and of course the official story tries to paint a picture of a complicated ponderous bureaucratic process that was supposedly necessary but what is deliberately overlooked is the fact that at the FAA's command center in Herndon, Virginia, there was a military liason staff present on 9/11 anyway. This is confirmed by the testimony of two senior FAA personnel before the 9/11 Commission. Ben Sliney, operations manager at New York terminal radar approach control of FAA testified to the 9/11 Commission saying: "Available to us at the Command Center of course is the military cell, which was our liaison with the military services. They were present at all of the events that occurred on 9/11." http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing12/9-11Commission_Hearing_2004-06-17.htm Monte Belger, then the acting deputy administrator of the FAA testified saying: "Well, if I can -- and I truly do not mean this to be defensive, but it is a fact -- there were military people on duty at the FAA Command Center, as Mr. Sliney said. They were participating in what was going on. There were military people in the FAA's Air Traffic Organization in a situation room. They were participating in what was going on. To my knowledge, the NMCC (National Military Command Center) was added to the conference call, the open conference call, at 9:20." http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing12/9-11Commission_Hearing_2004-06-17.htm#three The Air Force's own magazine lies about this, stating: "The FAA and NORAD did not have effective means of communicating with each other". http://www.afa.org/magazine/Oct2004/1004sept.asp So did Gen. Eberhart: "Because of just what you said, today we have all sorts of alternate paths to the FAA at the tactical and the operational and the strategic levels. I don't think, had FAA been up at that time, that we would have gotten any different information, because I don't think that the sectors, the FAA regions, had up- channeled this to the headquarters. And that's who we're trying to when we talk to." http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing12/9-11Commission_Hearing_2004-06-17.htm#two
The Air Force magazine article also feebly tries to explain away the inaction of F-15s launched from Otis A.F.B. in New York after the first crash into the WTC (announced on CNN almost immediately and don't tell me the Air Force doesn't have access to CNN), saying they were scrambled but placed in a holding pattern near Long Island when sending them straight to Manhattan would have enabled them to prevent the second WTC crash: "At 8:53 a.m., the F-15s from Otis got airborne. However, no one knew where to send them, and they were put into a holding pattern off Long Island." No one knew where to send them?? How about setting up a combat air patrol (CAP) over Manhattan, the place with the already-smoking Tower?? Which is what they did after the second Tower had been hit, when they would be of no more use there: "At 9:13 a.m., the Otis fighters left their holding pattern and flew 115 miles to Manhattan at 575 mph. They arrived in 12 minutes and established a combat air patrol (CAP) over the city." http://www.afa.org/magazine/Oct2004/1004sept.asp Another damning clue is found when they said "flew... at 575 mph". This may sound fast, but for fighter jets it definitely is not; F-15s can go a top speed of Mach 2.5+ [more than 2 and a half times the speed of sound], meaning 1,875mph. http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=101 So why on earth were they (and the fighters mentioned above that were launched from Andrews) flying so leisurely? Don't say "to save fuel" because of course the Air Force has had in-flight refuelling capability for decades and it is standard procedure to launch tanker aircraft to refuel fighters on CAP. “When it became clear what the threat was, we did scramble fighter aircraft, AWACS radar aircraft and tanker aircraft to begin to establish orbits in case other aircraft showed up in the FAA system that were hijacked, but we never actually had to use force.” said Gen. Myers. http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_12969.html Say it with me now, "standdown". Another shocking piece of information is that when fighters were scrambled from Langley, they were sent out over the Atlantic Ocean (!) instead of anywhere useful: "Instead of heading north to Washington, the fighter jets headed east over the ocean because the initial scramble order didn't include the target's location or distance. A "generic" flight plan incorrectly led the fighter jet pilots to believe they were to fly east for 60 miles, the report said." http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:SejG7JxX1xcJ:washingtontimes.com/national/20040617-022144-7689r.htm+FAA%2Bscrambled&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=27&gl=us

Also worth noting are the numerous Air Force (and other government agencies') exercises scheduled and ongoing the morning of 9/11. Operation: Northern Vigilance was a NORAD exercise ongoing on 9/11 that involved deploying some fighter aircraft to Alaska and northern Canada, where they conveniently would be unavailable when needed that morning: "The North American Aerospace Defense Command shall deploy fighter aircraft as necessary to Forward Operating Locations (FOLS) in Alaska and Northern Canada to monitor a Russian air force exercise in the Russian arctic and North Pacific ocean." http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:9U6clgxwSmgJ:www.norad.mil/newsroom/news_releases/2001/090901.htm+Northern%2BVigilance&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=us Very interesting is the fact that Northern Vigilance involved false radar "injects", or blips inserted into the radar scopes ostensibly to simulate aircraft, described in an article in the Toronto Star: "In a flash, Operation Northern Vigilance is called off. Any simulated information, what's known as an "inject," is purged from the screens." http://www.ringnebula.com/northern-vigilance.htm The injects were purged from the screens, or so he says. Also of note in the article is that NORAD mentions being notified of a hijacking before the second crash at the WTC: "Someone shouted to look at the monitor displaying CNN. At that point, we saw the World Trade Center, one of the towers, smoke coming out of it. And a minute later, we watched the live feed as the second aircraft swung around into the second tower," says Jellinek. He had one question for the people on the line from NEADS: "Was that the hijacked aircraft you were dealing with?" he asked. Yes, it was, came the reply." Another NORAD exercise was Vigilant Guardian, mentioned in the footnotes of the 9/11 Commission Report: "On 9/11, NORAD was scheduled to conduct a military exercise, Vigilant Guardian, which postulated a bomber attack from the former Soviet Union. We investigated whether military preparations for the large-scale exercise compromised the military's response to the real-world terrorist attack on 9/11. According to General Eberhart, "it took about 30 seconds" to make the adjustment to the real-world situation. Ralph Eberhart testimony, June 17, 2004. We found that the response was, if anything, expedited by the increased number of staff at the sectors and at NORAD because of the scheduled exercise." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Guardian#Global_Guardian_and_the_September_11_Attacks Still another NORAD exercise that morning was Global Guardian, which its Wikipedia article describes as: "an annual command-level exercise organised by United States Strategic Command in cooperation with Space Command and NORAD. Primary purpose is to test and validate nuclear command and control and execution procedures. Global Guardian is performed in conjunction with NORAD's Vigilant Guardian and Amalgam Warrior, as well as exercises sponsored by Air Combat Command (Crown Vigilance) and Space Command (Apollo Guardian)." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_exercises_scheduled_for_September_11%2C_2001#_note-2 Richard Clarke mentions in his book "Against All Enemies" another exercise he says was ongoing that morning called Vigilant Warrior, however it is undetermined whether that was a component of Vigilant Guardian or if he was simply confusing two other exercises, Amalgam Warrior (which was held earlier in 2001 which used drones to simulate a "terrorist" cruise missile attack against an American city) and Vigilant Guardian, mentioned above. Regardless, the fact that NORAD, the entity entrusted to protect north America's airspace, had at least three separate exercises for that single fateful morning strains credulity too much to be easily swallowed as a coincidence. Far more likely is NORAD using the exercises as cover for the operational execution of 9/11. In addition to NORAD's exercises that morning, FEMA had an exercise planned for the very next day, called Tripod II, taking place in Manhattan in cooperation with the Port Authority, the entity that actually owns the land that the World Trade Center sits on. Designed to simulate a biological warfare attack in Manhattan and treat mass casualties, it was described by Rudy Giuliani in his testimony before the 9/11 Commission: "And the reason Pier 92 was selected as the command center was because on the next day, on September 12th, Pier 92 was going to have a drill. It had hundreds of people here, from FEMA, from the federal government, from the state, from the State Emergency Management Office, and they were getting ready for a drill for biochemical attack. So that was going to be the place they were going to have the drill. The equipment was already there" http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing11/9-11Commission_Hearing_2004-05-19.htm#two How convenient. As if all that wasn't enough of a "coincidence", the National Reconnaissance Office, the intelligence agency that operates many of America's spy satellites and takes many of its personnel from the C.I.A., was also having an exercise on the morning of 9/11, described in an article in Boston.com thusly: "In what the government describes as a bizarre coincidence, one U.S. intelligence agency was planning an exercise last Sept. 11 in which an errant aircraft would crash into one of its buildings. But the cause wasn't terrorism -- it was to be a simulated accident. Officials at the Chantilly, Va.-based National Reconnaissance Office had scheduled an exercise that morning in which a small corporate jet would crash into one of the four towers at the agency's headquarters building after experiencing a mechanical failure. The agency is about four miles from the runways of Washington Dulles International Airport. Agency chiefs came up with the scenario to test employees' ability to respond to a disaster, said spokesman Art Haubold. No actual plane was to be involved -- to simulate the damage from the crash, some stairwells and exits were to be closed off, forcing employees to find other ways to evacuate the building. "It was just an incredible coincidence that this happened to involve an aircraft crashing into our facility," Haubold said." http://www.boston.com/news/packages/sept11/anniversary/wire_stories/0903_plane_exercise.htm
Also consider that on the morning of 9/11, the command of the operations at the National Military Command Center (NMCC) was temporarily in the hands of much-less-experienced [Navy] Capt. Charles Leidig, as mentioned in Leidig's statement before the 9/11 Commission: "On 10 September 2001, Brigadier General Winfield, U. S. Army, asked that I stand a portion of his duty as Deputy Director for Operations, NMCC, on the following day. I agreed and relieved Brigadier General Winfield at 0830 on 11 September 2001." http://216.239.51.104/search?q=cache:ToitHSEaBTgJ:www.9-11commission.gov/hearings/hearing12/leidig_statement.pdf+Leidig%2BSeptember%2B10%2BWinfield&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=6&gl=us Leidig goes on to say in his when Winfield resumed command (conveniently after the attacks were over): "Sir, I think that occurred right after I was relieved on the watch by General Winfield. Right after we resolved what was going on with United 93, around that time General Winfield took over." http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing12/9-11Commission_Hearing_2004-06-17.htm#two Experienced operations commander "conveniently" isn't present when needed the most, leaving the handling of the crisis up to his less-experienced deputy. Now doesn't that sound like something from out of a bad movie?
Norman Mineta's testimony was interesting as well. He recounted being in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) in the bunker under the White House with Dick Cheney: "I was made aware of it during the time that the airplane coming into the Pentagon. There was a young man who had come in and said to the vice president, "The plane is 50 miles out. The plane is 30 miles out." And when it got down to, "The plane is 10 miles out," the young man also said to the vice president, "Do the orders still stand?" And the vice president turned and whipped his neck around and said, "Of course the orders still stand. Have you heard anything to the contrary?" http://www.9-11commission.gov/archive/hearing2/9-11Commission_Hearing_2003-05-23.htm#panel_one Was Cheney talking about an order to shoot down the "airliner"? Or to not shoot it down? It certainly wasn't shot down; further, as Dr. David Griffin points out in his book "Debunking 9/11 Debunking" on page 33, that meaning would have made the exchange between Cheney and the young man unintelligible: "If the orders had been to shoot down the aircraft if it entered the forbidden airspace over Washington, the young man would have had no reason to ask if the orders still stood. His question made sense only if the orders were to do something unexpected -- not to shoot it down."
And remember that NORAD changed it's timeline on September 14, 2001, after having previously stated that no fighters had gotten airborne until after the attacks were over, which quickly became too incriminating to maintain. Subsequently it was changed on September 14 to the timeline that remained in place until almost the end of the 9/11 Commission hearings, itself plenty damning in its own right, when it was again changed for one that basically absolved the Air Force of any blame and pinned it all on the FAA, supposedly based on the "NORAD tapes". Here's a mention of that 14 September change: "And late today, Pentagon sources told CBS' Bob Orr that contrary to early reports, US Air Force jets did get into the air on Tuesday while the attacks were under way." http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/planes/defense/cbs_otis_scramble.html
As mentioned above, a completely new timeline was introduced, purporting to be based on tapes of NORAD conversations which contradicted basically NORAD's entire testimony. Vanity Fair's article dealing with the "NORAD tapes"-timeline changing refers to the discrepancy by quoting a NORAD general as: "The real story is actually better than the one we told," a NORAD general admitted to 9/11-commission staffers when confronted with evidence from the tapes that contradicted his original testimony." http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/08/norad200608 Which is one of the things severely detracting from the credibility of the tapes. Dr. David Griffin explores this "tapes" matter thoroughly in the book mentioned above, which I will quote excerpts from (the section dealing with that is also posted on a website whose address I will include following the excerpts):
"(1) The military’s earlier claim: When fighter jets at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia were scrambled at 9:24 that morning, they were scrambled in response to word from the FAA that possibly either AA 77 (as implied by Colonel Scott) or UA 93 (as stated by General Arnold) had been hijacked and was headed towards Washington.
What the tapes indicate: NEADS did not learn that AA 77 and UA 93 had been hijacked until after they had crashed. The Langley fighters were instead scrambled in response to “phantom AA 11”--that is, to a false report that AA 11 had not struck the World Trade Center and was instead headed towards Washington.
(2) The military’s earlier claim: Having learned from the FAA about the hijacking of UA 93 at 9:16, NEADS was tracking it and was in position to shoot it down if necessary. (Although the claim about the 9:16 notification is not reflected in NORAD’s timeline--which instead has “N/A”--both Arnold and Scott made this claim in their May 2003 testimony.)
What the tapes indicate: NEADS, far from learning of the possible hijacking of UA 93 at 9:16, at which time it had not yet been hijacked, did not receive this information until 10:07, four minutes after UA 93 had crashed. So NEADS could not have had fighter jets tracking it.
(3) The military’s earlier claim: NEADS was prepared to act on a command, issued by Vice President Cheney, to shoot down UA 93.
What the tapes indicate: There was no command to shoot down UA 93 before it crashed. Cheney was not notified about the possible hijacking of this flight until 10:02, only one minute before it crashed, and the shoot-down authorization was not given by him until many minutes after UA had crashed."
"The crucial difference is that according to the earlier story, although the FAA had been unaccountably slow in notifying the military about the possible hijacking of AA 11, UA 175, AA 77, and UA 93, it had notified it about all of them before they crashed and, at least with regard to the last three, soon enough that military jets could have intercepted them. On the basis of the tapes, The 9/11 Commission Report, while agreeing with the earlier timeline with regard to AA 11 (according to which notification came only nine minutes before it crashed), claims that the military was not notified about the other three flights until after they had crashed. The military, therefore, cannot be blamed for failing to stop them... Assuming the truth of the new story, the fact that it puts the military in a much better light has a staggering implication: Everyone in the military--from those in the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center (NMCC), under which NORAD operates, to high-level officers at NEADS and in NORAD more generally, to pilots and other subordinates--who knew the true course of events, whether from direct experience or from listening to the tapes, kept quiet about the inaccuracies in NORAD’s timeline, even though they knew that the true story would put the military in a better light, completely removing the possibility that the military had stood down its defenses. Why would they do this?" http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=2006091418303369 This is an great excerpt from that book and I've read the book in its entirety and I can tell you it's excellent; I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to find out more about the multitude of holes in the official 9/11 myth. In addition to the fact that none of the NORAD personnel testifying before the Commission had any recollection of the "tapes" timeline of events rather than the one they gave, as we can see, the timeline they swore by for so long painted them in a much more negative light, all to allegedly cover up for the FAA's "incompetence"?? Why on earth would the Air Force lie under oath and to tell a story that makes itself look complicit in exchange for making the FAA look "less incompetent"?? Also worth remembering is that though supposedly NORAD had the tapes available and supposedly could review them before testifying, and after the "tapes" account came out, nobody even suggested prosecuting NORAD personnel for perjury for "lying" in their earlier testimony, suggesting the Commissioners were glad to just have the earlier testimony "negated" by the tapes rather than press the issue. It doesn't hold water that NORAD would lie to cover up for FAA and simultaneously make itself look complicit.
So regarding the NORAD matters, no matter which way you look at it it becomes readily apparant, there had to have been some sort of standdown; standard operating procedures were not followed that one morning, when they were every other time before and since that airliners have deviated from their flight plan, lost radio contact etc. What are the odds of the world's most sophisticated Air Force being totally worthless on one particular morning, the one morning when it was needed the most? Maybe one in a googolplex??
Again, this is only part of the mountain of "discrepancies" in the official myth; remember, it only takes one aspect of the official story proven false to deflate the entire thing, and there are numerous pins to deflate the official balloon.

Now let's talk about the alleged "hijackers". There are a couple of important aspects to the "hijackers" matter that disqualify them from having done what they are accused of. For one thing, they were not very skilled in flying even small propellor planes like Cessnas, and had no experience whatsoever in flying any jet engine aircraft, let alone large passenger aircraft like Boeing 757s and -767s. Alhazmi and Almihdhar were described by a flight instructor at Sorbi's Flying Club as: "It was like Dumb and Dumber," he told the New York Times. "I mean, they were clueless. It was clear to me they weren't going to make it as pilots."
http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2001/Oct-26-Fri-2001/news/17309944.html
Another article quotes the instructor as saying "they had no idea what they were doing".
http://www.pulitzer.org/year/2002/national-reporting/works/093001.html
And bear in mind, this is on small propellor planes. Yet supposedly Alhazmi and Almihdhar were the first two selected as pilots by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: "KSM trained the first two suicide operatives recruited - Saudi nationals Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3813997.stm In fact, though usually Hani Hanjour is the one accused of piloting the Pentagon strike as per the official myth, an article in the San Jose Mercury News, here reprinted on JihadWatch, Alhazmi is claimed to be the "pilot" when it says: "The terrorist believed to have flown a hijacked airliner into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, obtained a California driver's license without providing the required Social Security number for identification, officials are acknowledging for the first time. Nawaf M.S. Alhazmi then used that license when he registered for the flight training that enabled him to pilot the doomed airliner." http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/004937.php And that was an article written in February 2005, so it is unclear why at that late date they still wouldn't have the official myth's details fully received and "plugged in". Regardless of whether it is an oversight or deliberate, there is no way Alhazmi, Almihdhar or Hanjour could pilot a Boeing 757 with their lack of skills in much smaller aircraft and having never flown a jet before. But you aren't supposed to think of that.

Atta and Al-Shehhi were not much good either: "In early October [2000], the two failed a Stage I exam for an instruments pilot rating."
http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/profiles/atta_and_shehhi_enroll_at_another_aviation_school.htm
Ziad Jarrah was little better than they were, and was denied being able to fly solo: "Because Hortman deemed Jarrah unfit to fly solo, he could fly this route only with an instructor.134 Hanjour, too, requested to fly the Hudson Corridor about this same time, at Air Fleet Training Systems in Teterboro,New Jersey, where he started receiving ground instruction soon after settling in the area with Hazmi."
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/9/11_Commission_Report/Chapter_7
The one who had the most difficult job of all, flying an "airliner" into the Pentagon, Hani Hanjour, was the worst of them all, absolutely terrible. The 9/11 Commission report also states about Hanjour that: "Hanjour flew the Hudson Corridor, but his instructor declined a second request because of what he considered Hanjour’s poor piloting skills." Then when he was in Bowie, Maryland "He took three flights with the instructors in the second week of August, but flew so poorly he was rejected for the rental, said Marcel Bernard, chief flight instructor at Freeway."
http://www.newsline.umd.edu/justice/specialreports/stateofemergency/airportlosses091901.htm
Yet the task he is accused of performing would have required considerable skill for even a qualified airline pilot, let alone a flight school washout. His maneuver is described thusly: "After the attacks, for example, aviation experts concluded that the final maneuvers of American Airlines Flight 77 -- a tight turn followed by a steep, accurate descent into the Pentagon -- was the work of "a great talent . . . virtually a textbook turn and landing," the law enforcement official said."
http://www.siteinstitute.org/bin/articles.cgi?ID=news902&Category=news&Subcategory=0
Elsewhere described as: "The hijacker-pilots were then forced to execute a difficult high-speed descending turn. Radar shows Flight 77 did a downward spiral, turning almost a complete circle and dropping the last 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes. The steep turn was so smooth, the sources say, it's clear there was no fight for control going on. And the complex maneuver suggests the hijackers had better flying skills than many investigators first believed."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/09/11/national/main310721.shtml Here's a diagram of that manouevre: http://911research.wtc7.net/planes/evidence/docs/aa77_final_maneuver.png
This from a guy that couldn't fly a small plane well enough to be allowed to rent it and fly solo??

The other main problem with the "hijackers" is that not only were they nowhere near skilled enough, they were also nowhere near Muslim enough. Remember, these are nineteen people accused of being so devoutly Muslim that they were perfectly willing to sacrifice their own lives to take some "infidels" with them. But they behaved like the exact opposite of devout Muslims, or even PRACTICING Muslims. Many of them drank alcohol. Heavily. "Agents in Hollywood showed employees at a downtown restaurant, Shuckums, photos of two men. Manager Tony Amos said yesterday he identified a man in a photo with the name Mohamed on the bottom.
"The guy Mohamed [Atta] was drunk, his voice was slurred and he had a thick accent," Amos said."
http://www.nj.com/specialprojects/index.ssf?/specialprojects/huntevil/flaclues.html
At another bar, Marwan Alshehhi is described as: "Marwan would talk to you; he enjoyed being in the bar," she said. "He enjoyed company." The article also says they frequented the bar (Outlook): "When Lizsa Lehman saw the 19 mugshots of the 9/11 terrorists displayed prominently in the newspaper, she found two familiar faces starring back at her -- Marwan al-Shehhi and Mohamed Atta. She got to know them both when they bellied up to her bar at the Outlook in Venice after their flying lessons a few miles away."
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060910/NEWS/609101202/0/MULTIMEDIA0201
That they were hard drinkers is confirmed by the accounts of bartenders at Shuckums among other places: "Tony Amos, the manager of Shuckums Oyster Bar and Restaurant in Hollywood, just north of Miami, was interviewed by the FBI and he and his barman and a waitress all identified Atta and his cousin as some hard drinkers who propped up the bar last Friday. Atta's bill for three hours of vodka drinking came to $48 (£33)."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/09/14/whunt114.xml
Another article says "They were wasted," said Idrissi".
http://www.sptimes.com/News/091301/Worldandnation/FBI_seizes_records_of.shtml
The night before 9/11 Atta and Alshehhi (which later "revisions" of the official myth put in Portland, Maine that night) were at a strip club in Daytona Beach, Florida, where they were getting hammered drunk and making threats: "In Daytona Beach, Kap said he told FBI investigators the men in his bar spent $200 to $300 apiece on lap dances and drinks, paying with credit cards. Kap said he gave the FBI credit card receipts, photocopied driver's licenses, a business card left by one man and a copy of the Quran - the sacred book of Islam - that was left at the bar." (convenient little bit of "evidence" left behind isn't it?). Bear in mind, Islam forbids both drinking alcohol AND nude debauchery. It also says "They were talking about what a bad place America is. They said 'Wait 'til tomorrow. America is going to see bloodshed,"' said John Kap, manager of the Pink Pony and Red Eyed Jack's Sports Bar. Kap said they made the claims to a bartender and a patron."
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/09/14/national/main311268.shtml
Another article notes the contradiction between Islamic fundamentalism and hard drinking, yet doesn't try to explain it away: "It happened at Shuckums, a raw bar on Hollywood's Harrison Street. Al-Shehhi and Atta knocked back drinks -- forbidden by the Islamic teachings they so zealously embraced." (Obviously they DIDN'T "so zealously embrace" Islamic teachings!).
http://web.archive.org/web/20010922164519/www.miami.com/herald/special/news/worldtrade/digdocs/000518.htm
They also did (other) drugs, said elsewhere by Amanda Keller, Atta's supposed girlfriend, to be cocaine, and alluded to here: ""They were gone for three days," said Tony LaConca. "They didn't sleep -- it was a continuous party." LaConca said Mohamed footed the entire bill for the weekend including buying Keller and the unnamed employee new clothes, alcohol, drugs and hotel stay."
http://www.sun-herald.com/NewsArchive2/091401/tp4ch14.htm
Apparantly they also smoked pot: "The students reportedly smoked a strange tobacco which smelled like marijuana, Kyser said."
http://www.sun-herald.com/NewsArchive2/091401/tp1ch11.htm?date=091401&story=tp1ch11.htm
Then consider that Mohamed Atta and Ziad Jarrah both had girlfriends, and both lived with their girlfriends at times, Atta in Florida, and Jarrah when he was in Germany. This is strictly forbidden for unmarried couples to be living together. A Muslim friend of Jarrah's from Germany said "I used to criticize him for living with her. By our religion, this living together before marriage is not allowed," recalls Abdullah Al-Makhadi". http://www.aldeilis.net/english/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=2088 "Ziad Samir Jarrah didn't fit the profile of an Islamic terrorist. He liked women. He drank. He didn't pray or attend a mosque. He didn't wear a beard. He acted more like a Westerner than someone from the Middle East, according to published reports on his background. Jarrah, 26, of Lebanon, was able to travel between the United States and Middle East even though his name was on a watch list of suspected terrorists. And twice, law enforcement authorities had him in their grasp and let him go." http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_90401.html Also, in addition to live-in girlfriends and going to strip bars, some of the "devout Islamic hijackers" sought the services of prostitutes: "While preparing to unleash their twisted ``holy war'' on America, some of the suicide hijackers set aside strict religious beliefs to whet their lusty appetites, partying with a high-priced hooker in Hub hotel rooms. A driver for a pair of local escort services told the Herald yesterday that he drove a call girl to the Park Inn in Chestnut Hill on Sept. 9 around 10:30 p.m. where she bedded down with one of the mass murderers. It was her second trip to the terrorist's room that day." http://web.archive.org/web/20011010224657/http:/www.bostonherald.com/attack/investigation/ausprob10102001.htm
Another one, Khalid Moqed, went into two different adult book/movie stores: "An employee of an adult bookstore next door to the motel said he identified one of the suspects, Khalid Moqed, from photographs shown to him by FBI agents. In August, Moqed came into another adult bookstore, in Beltsville, where the same employee also works. When he first saw Moqed, he thought he was a police officer because of his short haircut and muscular build, said the employee, who refused to give his name. The man looked nervous and ''he didn't say anything, he just looked around at magazines and movies and left,'' the employee said."
http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/091901/ter_124-7573.shtml
Atta and other "hijackers" took at least five trips to Las Vegas, the most sinful city in the world, and indulged in lapdances from strippers and plenty of gambling, both off-limits to faithful Muslims: "engaged in some decidedly un-Islamic sampling of prohibited pleasures in America's reputed capital of moral corrosion." "He spent about $20 for a quick dance and didn't tip more." "Samantha remembers the killer settling into the crushed red velvet chair, staring blankly up at her while she undulated her hips inches from his face." "Some of the girls here remember a couple of those guys coming in here in August, too" ""True Muslims don't drink, don't gamble, don't go to strip clubs," said Dr. Osama Haikal, president of the board of directors of the Islamic Foundation of Nevada. "These things are a sin" "If the hijackers copped a lap dance or even a watery scotch in most strict Islamic countries, they would be flogged, Haikal said"
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/10/04/MN102970.DTL

So knowing these things about the unskilled, un-Islamic "hijackers" it becomes pretty damned difficult to believe they did what the official myth accuses them of.

So if they weren't "Islamic fundamentalist suicide hijackers" what were they and what was their purpose? We can get some ideas as to the possible answer from some of the following clues. Consider: Several of them apparantly lived on U.S. military bases at one time or another. CNN's mention of it can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yghzekjXS90 Pensacola Naval Air Station, the cradle of U.S. Navy aviation was listed as the residence of two of them. Maxwell Air Force Base was another. Brooks Air Force Base also. One supposedly attended the Defense Language Institute at Lackland Air Force Base. At least one of them lived on Tyndall Air Force Base.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_55522.html
Atta supposedly trained in some capacity at Norfolk Naval Air Station. http://911digitalarchive.org/crr/documents/1320.pdf
First the DoD said "It may just be a case of mistaken identity"
http://greenvilleonline.com/news/2001/09/20/2001092012469.htm
Then they claimed to have looked into the matter and found discrepancies in the biographical data, such as their ages, that meant they were different people.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A38270-2001Sep15
But the DoD won't provide the biographical data so that it can be independently verified that they aren't the same individuals. If they had nothing to hide they would be leaping at the chance to prove "hijackers" weren't in any way connected to U.S. military bases. Their refusal speaks volumes. Then consider: Two of the "hijackers", Alhazmi and Almihdhar, lived for a while with an F.B.I. informant in San Diego.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/09/attack/main521223.shtml
Aukai Collins, a C.I.A. and F.B.I. (yes both) informant who infiltrated Chechen Islamic guerilla forces in the 1990s, lived in Phoenix, Arizona and claimed to have known Hani Hanjour.
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,344146,00.html
http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2002/07/17/collins_interview/index.html?pn=3
Then consider the areas in the U.S. where the "hijackers" lived, undertook rudimentary training etc. Florida especially, San Diego, Phoenix area, and greater Washington D.C. area. All four of those are very important hubs of the military-industrial complex. Why on earth would firstly these "hijacker pilots" be undertaking their "training" in the U.S. instead of somewhere in the Middle East where they would be sure to arouse less suspicion, and secondly, upon making the inexplicably risky decision to train in their target country, why on earth would they go out of their way to live in the areas most likely to be saturated with intelligence and military personnel? Florida has been of critical importance to the C.I.A. for a long time with its close proximity to Cuba and its excellent location for importing cocaine from south America via the Caribbean. Also a haven for Cuban exiles, a group intimately connected to the C.I.A., as is the mafia, who ALSO heavily represented in Florida. They couldn't have picked a worse state for C.I.A. activity excepting Virginia, which they ALSO picked which I will address in a moment. Florida has a ton of military bases also, including the headquarters of both Special Operations Command and Central Command (the entity mostly responsible for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan), at MacDill A.F.B. Where they spent most of their time in Florida was in the congressional districts of Katherine Harris and Porter Goss (later Director of Central Intelligence of the C.I.A.). The Bush family has a winter retreat on Boca Grande. The rest of their time in Florida was spent in the district of Bob Graham of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Graham was having breakfast with Porter Goss and the director of the ISI on the morning of 9/11. On CNN's timeline it quotes him, saying: "4:20 p.m.: U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Florida, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, says he was "not surprised there was an attack (but) was surprised at the specificity." He says he was "shocked at what actually happened -- the extent of it." http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/chronology.attack/ San Diego is enormously important to the defense industry, as well as having very important military bases there with a large Navy base and the Marines' west coast recruit depot. It was also the congressional district of corrupt Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Phoenix is also an important hub. Scottsdale has huge General Dynamics plant. Honeywell, Raytheon and L-3 Communications (who bought Titan) are in Phoenix. The C.I.A. had or has more than one airstrip in the area for its proprietary airlines. The Phoenix area is the congressional district of John McCain. In the greater Washington D.C. area they lived in Vienna, Virginia, within spitting distance of C.I.A. headquarters. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/graphics/attack/hijackers.html
Others lived in Laurel, Maryland, literally right outside the gates of the N.S.A. headquarters.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/2033791.stm
They even ate frequently at a pizzaria that was an N.S.A. hangout!
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_10-6-2002_pg4_7
Starting to see a pattern here?

But the "hijackers" themselves are far from being the only thing false about the official fairy tale. First digest this and then tomorrow we can discuss the "collapses" of the Twin Towers and WTC # 7; the standdown of the Air Force necessary for them to reach their targets; the Pentagon crash; the Shanksville crash; the "put" options on the stock of United and American Airlines and Morgan Stanley-Dean Witter; Warren Buffet's charity golf tournament at Offutt A.F.B. that saved many a WTC C.E.O.; the forewarning not to fly given to the mayor of San Francisco and several DoD generals, the fact that Ashcroft stopped flying commercial airlines a couple months before due to unspecified intel.; the head of Pakistan's intel. agency wiring money to the hijacker patsies and eating breakfast with Bob Graham and Porter Goss on the morning of 9/11; Bush and his Secret Service personnel at Booker Elementary; the shamefully fast removal and disposal of steel debris evidence from the WTC and the breathtakingly callous disposal of WTC victims' remains into a landfill called "Fresh Kills"; the lying about the air quality at Ground Zero; the Cheney regime opposition to having an investigation into 9/11 at all and only relenting when allowed to handpick its members, dictate its scope, gatekeep its evidence and "evidence", and only have Bush and Cheney "testify" together, behind closed doors, with their attorneys present, with nothing recorded and no notes taken, etc. There is a mountain of evidence that renders the official story about as believable as that pathological liar character played by John Lovitz on Saturday Night Live. What the puppetmasters behind 9/11 are counting on is the average American not bothering to look into the details, since in so doing the story quickly falls apart, but rather to simply take the event at face value. So far, for most Americans, that has been the sad case, however more and more are finding one loose end or another, pulling on it, and the whole ball of string comes unraveled. It's all in becoming acquainted with the details. Do what the plotters don't want you to do: instead of taking their word for it, look into it yourselves.

In summing up what I wrote previously about the "hijackers", it appears most likely that rather than "Al Qaeda Islamic fundamentalists" they were actually C.I.A. assets. Their purpose seems to have been not to hijack or fly any airliners but rather to leave an easily-found trail of (hamfisted, B-movie) "evidence", like the Quran left at the bar, the threat of impending bloodshed, Atta's luggage that "just so happened" to not make it onto the flight, the maps and boxcutter left in a motel room just before 9/11, etc. so as to flesh out the "nineteen hijackers" myth. That "evidence" was meant to be found is attested to by many of the government's investigators, as mentioned in an article in the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh, called "What Went Wrong" in which he states: "Many of the investigators believe that some of the initial clues that were uncovered about the terrorists' identities and preparations, such as flight manuals, were meant to be found. A former high-level intelligence official told me, "Whatever trail was left was left deliberately—for the F.B.I. to chase." http://cicentre.com/Documents/DOC_Hersch_OCT_01.htm http://www.globalpolicy.org/wtc/analysis/1001intel.htm (reprinted there and elsewhere, as the article's online page in the New Yorker magazine itself has suspiciously truncated the article, excising this portion among others, as though they don't want anyone to read that the "evidence" appeared to many to be meant to be found.) They were patsies and necessarily had no idea they were being set up as patsies. This is what the C.I.A. calls compartmentalization, operatives/assets only knowing the bare minimum of details, just enough to carry out their part in the plan. Certainly they didn't know the reason behind what they were instructed to do or what "evidence" they were told to leave here or there. If I had to guess, I would say they all probably thought they were undertaking flight training to become C.I.A. drug smuggling pilots. Surely on 9/11 or very shortly thereafter they were killed off so that nobody in October 2001 could call in to a radio show and say "Hey, I just saw Mohamed Atta at the Dairy Queen yesterday". It is basically a certainty that several of the nineteen were not actually in any way involved in anything, as several turned up alive days after 9/11, wondering why they were being accused of being "suicide hijackers" when still very much alive.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1558669.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1559151.stm
This would seem to indicate that in addition to the C.I.A. asset patsies there were several passports stolen from completely uninvolved individuals so as to pad the "hijacker" roster without having to actually have nineteen patsies. The F.B.l. very soon after 9/11 released its list of the "nineteen hijackers", then backpedaled and said that it might not be certain as to all of their identities when word reached it of the "resurrected hijackers". Presumably once this blew over they settled back into their prior mode of claiming that the nineteen it named were all accurate, and to this day denies there was really a mix-up.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1571/is_2003_June_24/ai_103603756
http://multimedia.belointeractive.com/attack/investigation/1103investigation.html
In that vein, the mainstream "news" also still refers to the "nineteen hijackers" complete with the same photos as if there was never any controversy. Also the New Yorker states:"There is also no firm evidence tying all of the terrorists to the bin Laden organization, the official said, despite public statements to that effect by the Bush Administration" http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/10/08/011008fa_FACT
Also worth mentioning is the fact that the F.B.I.'s wanted poster for Osama bin Laden mentions the Khobar Towers bombing, the 1993 WTC bombing, the attack on the USS Cole, but makes no mention of 9/11.
http://www.fbi.gov/wanted/terrorists/terbinladen.htm
When contacted about this they confirmed that the reason why his poster says nothing about 9/11 is that they have no hard evidence linking bin Laden to 9/11 (which tells you how authentic the F.B.I. thinks the "Osama confession video" is): "In the case of the 1998 United States Embassies being bombed, Bin Laden has been formally indicted and charged by a grand jury. He has not been formally indicted and charged in connection with 9/11 because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.” http://muckrakerreport.com/id267.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/27/AR2006082700687.html
Which would fit with the Cheney regime's refusal to provide any "evidence" connecting bin Laden to 9/11, as demanded by the Taliban in exchange for handing him over to the U.S. in the time shortly after 9/11. More than once they offered to turn him over to the U.S. or a third country if only the U.S. would provide some kind of evidence against him regarding 9/11. Since it had and has no evidence against him, Bush refused. http://english.people.com.cn/english/200109/19/eng20010919_80610.html http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,573975,00.html http://www.rte.ie/news/2001/1005/afghanistan.html http://archives.tcm.ie/breakingnews/2001/09/12/story23517.asp

Now let's turn to the events of 9/11. One problem is the flight manifests. For one thing, Hani Hanjour was not named as one of the hijackers when the initial list of "nineteen hijackers" was released which was explicitly claimed to have been derived from the flight manifests; instead, it listed a "Mosear Caned", who has never been mentioned since. Hanjour was substituted for "Mosear Caned" a short while later.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0109/14/bn.01.html
For another thing, in looking at the manifests for each of the four alleged airliners that morning, one quickly finds that they are each extremely below passenger capacity, yet all four were supposedly coast-to-coast flights:
Flight 11: allegedly 81 passengers out of a capacity of 228
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/victims/AA11.victims.html
Flight 77: allegedly 58 passengers out of a capacity of 182 http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/victims/AA77.victims.html
Flight 175: allegedly 56 passengers out of a capacity of 228
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/victims/ua175.victims.html
Flight 93: allegedly 38 passengers out of a capacity of 182 http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/victims/ua93.victims.html
An article in the Dallas Morning News says of "Flight 93": "And also like the others, it had plenty of empty seats. Boeing 757s, depending on the configuration of the single-aisle compartments, hold between 178 to 224 passengers. When Flight 93 pushed back from the gate at 7:01 a.m. Central time, it was, at most, at 21 percent capacity. The low passenger count certainly couldn't have been cost-efficient for a cross-country flight. And although airlines deny it, air travelers traditionally have complained that airlines sometimes cancel sparsely filled flights and reroute passengers on the next regularly scheduled plane to their destination." http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:8fiV50lNNxYJ:www.public-action.com/911/dmnheroes/+butterknife%2Bbreakfast%2BGlick&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=22&gl=us An article in MSNBC remarks on this as well, saying: "There was, in airline parlance, a “light load” that morning. Only 37 of the plane’s 182 seats were occupied. Some of the passengers had never planned to be on the flight." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3067652/ Think about it. For four coast-to-coast flights, this tiny amount of ticket-buying passengers wouldn't pay for the fuel to fly them there, or the salaries of the flight crew to fly it, or the wages of the ground crew to fuel it and get it ready for flight. Airlines are not in the charity business; no airline manager in his right mind would have these four incredibly under-capacity flights take off. Rather, they would each have been cancelled and their passengers bumped to later flights. An airline with Boeing 757s flying coast-to-coast flights with 38 passengers is an airline that isn't going to stay in business for very long. Far more likely would be that there were only two actual airliners (of the alleged 4) that took off that morning, and two reasonably-near-capacity manifests were each split in half.

Another problem arises with the Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS), and it lends more weight to the idea that there were but two of the four that actually took off. Though the BTS has records for both United Airlines flights taking off that morning (Flights 93 and 175), both American Airlines flights (Flights 11 and 77), according to their records, did not take off that morning or at any time that day at all:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~holmgren/bts11nodatafound.html
http://members.iinet.net.au/~holmgren/bts77no%20datafound.html
http://members.iinet.net.au/~holmgren/loganaadepart.html
http://members.iinet.net.au/~holmgren/dullesaadepart.html

THE CUNNING REALIST

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Another Year

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