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Title: Why the towers fell: Two theories [by a civil engineer]
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URL Source: http://www.vermontguardian.com/commentary/032007/TwinTowers.shtml
Published: Mar 1, 2007
Author: William Rice
Post Date: 2007-04-17 16:30:39 by honway
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Why the towers fell: Two theories By William Rice William Rice, P.E., is a registered professional civil engineer who worked on structural steel (and concrete) buildings in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. He was also a professor at Vermont Technical College where he taught engineering materials, structures lab, and other building related courses, Posted March 1, 2007 Having worked on structural steel buildings as a civil engineer in the era when the Twin Towers were designed and constructed, I found some disturbing discrepancies and omissions concerning their collapse on 9/11. I was particularly interested in the two PBS documentaries that explained the prevailing theories as determined by two government agencies, FEMA and NIST (National Institute of Science and Technology). The first (2002) PBS documentary, Why the Towers Fell, discussed how the floor truss connectors failed and caused a “progressive pancake collapse.” The subsequent 2006 repackaged documentary Building on Ground Zero explained that the connectors held, but that the columns failed, which is also unlikely. Without mentioning the word “concrete,” the latter documentary compared the three-second collapse of the concrete Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building with that of the Twin Towers that were of structural steel. The collapse of a concrete-framed building cannot be compared with that of a structural steel-framed building. Since neither documentary addressed many of the pertinent facts, I took the time to review available material, combine it with scientific and historic facts, and submit the following two theories for consideration. The prevailing theory The prevailing theory for the collapse of the 110-story, award-winning Twin Towers is that when jetliners flew into the 95th and 80th floors of the North and South Towers respectively, they severed several of each building’s columns and weakened other columns with the burning of jet fuel/kerosene (and office combustibles). However, unlike concrete buildings, structural steel buildings redistribute the stress when several columns are removed and the undamaged structural framework acts as a truss network to bridge over the missing columns. After the 1993 car bomb explosion destroyed columns in the North Tower, John Skilling, the head structural engineer for the Twin Towers, was asked about an airplane strike. He explained that the Twin Towers were originally designed to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707 (similar in size to the Boeing 767). He went on to say that there would be a horrendous fire from the jet fuel, but “the building structure would still be there.” The 10,000 gallons of jet fuel (half capacity) in each jetliner did cause horrendous fires over several floors, but it would not cause the steel members to melt or even lose sufficient strength to cause a collapse. This is because the short-duration jet fuel fires and office combustible fires cannot create (or transmit to the steel) temperatures hot enough. If a structural steel building could collapse because of fire, it would do so slowly as the various steel members gradually relinquished their structural strength. However, in the 100-year history of structural-steel framed buildings, there is no evidence of any structural steel framed building having collapsed because of fire. Let’s assume the unlikelihood that these fires could weaken all of the columns to the same degree of heat intensity and thus remove their structural strength equally over the entire floor, or floors, in order to cause the top 30-floor building segment (South Tower WTC #2) to drop vertically and evenly onto the supporting 79th floor. The 30 floors from above would then combine with the 79th floor and fall onto the next level down (78th floor) crushing its columns evenly and so on down into the seven levels below the street level. The interesting fact is that each of these 110-story Twin Towers fell upon itself in about ten seconds at nearly free-fall speed. This violates Newton’s Law of Conservation of Momentum that would require that as the stationary inertia of each floor is overcome by being hit, the mass (weight) increases and the free-fall speed decreases. Even if Newton’s Law is ignored, the prevailing theory would have us believe that each of the Twin Towers inexplicably collapsed upon itself crushing all 287 massive columns on each floor while maintaining a free-fall speed as if the 100,000, or more, tons of supporting structural-steel framework underneath didn’t exist. The politically unthinkable theory Controlled demolition is so politically unthinkable that the media not only demeans the messenger but also ridicules and “debunks” the message rather than provide investigative reporting. Curiously, it took 441 days for the president’s 9/11 Commission to start an “investigation” into a tragedy where more than 2,500 WTC lives were taken. The Commission’s investigation also didn’t include the possibility of controlled-demolition, nor did it include an investigation into the “unusual and unprecedented” manner in which WTC Building #7 collapsed. The media has basically kept the collapse of WTC Building #7 hidden from public view. However, instead of the Twin Towers, let’s consider this building now. Building #7 was a 47-story structural steel World Trade Center Building that also collapsed onto itself at free-fall speed on 9/11. This structural steel building was not hit by a jetliner, and collapsed seven hours after the Twin Towers collapsed and five hours after the firemen had been ordered to vacate the building and a collapse safety zone had been cordoned off. Both of the landmark buildings on either side received relatively little structural damage and both continue in use today. Contrary to the sudden collapse of the Twin Towers and Building #7, the four other smaller World Trade Center buildings #3, #4, #5, and #6, which were severely damaged and engulfed in flames on 9/11, still remained standing. There were no reports of multiple explosions. The buildings had no pools of molten metal (a byproduct of explosives) at the base of their elevator shafts. They created no huge caustic concrete/cement and asbestos dust clouds (only explosives will pulverize concrete into a fine dust cloud), and they propelled no heavy steel beams horizontally for three hundred feet or more. The collapse of WTC building #7, which housed the offices of the CIA, the Secret Service, and the Department of Defense, among others, was omitted from the government’s 9/11 Commission Report, and its collapse has yet to be investigated. Perhaps it is time for these and other unanswered questions surrounding 9/11 to be thoroughly investigated. Let’s start by contacting our congressional delegation. William Rice, P.E., is a registered professional civil engineer who worked on structural steel (and concrete) buildings in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. He was also a professor at Vermont Technical College where he taught engineering materials, structures lab, and other building related courses.
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#156. To: BeAChooser (#154)
http://wtc.nist.gov/media/Public%20Transcript%20021204%20Final1_withlinks.pdf Transcript of NIST Public Meeting in New York City - February 12, 2004 Table of Contents Jim Hill, National Institute of Standards and Technology ......... 1 Shyam Sunder, National Institute of Standards and Technology ..... 2 * * * Dr. Sunder: Good morning. Jim has already introduced me as the lead investigator for the federal building and fire safety investigation of the World Trade Center disaster, and I will take this time this morning to explain to you our overall goals, our objectives, and where we are in terms of status and progress on the investigation. * * * I'm going to touch on a number of aspects of our investigation which I think it’s worth for the public to know at this point in time. First of all the issue with regard to the safety of the towers in an aircraft collision. Buildings are not designed to withstand the impacts of fuel laden commercial airliners. However, in the case of the World Trade Center, it was a consideration. The structural safety of the towers in an aircraft collision was considered in the original design. We have some documents from 1964 that suggest that. The impact scenario that was considered is a Boeing 707 traveling at 600 miles an hour. There's another document a month later that considers an aircraft impact at the 80th floor of one of the towers. When you put those two together, the events of September 11th look strikingly similar. The analysis that was reported from that time indicated that such collision would result in only local damage which could not cause collapse or substantial damage to the buildings. We now know that the buildings withstood the initial impact of the aircraft. The loss of life would have been far greater had the buildings collapsed upon impact. The large size of the buildings, the 208 x 208 feet floor plan area, and the dense exterior grid of columns, enabled the buildings to withstand the initial impact of the airplanes. But when you go beyond the initial impact to look at fire safety and life safety, we find that there are some contradictory views.
Let's see. Scientific American
says he was. NIST says he was. American Society of Civil Engineers
says he was. Columbia University says he was. PBS says he was. http://www.skyscraper.org says he was.
The MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering says he was.
McGraw-Hill Construction / ENR magazine says he was. The American Council
of Engineering Companies says he was. http://www.cenews.com says he was. The
National Academy of Engineering says he was. en.structurae.de says he was.
The BBC says he was. The Stanford Engineering Department says he was.
http://www.construction.com says
he was. http://www.istructe.org says
he was. http://www.wtc.com says he was.
http://www.americanscientist.org
says he was. The NYTimes says he was. The University of Berkeley says
he was. Right, NC. We have every reason to doubt them. ROTFLOL!
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Explain a symmetric collapse of a building with asymmetric damage. It cannot be done without explosives to make it happen.
Then you should have no
trouble naming structural engineers and demolitions experts who agree with you
that the WTC towers were brought down by explosives. You can name some,
right? Can you name even one? No????
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You can name some, right? Can you name even one? No???? You are such a fag. Only because it serves my purpose to hoist you on your own retard, I'll give you one, Beach hoser: Van Romero. ------------------------------------------ Three days after 9/11, The Albuquerque Journal interviewed Demolition Scientist Van Romero. Explosives Planted In Towers New Mexico Tech Expert Says By Olivier Uyttebrouck Journal Staff Writer Televised images of the attacks on the World Trade Center suggest that explosives devices caused the collapse of both towers, a New Mexico Tech explosion expert said Tuesday. The collapse of the buildings appears "too methodical" to be a chance result of airplanes colliding with the structures, said Van Romero, vice president for research at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. "My opinion is, based on the videotapes, that after the airplanes hit the World Trade Center there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse," Romero said. Romero is a former director of the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center at Tech, which studies explosive materials and the effects of explosions on buildings, aircraft and other structures.
[nc #155] If Robertson was the Lead Structural Engineer "of record," produce that record. Looking at your non-response SPAM, I accept that you CANNOT produce any actual record showing that Robertson was the Lead Structural Engineer "of record." SPAM is not substance. NONE of the links you provided goes to a web page that says anything about Robertson or his being the Lead Structural Engineer of record. Robertson is now a licensed Structural Engineer in California. He is not now, nor has he ever been, a licensed Structural Engineer in New York. There is no such thing as a licensed Structural Engineer in the state of New York. Robertson is a licensed Professional Engineer in New York. Robertson was yet a licensed Professional Engineer in New York in 1964. As Robertson was not a licensed Professional Engineer in New York in 1964, it was impossible for him to have been any engineer "of record" in 1964. All that going on, and Leslie Robertson was NOT even a LICENSED Professional Engineer. Without that license he could not have been the Lead Structural Engineer of record as you have claimed. That is correct. In 1964, Leslie Robertson had not yet acquired his license as a Professional Engineer in the State of New York. However, in 1964, John B. Skilling WAS a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of New York. In 1964, of the two, ONLY John Skilling could have been the Engineer of record. When must I employ a licensed PE? Generally, you will need the services of a licensed design professional such as a PE any time you need the approval of a government agency or official for a construction project; these officials can only accept engineering plans signed and stamped with the seal of the PE. Check with that official to determine what you are required to submit. You will also need a PE when the complexity of the design of a project requires the skills of a professional engineer or when the services fall within the legal definition of professional engineering. Note: Requirements vary slightly from state to state. The requirements listed below are based on the requirements of the State of New York. Only when all requirements have been met can an individual be considered a Licensed Professional Engineer. Becoming a Licensed Professional Engineer requires at least 12 years of acceptable education/experience credit. Some of this is often obtained through four years of college study, although there are other ways of obtaining the required credit. After obtaining six years of acceptable education/experience credit, the candidate takes the Fundamentals of Engineering exam. After passing the Fundamentals of Engineering exam, and obtaining at least 12 years of acceptable engineering/education experience, the engineer must pass the Principles and Practice of Engineering exam. Only when all requirements have been met can an individual be considered a Licensed Professional Engineer. ROTFLOL!!!!!!!!!!! Your guy was not licensed and could not sign or stamp a damn thing in 1964, and you said at BAC #35, "The design of the major structural elements of the towers surely had to have been completed by February 1964." Damn. Just Damn!!!! Ohhhh... my side thingEYs
Which just proves you don't really know what you are talking about, Paul. First of all, Van Romero retracted his statement just a short while later. That fact was carried in the Albuquerque Journal, too. He said he changed his mind after looking at more detailed videos and the rest of the information that was gathered. Futhermore, Romero is NOT an demolition expert. Here is his resume: ************* http://infohost.nmt.edu/~red/van.html "Van D. Romero, Ph.D. ... snip ... Current Employment Since 1997: Vice President for Research and Economic Development, New Mexico Tech., Serves as chief official of the Research and Economic Development Division responsible for the encouragement, leadership, and support of research at the Institute and for the administrative and policy making activities of the division; offers dynamic research and administrative leadership to stimulate, coordinate, and provide support for the research at New Mexico Tech; acts as advocate for research within the Institute; serves as director of the Geophysical Research Center; manages the research support functions of the Research Division; serves as the Institute's representative and on-campus administrator for the Waste-Management Education and Research Consortium; acts as an external advocate and representative for New Mexico Tech's research activities; serves as mentor to new faculty to help them establish their research programs at the Institute; strongly encourages diversity and affirmative action; identifies research opportunities and actively encourages development of interdisciplinary research at the institute; ensures that high quality proposals are submitted by the Institute." Previous Experience 1995-1997: Director, Energetic Materials Research & Testing Center, Direct and manage a multi-disciplinary team of scientists, engineers, and staff involved in RDT&E programs in energetic materials. EMRTC provides a working laboratory for conducting research in support of both government and commercial programs in the areas of ordnance, explosives, propellants and other energetic materials. Facilities include over 30 separate test sites, gun ranges and research labs located within a 32 square mile field laboratory. Developed and implemented counter-terrorist program that benefits research and academic programs. 1994 - 1995: Senior Member Technical Staff, Sandia National Lab, Albuquerque, NM. Conducted Environmental Impact Assessment for Medical Isotope Production program. Program consisted of converting weapons program facility to produce radio-isotopes for medical usage. 1993 - 1994: Deputy Director of Environmental, Safety and Health Oversight; Manager, Hazardous Waste Programs, Superconducting Super Collider, Dallas, TX. Developed and implemented radiation protection policies compatible with DOE orders and CFR regulations, performed liaison activities with DOE, and provided technical direction to radiation and hazardous waste program. Responsible for the development and review of radiation transport calculations, shielding design, health physics procedures, mixed waste procedures, and environmental monitoring activities. Served as Chairman of the Laboratory's ALARA committee and member of DOE's R&D Laboratory Working Group (RADWG) Health Physics Procedures Committee. Responsible for RCRA compliance during project closure. 1979 - 1993: Manager, Thermal Hydraulic Programs, General Electric Knolls Atomic Power Lab, Schenectady, NY. Responsible for both the technical and personnel management of the group. Key participant in the long term planning and direction of both the research and the facilities construction and maintenance. Group responsibilities included thermodynamic and materials testing and analysis of fuel channels, steam generators, and in-core materials. This work determined the thermodynamic limits for the nuclear reactor which will power the next generation submarine scheduled for delivery at the turn of the century. In previous work as Lead Engineer, was responsible for the experimental fluid mechanics effort and developed LASER instrumentation and techniques for flow visualization and quantitative flow measurements. Additional experience includes the development, execution, and analysis of environmental impact testing of nuclear sub marines which includes radiation transport analysis, neutron detection, and gamma ray spectroscopy." Current Funded Research Activities * Experimental verification of the alpha-omega effect for galaxy formation with Los Alamos National Laboratories. Courses Taught * Graduate and undergraduate courses in Solid State Physics and Particle Physics for the Physics Department Patents Held * Procedure to study Bubble Evolution by correcting scattered LASER light and dynamic pressure signals ********** At the time of 9/11 he wasn't even working in the field of explosives. For ONLY 2 or 3 years he ran a group that focused on ordnance, explosives and energetic materials ... and not so much the effects of them on structures but the characteristics of the explosives themselves. Certainly there is no mention of him working on explosive demolition of structures or buildings. And we learn that prior to 1995, he conducted Environmental Impact Assessments, implemented radiation protection policies and investigated thermodynamic limits for the nuclear reactors. That's hardly the resume of the explosives, demolition and structures *expert* you present. In fact, take a look at his publications. You won't find one word about demolition or structures in those titles. And hardly a mention of explosives. You seem to live in a world of misinformation, Paul. Not a good foundation for finding the truth.
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SPAM is not substance. His SPAM IS without substance all right... His link in response #154 is invalid - it doesn't work - it leads to nothing. And at least 1 of the "links" in his #157 produced the same results... It's impossible for me to tell what side of the fence he's truly on (ignorant as that may sound). Let me explain. (As an aside - I find the NORAD stand-down to be of key significance in bearing forth the "official 9/11 lie"... When famed golfer Payne Stewart's charter flight went off course and started going north from the Panhandle of Florida, within 20 minutes NORAD had 2 fighters scrambled and on that situation like flies on shit. They were looking into the cockpit of the charter flight and reporting that the crew was unconscious - and stayed with that flight until it crashed. Yet for some reason, on 9/11 NORAD cannot manage to get even one fighter scrambled when 4 commercial airliners are flying off course for over an hour and a half - AND headed towards some of the most highly restricted airspace in the world????? BULLSHIT!!!!! Yet this is a topic BAC adamantly avoids.) For the sake of argument, lets pretend the collapses occurring on 9/11 happened exactly for the reasons given in the "official story" and for no other reason. That still does NOT explain any of the other "serious questions" such as those I posed to him in the link above. And his refusal to address ANY of them speaks volumes. That is why I say it's hard to tell what side of the fence he's on. Based upon the fact that he ONLY wants to discuss the collapses, and tries to divert everything else to that subject (and touts the "official story of it) - the most logical conclusion would have to be that he's a shill... One thing is certain: the ONLY way a person can successfully be a liar is to always tell a mix of lies with truth. If someone only tells truth, then we know what they say is true. If someone only tells lies, then we always know what truth is (the opposite of what they say). But when lies are mixed with truth - we're always left guessing. And that's exactly where BushCo and the likes of BAC leave us. From this, one other thing can be gathered: If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man. Albert Einstein
You said ONE, Douche bag. You don't get to prattle on and on to try to change that. Oh, and I didn't read your post, so I'm glad you wasted all that time and energy on it.
http://physics911.net/kevinryan Propping Up the War on Terror: Lies about the WTC by NIST and Underwriters Laboratories This paper appeared in 9/11 and the American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out, ed. David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott (Northampton: Interlink Books, 2006). Propping Up the War on Terror: Lies about the WTC by NIST and Underwriters Laboratories Kevin Ryan “Already there is near-consensus as to the sequence of events that led to the collapse of the World Trade Center.”- Shankar Nair, as quoted in the Chicago Tribune September 19, 2001 Turn on C-Span, or “Meet The Press,” or any other media program presenting federal officials. Whatever the issue, it always comes back to the same thing. Our government really has nothing else to offer us but protection from another 9/11. It uses this painful story to cut public services, eliminate our basic rights, and plunder the national coffers. But for many of us, it is not entirely clear from whom we most need protection.[1] As our debt explodes and our freedoms diminish, it would be wise to maintain focus on the origins of our War on Terror. No matter where this war leads us, we will need to keep the beginning in mind if we ever hope to see an end. The Point of Origin: The Collapse of the WTC Many have found that the 9/11 Commission not only failed to help us understand what happened; it also omitted or distorted most of the facts.[2] But if we really want to zero in on the exact turning point around which we plunged into chaos, we need to focus in particular on the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings. This is where our hearts were wrenched and our minds were made ready for never-ending war, torture, and apparently the end of everything that was American. If we are ever to emerge from this insanity, we need to know how three tall buildings collapsed due to fire, all on the same day, when no such thing has ever happened before. The Twin Towers and Why They Fell It would help to begin with an accurate description of the WTC towers in terms of quality of design and construction. In July of 1971, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) presented a national award judging the buildings to be “the engineering project that demonstrates the greatest engineering skills and represents the greatest contribution to engineering progress and mankind.”[3] Others noted that “the World Trade Center towers would have an inherent capacity to resist unforeseen calamities.” This capacity stemmed from the use of special high-strength steels. In particular, the perimeter columns were designed with tremendous reserve strength whereby “live loads on these columns can be increased more than 2,000% before failure occurs.”[4] One would expect that any explanation for the destruction of such buildings would need to be very solid as well. Four years after 9/11, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) finally did give us their version of “why and how” two of the buildings collapsed, but its explanation may be even less effective than the 9/11 Commission report.[5] Now that the official story has been given, however, we can see just how weak and ill-defined our basis for this War on Terror has been all along. Additionally, we can track the evolution of official comments about collapse and see who was involved. Selling the Official Story: Some Key Players Shankar Nair, whose statement quoted above is quite telling, was one of those “experts” on whom the government depended to support what turned out to be an ever-changing, but always flimsy, story. Many of the scientists involved in the investigation were asked to examine ancillary issues, like escape routes and other emergency response factors. But those few who attempted to explain what really needed explaining, the unique events of fire-induced collapse, appear to have engaged in what can only be called anti-science. That is, they started with their conclusions and worked backward to some “leading hypotheses.” Not surprisingly, many of the contractors who contributed to the NIST investigation, like the company for which Nair works, just happen to depend on good relationships with the government in order to earn their living. What may be a surprise is just how lucrative these relationships can be. For example, Nair’s company, Teng & Associates, boasts of Indefinite Quantity Contracts, long-term relationships with federal government agencies, and federal projects worth in excess of $40 million.[6] Others who worked so hard to maintain the official story included Gene Corley, a concrete construction expert listed by the National Directory of Expert Witnesses as a source for litigation testimony.[7] Corley was more than just a witness, however. He had led the Oklahoma City bombing investigation and then was asked to lead the initial ASCE investigation into the WTC disaster. Perhaps someone else, with less experience in bombings and more experience in fires, would have been a better choice. But without authority to save samples or even obtain blueprints, the ASCE investigation was ineffective anyway. Corley himself ended up being a very versatile resource, however, providing testimony supporting the pre-determined conclusions many times, and even posing as a reporter during an NIST media session.[8] There was really no need for phony media coverage. As with The 9/11 Commission Report and the lead-up to the Iraq War, the major media simply parroted any explanations, or non-explanations, given in support of the official story. One example is from a television program called “The Anatomy of September 11th,” which aired on the History Channel. Corley took the lead on this one as well, but James Glanz, a New York Times reporter, was also interviewed and helped to spread what is probably the worst excuse for collapse given. He told us that the fires heated the steel columns so much (the video suggested 2500 F) that they were turned into “licorice.” Other self-proclaimed experts have been heard promoting similar theories.[9] They will probably come to regret it. This is because the results of physical tests performed by NIST’s own Frank Gayle proved this theory to be a ridiculous exaggeration, as some people already knew. The temperatures seen by the few steel samples saved, only about 500 F, were far too low to soften, let alone melt, even un-fireproofed steel. Of course that result could have been calculated, knowing that 4,000 gallons of jet fuel[10]-not 24,000 gallons or 10,000 gallons, as some reports have claimed-were sprayed into an open-air environment over several floors, each comprised of more than 1,000 metric tons of concrete and steel. Another expert who served on NIST’s advisory committee was Charles Thornton, of the engineering firm Thornton and Tomasetti. Thornton’s partner, Richard Tomasetti, was reported to be behind the unprecedented and widely criticized decision to destroy most of the steel evidence.[11] Early on Thornton said: “Karl, we all know what caused the collapse.” He was talking to Karl Koch, whose company erected the WTC steel. Koch attempted to clarify as follows. “I could see it in my mind’s eye: The fire burned until the steel was weakened and the floors above collapsed, starting a chain reaction of gravity, floor falling upon floor upon floor, clunk - clunk - clunk, the load gaining weight and momentum by the nanosecond, unstoppable. Once enough floors collapsed, the exterior walls and the core columns were no longer laterally supported and folded in.”[12] This is a description of what was called the Pancake Theory, the most widely accepted version of what happened. The Pancake Theory was promoted by an influential 2002 NOVA video called “Why the Towers Fell,” in which Corley (yet again) and Thornton were the primary commentators. Both of them talked about the floors collapsing, and Thornton described how the perimeter columns buckled outward, not inward as Koch had described. The video made a number of false claims, including exaggeration of the temperatures (2000 F), remarks about melting steel, and the incredible statement that two-thirds of the columns in WTC1 (the North Tower) were completely severed. NIST’s report now indicates that only about 14% of the columns in WTC1 were severed, and in some photos we can count most of these for ourselves.[13] NIST and Underwriters Laboratories In August 2004, Underwriters Laboratories evaluated the Pancake Theory by testing models of the floor assemblies used in the WTC buildings. Despite all the previous expert testimony, the floor models did not collapse. NIST reported this in its October 2004 update, in a table of results that clearly showed that the floors did not fail and that, therefore, pancaking was not possible.[14] NIST more succinctly stated this again in its June 2005 draft report, saying: “The results established that this type of assembly was capable of sustaining a large gravity load, without collapsing, for a substantial period of time relative to the duration of the fires in any given location on September 11th.”[15] At the time of the floor tests, I worked for Underwriters Laboratories (UL). I was very interested in the progress of these tests, having already asked some sensitive questions. My interest began when UL’s CEO, Loring Knoblauch, a very experienced executive with a law degree from Harvard, surprised us at the company’s South Bend location, just a few weeks after 9/11, by saying that UL had certified the steel used in the WTC buildings. Knoblauch told us that we should all be proud that the buildings had stood for so long under such intense conditions. In retrospect it is clear that all of us, including Knoblauch, were ignorant of many important facts surrounding 9/11 and did not, therefore, see his statements as particularly important. Over the next two years, however, I learned more about the issues, like the unprecedented destruction of the steel evidence and the fact that no tall steel-frame buildings have ever collapsed due to fire. And I saw video of the owner of the buildings, stating publicly that he and the fire department made the decision to “pull”-that is, to demolish-WTC7 that day,[16] even though demolition requires many weeks of planning and preparation. Perhaps most compelling for me were the words of a genuine expert on the WTC. This was John Skilling, the structural engineer responsible for designing the towers.[17] (The NOVA video, incidentally, gave this credit to Leslie Robertson. But Robertson, who never claimed to have originated the design, was only a junior member of the firm [Worthington, Skilling, Helle and Jackson], and Skilling was known at the time to be the engineer in charge.) In 1993, five years before his death, Skilling said that he had performed an analysis on jet plane crashes and the ensuing fires and that “the building structure would still be there.”[18] By 2003, all of this information was available to anyone who cared. The details were, without a doubt, difficult to reconcile with testimony from officials, reporters, and scientists who were supporting the official story. But in November of that year, I felt that answers from UL were needed. If, as our CEO had suggested, our company had tested samples of steel components and listed the results in the UL Fire Resistance Directory almost forty years ago, Mr. Skilling would have depended on these results to ensure that the buildings were sufficiently fire resistant. So I sent a formal written message to our chief executive, outlining my thoughts and asking what he was doing to protect our reputation. Knoblauch’s written response contained several points. He wrote: “We test to the code requirements, and the steel clearly met those requirements and exceeded them.” He pointed to the NYC code used at the time of the WTC construction, which required fire resistance times of 3 hours for building columns, and 2 hours for floors. From the start, his answers were not helping to explain fire-induced collapse in 56 minutes (the time it took WTC2, the South Tower, to come down). But he did give a better explanation of UL’s involvement in testing the WTC steel, even talking about the quality of the sample and how well it did. “We tested the steel with all the required fireproofing on,” he wrote, “and it did beautifully.”[19] This response was copied to several UL executives, including Tom Chapin, the manager of UL’s Fire Protection division. Chapin reminded me that UL was the “leader in fire research testing,” but he clearly did not want to make any commitments on the issue. He talked about the floor assemblies, how these had not been UL tested, and he made the misleading claim that UL does not certify structural steel. But even an introductory textbook lists UL as one of the few important organizations supporting codes and specifications because they “produce a Fire Resistance Index with hourly ratings for beams, columns, floors, roofs, walls and partitions tested in accordance with ASTM Standard E119.”[20] He went on to clarify that UL tests assemblies of which steel is a component. This is a bit like saying “we don’t crash test the car door, we crash test the whole car.” In any case, Chapin suggested that we be patient and wait for the report from NIST, because the investigation into the “collapse of WTC buildings 1, 2, and 783; was an ongoing process and that “UL is right in the middle of these activities.”[21] For the most part, I did wait, although I shared my concerns with Chapin again at UL’s Leadership Summit in January 2004. I encouraged him to ask for a company news release on our position, but this did not happen and I never heard from him again. By the time UL tested the floor assembly models in August of that year, I had been promoted to the top management job in my division, Environmental Health Laboratories, overseeing all company functions. Two months later, NIST released an official update that included the floor test results, as well as Frank Gayle’s results, in which steel temperatures were predicted. These results clearly invalidated the major theories of collapse, because pancaking could not occur without floor collapse and steel does not turn to licorice at the temperatures discussed. After reviewing this update, I sent a letter directly to Dr. Gayle at NIST. In this letter, I referred to my experiences at UL and asked for more information on the WTC investigation and NIST’s soon-to-be-published conclusions. NIST had planned at the time to release its final report in December, with time allowed for public comment. After I allowed my letter to become public,[22] this date was moved to January 2005, and then nothing was heard from NIST for several months. Other than UL’s involvement in testing the steel components, the facts I stated had all been reported publicly, but when I put them together plainly, they were considered outrageous. Five days after I sent my letter, I was fired by UL for doing so. The company made a few brief statements in an attempt to discredit me, then quickly began to make it clear that its relationship with the government, perhaps due to its tax-exempt status, was more important than its commitment to public safety. For example, in spite of Tom Chapin’s previous statements, UL suggested that it had played only a “limited” role in the investigation. Despite what our CEO, Loring Knoblauch, had written and copied to several executives, UL said there was “no evidence” that any firm had tested the steel used in the WTC buildings.[23] In doing so, UL implied that its CEO not only had fabricated this story about testing the WTC steel but had also spoken and written about it for several years without anyone in the company correcting him. As I see it, the only other option was that the company claiming to be our “Public Safety Guardian” was lying to us about the most important safety issue of our lives. My experiences give a taste for the delicate nature of our critical turning point. But to keep our focus, we should examine what NIST did with the results of its physical tests, which had failed to support its conclusions. Did NIST perform more tests, at least to prove its key argument that much of the fireproofing on the steel in the Twin Towers popped off due to the impact of the airliners? No, it did not. Instead, NIST put together a black box computer model that would spit out the right answers. This black box model was driven by initial parameters that could be tweaked. When the parameters that had initially been considered “realistic” did not generate results that “compared to observed events,” NIST scientists performed their final analysis using another set of parameters they called “more severe.”[24] When they were finished, their model produced video graphics that would enable anyone to see the buildings collapse without having to follow a train of logic to get there. Tom Chapin of UL was one of those doomed to make public comments in support of NIST’s final report. His comments were innocuous enough but he did hint at something of value. “The effect of scale of test assemblies…,” Chapin said, “requires more investigation.”[25] This may be the closest thing to a straightforward statement that we will ever see from UL on the matter. But it seems clear enough that results showing zero floor collapse, when scaled-up from the floor panels to a few floors, would still result in zero floor collapse. Perhaps a more direct version of Chapin’s comment might be that test results negating predetermined conclusions should not be used to prove them. Other than the video, NIST left us with only some vague statements about a few sagging floors suddenly destroying two hundred super-strong perimeter columns and forty core columns. But since sagging floors do not weigh more than non-sagging floors, it is difficult to see how this might occur, especially so uniformly. NIST claimed the perimeter columns saw increased loads of between 0 and 25% due to the damage, but it never reconciled this with the original claim that these columns could resist 2000% increases in live load. And the outward-buckling theory, suggested by Thornton, was changed again to inward buckling-apparently the forces involved were never well defined. Additionally, NIST suggested that the documents that would support testing of the steel components, along with documents containing Skilling’s jet-fuel-fire analysis, could not be found.[26] Ultimately, NIST failed to give any explanation for the dynamics of the towers as they fell, about how and why they dropped like rocks in free-fall. For both buildings, NIST simply stated that “once the upper building section began to move downwards . . ., global collapse ensued,” as if just saying so was enough.[27] As for WTC7, NIST as of yet has not elaborated on its “working collapse hypothesis,” which was vaguely presented in June 2004.[28] The bottom line is that, after more than four years, it is still impossible for the government even to begin to explain the primary events that drive this War on Terrorism. So much has been sacrificed, and so much has been invested in this story, that we all have a need for supportive answers. But when we look for those answers, all our “mind’s eye” can see is this smoky black box, where scientific results are reversed to support politically correct, pre-determined conclusions. That critical point of divergence, where our lives were turned upside down and all logic followed, has always been too painful to imagine. But now, without expert accounts of pancaking floors and licorice steel, it cannot be imagined at all. Some of us remain hopeful that we can still achieve a critical mass awareness of the need for truth, and in doing so pull the support out from under what John McMurtry calls “the 9/11 Wars.”[29] But if we cannot, even as the hopes for peace fade and the number of 9/11 families continues to grow, we should remember how we got this story and how it was propped up despite all the evidence against it. Because whatever happens next, after the smoke clears, our children may have a need to know. [1] Richard Heinberg, “Götterdämmerung,” Museletter, No.144, March 2004 (http://www.museletter.com/archive/144.html). [2] David Ray Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions (Northampton: Interlink Books, 2005). Griffin summarizes the omissions and distortions in “The 9/11 Commission Report: A 571-Page Lie,” 911 Visibility Project, May 22, 2005 (http://www.septembereleventh.org/newsarchive/2005-05-22-571pglie.php). [3] Angus K. Gillespie, Twin Towers: The Life of New York City’s World Trade Center (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press 1999), 117. [4] “How Columns Will Be Designed for 110-Story Buildings,” Engineering News-Record, April 2, 1964: 48-49. [5] Jim Hoffman, “Building a Better Mirage: NIST’s 3-Year $20,000,000 Cover-Up of the Crime of the Century,” http://911Research.wtc7.net, December 8, 2005 (http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/nist/index.html). [6] Website for Teng & Associates (http://www.teng.com/teng2k3/mainframe.asp). [7] Website for National Directory of Expert Witnesses (http://national-experts.com/members2/witness.asp?d_memnum=07572&d_lnum=2). [8] Archived webcast video of NIST press briefing, NIST News Release website, June 23, 2005 (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/wtc_briefing_june2305.htm), 01:15:10. [9] Sheila Barter, “How the World Trade Center Fell,” BBC News, September 13, 2001 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1540044.stm). [10] Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), “World Trade Center Building Performance Study,” May 2005, Chapter 2. [11] James Glanz and Eric Lipton, City in the Sky: The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center (New York: Times Books, 2003), 330. [12] Karl Koch III with Richard Firstman, Men of Steel: The Story of the Family that Built the World Trade Center (New York: Crown Publishers, 2002), 365. [13] Eric Hufschmid, Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack (Goleta, Calif.: Endpoint Software, 2002), 27. [14] Table of results from Underwriters Laboratories August 2004 floor model tests, as presented by NIST in October 2004 (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/P6StandardFireTestsforWeb.pdf), 25. [15] NIST, Final Report of the National Construction Safety Team on the Collapses of the World Trade Center Towers(Draft) (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/NISTNCSTAR1draft.pdf), 195. [16] Silverstein’s statement is contained in “America Rebuilds,” PBS documentary, 2002 http://(www.pbs.org/americarebuilds). It can be viewed http://(www.infowars.com/Video/911/wtc7_pbs.WMV) or heard on audio file (http://VestigialConscience.com/PullIt.mp3). [17] “Structures Can Be Beautiful, World’s Tallest Buildings Pose Esthetic and Structural Challenge to John Skilling,” Engineering News-Record, April 2, 1964: 124. [18] Glanz and Lipton, City in the Sky, 138. [19] Underwriters Laboratories email correspondence, December 1, 2003. [20] Samuel H. Marcus, Basics of Structural Steel (Reston, Va.: Reston Publishing 1977), 20. [21] Underwriters Laboratories email correspondence, December 1, 2003. [22] Kevin Ryan, “The Collapse of the WTC,” 911 Visibility Project, November 11, 2004 (http://www.septembereleventh.org/newsarchive/2004-11-11-ryan.php). [23] John Dobberstein, “Area Man Stirs Debate on WTC Collapse,” South Bend Tribune, November 22, 2004 (http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20041124095100856). [24] NIST, Final Report, 196. [25] Comments from Underwriters Laboratories on NIST WTC report, NIST website (http://wtc.nist.gov/comments/ULI_Ganesh_Rao_8-5-05.pdf). [26] Archived webcast video of NIST press briefing, NIST News Release website, June 23, 2005 (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/wtc_briefing_june2305.htm), 01:18:50. [27] NIST, Final Report, 197. [28] NIST presentation on WTC7 collapse investigation, NIST website (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/June2004WTC7StructuralFire&CollapseAnalysisPrint.pdf). [29] John McMurtry, “9/11 and the 9/11 Wars: Understanding the Supreme Crimes.” In David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott, eds., 9/11 and the American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out (Northampton: Interlink Books, 2006). My present essay will also appear in this volume.
http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/wtc05-07-03.htm NIST has been unable to locate any fire endurance tests conducted on the WTC floor system to determine its fire rating. The Architect of Record and the Structural Engineer of Record stated in 1966 and 1975, respectively, that the fire rating of the floor system of the WTC towers could not be determined without testing. Transcript of NIST Public Meeting in New York City - February 12, 2004 68 Dr. Hill: Thank you, Roger. Next we'll hear from Leonard Crisci, FDNY family member. Is Leonard here? Leonard Crisci: Yes. Dr. Hill: Okay. L. Crisci: Thank you. John Napolitano: I’m standing here with Leonard. Everybody has their bag of logs to tote, and Lenny has me. L. Crisci: My brother, as you remember from before, is Lt. John Crisci from the Hazardous Material Unit who perished at the World Trade Center. But what I would like to bring - just throw this out. I'm not an architect nor am I an engineer, but I'm a reasonable man. And I use that as a way of doing life. What a reasonable man would think and do. And part of it is this. When you look at the World Trade Center as a whole, this - the Port Authority and it’s construction, and you read about it and you look into it, you see that what happened here, what occurred, was that the Port Authority took a - and the word is bad, conspiracy, because then everybody puts their head down. But they conspired to build this building using unorthodox ways. And here, follow me, Yama, the architect, a small guy in a Midwest city who never had a big project, yet he is the one who sought out to build the Trade Center. He gets the job. Skilling, an engineer, again from a small firm out west, out on the west coast, he gets the job to be the engineer. And he brings in a guy by the name of Leslie Robertson, who’s a college graduate, but at the time is not an engineer. Yet he designs the structure of the outer walls with the interior walls, the thin construction. [nc note: Mr. Crisci should have said "not a licensed Professional Engineer."] Then you watch what happens. Where do you get the steel to build this building? Well, you get it from United States Steel or Bethlehem Steel, the two number one in the world at that time. Remember, we were dealing in the 1960s. Japan and Korea were not a factor then. Yet, they go out and get bids from those two giants of steel are turned down because they say excessive. Yet they go out and get ten smaller companies, each one fractured all throughout the country, from Texas, to Seattle, to New York. They build the Trade Centers and they compartmentalize the building of the Trade Center. A Pullman coach, who builds railroad cars, builds part of the World Trade Center. They get the contract. They build it. Now you’ve gone and you find the erector, Koch. Koch erects the building. When they bid out the process for the erecting, Koch is the only bidder. Why? Because no one else wanted to - they knew they couldn't get involved in it. Plus they were a small company with a lot of good background in the erecting business. They go on and erect the building. It was a foregone conclusion that they were going to go bankrupt, and which they did. They - well at least not totally, later on they went bankrupt. But they built the building. The Trade Center was constructed at 60% of the steel in the first 12 floors. If you’re getting paid by the tonnage, your money is gone by the time you reach the 13th floor. The next 100 floors were built with only 40% of the steel. The steel gets progressively thinner, up to a quarter of an inch when it reached the 110th floor. Then you bring this innovative - if you went out to buy a washing machine today, and the salesman told you that it's innovative, never tried before, never done before, you’d probably walk out of the store. You don’t want to buy it. Yet everything in the World Trade Center was innovative, never done before, new concept, excellent idea. The bottom line was that the Port Authority made a concerted effort to go and get small companies that were dependent upon the Trade Center either for their fame, fortune, or glory. That's how these guys - because everyone who was involved in it, except the big guys, Skilling and Leslie Robertson, they all went bankrupt. In the book, "Men of Steel," by Koch, he brings out a very, very pointed story. He's in the business 100 years erecting steel. He brings his grandfather into the topping out ceremony. They pull his 90-year-old grandfather in a wheelchair out onto one of the floors in the mid building. This 90-year-old man who’s been erecting steel for all of his life looks around and says to his son, “Where’s the steel? Where is it?” And then the son explains, Dad - you know, Grandpa, it’s on the outside and the inside. There's no steel in this building. What's holding it up? Well, what’s holding it up was this innovative idea of truss floors, spanning 60 feet across, held onto by 5/8-inch bolts. This is what our loved ones were standing on and doing business on. That's why we're here. J. Napolitano: No dedicated fire escapes. No cement. No concrete. Sheet rock walls to stop an airplane. L. Crisci: You build a structure with high-speed elevators; encase them in sheet rock. Sure, it was a great - my thing has always been that if Robertson was a student at MIT, and he designed the World Trade Center as his Masters for his graduation class, he would have got an A from his professor. And he would have said, this is great. One of the best ideas I’ve ever seen. But on the bottom it would have said, it ain’t gonna work. It’s not gonna work. It can’t happen. J. Napolitano: And it didn't work. L. Crisci: And you know what, it didn’t work, because they murdered our family members by putting them in a building that they couldn't get out of when it came. By the way, everybody who went and built that World Trade Center, all the contractors, nobody made money. The only ones who made money were the Port Authority. And why did they make it? Because they gave their tenants beautiful views with wide open, 209 feet of open views. They gave them - when that fire - when that plane hit, that plane, there was nothing to stop the spread of that fuel. It went across the floors. It ignited. It ignited everything on it. Nothing was done to help us. When they built those stairwells, you know, they didn't give you a way out. They gave you 3, but no way out. You were dead if something cut off one of those stairwells. And they died. They died horribly. J. Napolitano: The steel had a two-hour fire rating that they felt that it wouldn’t fail and the building would stay up. But they knew from 1993, that it took over ten hours to evacuate. Do the math. And they sent first responders up there, and give them a window of two hours to get up 80, 90 floors to try to rescue people and get them out. All within two hours. L. Crisci: What I ask you sir, and I know you’re not investigating, you’re not a criminal liability, but I say this to you. This was a - Austin Tobin, he designed this with the full intent, knowing what was going to happen. He did it economically then the Port Authority went with him. Those buildings should have never been inhabited out there. All of our people who were - and you have to say that when it comes down. All these icons of industry, they gotta know. Because if - just think of the magnitude of that building. Why wasn’t it full of New York architects and New York engineers? Why did they have to go out of town to get these people? Because those are the only people that could be brow beaten by the developers. They did what they had to do because that’s what made them famous. And that has to be said. Dr. Hill: Len? Okay, Leonard. Thank you for your comments. I appreciate it. L. Crisci: Thank you for letting me have my comments. John Napolitano: Thank you very much. I just want to say something really brief. My son was a first responder. He was with Rescue Two, Lieutenant John P. Napolitano. He was a husband, a father; two little girls. Lenny, his brother, John Crisci, Lieutenant with HazMat, also a father; three sons. On the morning of September 12 Lenny and I got down there to search for our loved ones and some of the loved ones of you people here in this room today, and we never found them. At what they were calling “ground zero” at a triage area, I wrote a message in the ashes to my son. I thought if he was hurt and they brought him there that he’d see it and he’d know we were there. I just simply wrote "Rescue Two, John Napolitano, I'm here and I love you, Dad." I'm sure he saw it. Well, I’m here today on his behalf and his name, because if he could be here, he’d be saying what I'm saying today and what Lenny’s saying today. Gentlemen, listen, we know the buildings failed. There was a lot of expert testimony here. We know what we saw. We saw the buildings come down. The question is, was it an honest mistake on how they were made or was it criminal? And that's the question that has to be asked. Thank you. Dr. Hill: Thank you.
That's false. But you continue with your circus act, NC. Go ahead, continue with your circus act, NC. New York allowed a licensed Professional Engineer in California to legally practice in New York. Ever hear of "comity"? Apparently not. So you claim. Prove it. With a source we can both believe. And do something more than quote CURRENT regulation and rules, NC. Quote the regulations as they stood back in 1964. You can do that, can't you? Or perhaps all those organizations I listed who state that Robertson was the lead structural engineer on the project actually know something that you do not.
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Hey BAC, does your standard of 'proof' apply to Dr. Rokke and the DU issue? Well ...... C'mon asshole, you can't have it both ways! Oh, other than third-party citation, what were the professional qualifications of your engineer guy, relative to 1964? Hey BAC, you asshole, I'm talking to you!
Go ahead, continue with your circus act, NC. New York allowed a licensed Professional Engineer in California to legally practice in New York. Ever hear of "comity"? Apparently not. So you claim. Prove it. With a source we can both believe. And do something more than quote CURRENT regulation and rules, NC. Quote the regulations as they stood back in 1964. You can do that, can't you? Or perhaps all those organizations I listed who state that Robertson was the lead structural engineer on the project actually know something that you do not. http://www.lera.com/robertson.htm Education University of California at Berkeley, B.Sc., 1952 Professional Licenses Structural Engineer - California http://www.cee.princeton.edu/people/e21/robertson/profile.html BS, University of California at Berkeley, 1952 Honorary degree, Doctor of Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1986 http://www.heimer.com/pe/index.html Note: Requirements vary slightly from state to state. The requirements listed below are based on the requirements of the State of New York. Only when all requirements have been met can an individual be considered a Licensed Professional Engineer. Becoming a Licensed Professional Engineer requires at least 12 years of acceptable education/experience credit. Some of this is often obtained through four years of college study, although there are other ways of obtaining the required credit. After obtaining six years of acceptable education/experience credit, the candidate takes the Fundamentals of Engineering exam. After passing the Fundamentals of Engineering exam, and obtaining at least 12 years of acceptable engineering/education experience, the engineer must pass the Principles and Practice of Engineering exam. Only when all requirements have been met can an individual be considered a Licensed Professional Engineer. Source: New York State Education Department http://www.nysed.gov/coms/op001/opscr2?profcd=16&plicno=034360 Name : ROBERTSON LESLIE E http://www.nysed.gov/coms/op001/opscr2?profcd=16&plicno=039286 Name : SKILLING JOHN B
Before moving to New York, Robertson was a resident of Washington, not California. As you have reminded everyone many times, Robertson had moved to New York. He was not an out-of-state resident. An engineering license is only valid in the state in which it is issued. While it may be easier for someone who holds a license in one state to obtain a license in another state, said engineer must nevertheless obtain a license in each state for which he chooses to practice. Robertson obtained his New York State license on January 6, 1965. Until he was licensed as a Professional Engineer in the state of New York, he could not act as a Licensed Professional Engineer.
What's the problem? Couldn't figure out that there shouldn't be a space between the ? and ArtNum? Here: http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=51045&Disp=0 "The 9/11 Truther Credo" By the way, innieway that article describes your debating tactics to a T. Try this: http://www.skyscraper.org Guess you missed what I posted about that too. Too bad. Perhaps not. But I guarantee that you folks won't be taken seriously as long as you continue to mix the easily debunked nonsense like bombs in the towers and no Flight 77 at the Pentagon in with the legitimate questions. And you won't be taken seriously as long as you continue to use the tactics listed in http://freedom4um.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=51045&Disp=0 .
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So you consider Kevin Ryan a credible source, NC? Even after all that has been pointed out about him? Even after all the instances where his dishonesty, misrepresentations of fact, and lack of understanding about structures, demolition, fire, steel and physics have been pointed out in thread after thread on the internet? If he is what your side of the debate calls an credible expert 5 years after 9/11, your side is really in trouble. You need to face the truth. In 5 years, your side has been unable to get anyone (well, maybe one or two, but one can easily show they aren't reliable or credible either) with appropriate credentials to support your accusations. And all Ryan does in this latest article is rehash a few dozen claims that have already been shown to be untrue, gross distortions of the truth or based on false logic. This regurgitation of claims that have already been discredited is just a "9/11 Truther" tactic. What can I do at this point in time but laugh? NC, it is difficult to take you serious when the likes of Kevin Ryan, water treatment expert, is the best you can offer. After more than 5 years.
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Beach hoser, the only way NORAD doesn't stop the Pentagon attack is if the White House STOPPED THEM. I know you hate to see it, but Norm Manetta did. Mineta on Cheney stand down http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRJAI4- e7Xw&mode=related&search=
Interesting research, NC. Happen to know who actually signed the drawings? And what are you going to do with this info? Try and prove that the towers shouldn't have collapsed in a court of law? That should be interesting. ROTFLOL!
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Can't answer for the Mineta video, can you, beach hoser? So, you'll keep slamming any person who offers an opinion about 9-11, because you worship authority and wrongly think they'd treat you any differently than they would the rest of us.
John Skilling went to the Port Authority Headquarters in New York in the summer of 1962 - unaccompanied - and pitched the design. [Glanz & Lipton, City in the Sky, p. 118] John Skilling obtained his New York Professional Engineer license on June 8, 1962. The contract was awarded to Worthington, Skilling, Helle and Jackson on September 12, 1962. [Glanz & Lipton, City in the Sky, p. 119] Jack Christiansen was the firm's "resident master of thin concrete structures." [Glanz & Lipton, City in the Sky, p. 120] Jack Christiansen obtained his New York Professional Engineer license on May 24, 1963. Harold Worthington obtained his New York Professional Engineer license on October 7, 1963. Leslie Robertson obtained his New York Professional Engineer license on January 6, 1965. I don't reckon they figured junior non-partner Robertson needed one until 1965. Let us not forget that according to BAC #45: "The design of the major structural elements of the towers surely had to have been completed by February 1964." http://www.nysed.gov/coms/op001/opscr2?profcd=16&plicno=040112 Name : CHRISTIANSEN JOHN V http://www.nysed.gov/coms/op001/opscr2?profcd=16&plicno=040201 Name : WORTHINGTON HAROLD L
Not Robertson as he was not legally qualified to do so. Skilling, Worthington and Christiansen were the ones lawfully qualified to sign documents.
Repeat it every time you make the FALSE claim that the UNLICENSED Robertson was the "Lead Structural Engineer of record."
Depends on when the final drawings were signed.
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According to BAC #45: "The design of the major structural elements of the towers surely had to have been completed by February 1964." Robertson was not licensed until 1965. Of course, Skilling was licensed in 1962, and Worthing and Christiansen were licensed in 1963. Perhaps later on Daddy [Chief Engineer Skilling] threw some crumbs to Robertson. Perhaps after Skilling signed for and submitted all of the MAJOR structural elements of the tower design about a year before Robertson was eligible to sign anything, Robertson was permitted to supervise the construction of the towers according to the drawings signed by Skilling and Robertson could have signed for some MINOR modifications. Of course, at all times Chief Engineer Skilling could have said to Robertson, "Who's your Daddy?" And let us not forget what Dr. Sunder said about documents NIST obtained from 1964: The impact scenario that was considered is a Boeing 707 traveling at 600 miles an hour. There's another document a month later that considers an aircraft impact at the 80th floor of one of the towers. When you put those two together, the events of September 11th look strikingly similar. There is not one documented study but TWO. Each considers an aircraft hit into the towers. The impact scenario was a Boeing 707 traveling at 600 miles per hour. They are strikingly similar to the actual events of 9/11. Let us not forget the 1964 press conference to counter the claims in the NYT that the towers were vulnerable to aircraft strikes: According to BAC delusion #149, that translates to, "In 1964 (and even today) large commercial planes didn't fly 600 mph at 1000 feet above a city. So NOONE was considering that a design load for buildings until 9/11." Or in BAC delusion #154, "That they would have looked at a 600mph crash as a design load is ridiculous."
How else could Skilling have reported in the white paper dated February 1964 that they'd investigated whether a plane crash would collapse the towers? That doesn't mean he wasn't the one who did the analysis Skilling mentioned. Doesn't mean they reviewed and signed the final drawings. That's not what source after source says. Wonder why they got it wrong? Afterall, some of them ... unlike you or I have actually seen the drawings. Sorry, but that is just plane (sic) silly. There is no rationale reason to look at an 600 mph impact scenario. Not unless one is considering a deliberate crash ... and they weren't doing that in 1963. Because the only circumstances where such a large plane might accidently hit the towers is if it was lost in fog at low level (in which case it is highly doubtful that it would be flying at it's maximum velocity) or if a mechanical problem or a collision causes the plane to fall from a higher altitude (which is a very rare event and again something that codes and building designers back then simply did not consider a reasonable design load). Far more likely is that both Skilling and the Port Authority architect misrepresented (either deliberately or through miscommunications) what sort of analysis was actually done in order to allay public concern brought about by someone who didn't want the towers built and who was exaggerating the threat from such events. Really? Can you produce this document? No? The truth is that we don't really know what was or wasn't done. Or whether there were one or two *studies*. The only person who is still alive who seems to remember anything is Robertson. Absolutely true.
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[nc] Robertson was not licensed until 1965. [BAC #182] That doesn't mean he wasn't the one who did the analysis Skilling mentioned. It -does- mean that he was not the "Lead Structural Engineer of Record" or "Head Structural Engineer or Record" which is the LIE you repeatedly told. While Robertson may have been assigned to perform analysis, or fetch coffee and donuts for his Daddy, he was not the "Lead Structural Engineer of Record" or "Head Structural Engineer or Record" which is the LIE you repeatedly told. It also means that your entire spam list consists of discredited sources. [BAC #1] First of all John Skilling was NOT the head structural engineer for the WTC towers. Leslie Robertson is the head structural engineer of record. [BAC #154] Robertson was the Lead Structural Engineer of record. Skilling simply owned the design company and had a strong interest in making potential occupants feel safe. ----- [BAC #155] Let's see. Scientific American says he was. NIST says he was. American Society of Civil Engineers says he was. Columbia University says he was. PBS says he was. http://www.skyscraper.org says he was. The MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering says he was. McGraw-Hill Construction / ENR magazine says he was. The American Council of Engineering Companies says he was. http://www.cenews.com says he was. The National Academy of Engineering says he was. en.structurae.de says he was. The BBC says he was. The Stanford Engineering Department says he was. http://www.construction.com says he was. http://www.istructe.org says he was. http://www.wtc.com says he was. http://www.americanscientist.org says he was. The NYTimes says he was. The University of Berkeley says he was. -----
"The design of the major structural elements of the towers surely had to have been completed by February 1964." Robertson was not licensed until 1965. Skilling was licensed in 1962. Worthing and Christiansen were licensed in 1963. Robertson obviously had no need for a license until 1965, a year after BeAChooser determined that "[t]he design of the major structural elements of the towers surely had to have been completed." Until a year after BeAChooser determined that "[t]he design of the major structural elements of the towers surely had to have been completed," Robertson could not sign a damn thing.
Now how could that be a lie when I cited source after source (see post #157) that ALL said Robertson was the lead or head structural engineer (and "of record" in some of those cases). Perhaps you don't really know what a lie is, NC. Well that may be. Or perhaps they know something you do not. Who signed the final engineering drawings? You can't answer that question? Who was the project engineer on that job? It was Robertson, wasn't it? And by the view of many, that would indeed make him the head or lead structural engineer on that job. Do you have any sources that said Skilling was the engineer who worked on a day to day basis on the design of the towers? No? Do you have any sources that say Skilling was the one who directly supervised the team of engineers in New York? No? Well again, maybe all those sources in that list know something you do not. I don't think you really understand what signing the drawings means, NC.
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Robertson was not licensed until 1965. Robertson could not sign anything but the receipt for donuts and coffee until 1965 after "The design of the major structural elements of the towers surely had to have been completed."
[nc] Robertson was not licensed until 1965. [BAC #182] That doesn't mean he wasn't the one who did the analysis Skilling mentioned. It -does- mean that he was not the "Lead Structural Engineer of Record" or "Head Structural Engineer o[f] Record" which is the LIE you repeatedly told. Now how could that be a lie when I cited source after source (see post #157) that ALL said Robertson was the lead or head structural engineer (and "of record" in some of those cases). Perhaps you don't really know what a lie is, NC. The question posed at #157 was, "If Robertson was the Lead Structural Engineer "of record," produce that record." You cited source after source that you purported said "Lead Structural Engineer of record." Now your SPAM list is reduced to, "'of record' in some of those cases." Of course, you posted no quote or citation to anything but the name of an organization. For example, "Columbia University" did not say anything unless it issued from the organization and not just some internet comment from someone at Columbia University. So it is with all those unidentified purported "citations." As for your links, not a solitary one provides so much as a mention of Robertson or the lead structural engineer of anything. Each merely goes to the homepage of some site or other. Let us review that #157 to show that your purported links and cites are just empty bullshit. Let's see. Scientific American says he was. [nc - the editorial staff of Scientific American says he was what? The "Lead Structural Engineer of Record" or the coffee and donut fetcher?] NIST says he was. American Society of Civil Engineers says he was. Columbia University says he was. PBS says he was. http://www.skyscraper.org says he was. The MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering says he was. McGraw-Hill Construction / ENR magazine says he was. The American Council of Engineering Companies says he was. http://www.cenews.com says he was. The National Academy of Engineering says he was. en.structurae.de says he was. The BBC says he was. The Stanford Engineering Department says he was. http://www.construction.com says he was. http://www.istructe.org says he was. http://www.wtc.com says he was. http://www.americanscientist.org says he was. The NYTimes says he was. The University of Berkeley says he was. Right, NC. We have every reason to doubt them. ROTFLOL!
The firm of Worthington, Skilling, et. al., was awarded the contract on 9/12/1962. Skilling was licensed in New York in June 1962. The design of the major structural elements of the towers surely had to have been completed by February 1964. Otherwise, Skilling could not possibly have completed an analysis of the structure's ability to survive a high speed plane crash that he published a White Paper about on February 3, 1964. ... Either the White Paper is simply nonsense based on an incomplete design or the design (as far as what would be necessary to determine the resistance of the towers to plane impact) was completed by February 3, 1964. And since it must have taken some time to do the analysis that is claimed and write the White Paper, that would imply the design was essentially finished before January 1964. ... But he didn't change the essential structure during that revision. The revision must have consisted of very few changes because the articles you linked and quoted from 1964 and earlier show design details (size of columns, spacing, steel strengths, etc) that agree quite well with the final design. And indeed, the article you quote doesn't say the revision involved changes in the major structure. Assume arguendo that the major structural elements of the towers had to have been competed by February 1964, as claimed by BAC. Assume the design was essentially finished before January 1964 as claimed by BAC. Assume subsequent revision consisted of very few changes because the design details from 1964 agree quite well with the final design, as claimed by BAC. QUESTION: In what year was somebody, anybody, first designated as the "Lead Structural Engineer of Record?" (a) 1962
A response that's right out of the book http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/01/11/wtc_forum.html "Columbia News, the Public Affairs and Record Home Page, Columbia Hosts Nov. 12 Forum of World Trade Center Engineers, by Suzanne Trimel, ... snip ... Among the participants will be Leslie Robertson of Leslie Robertson Associates, the engineer of record for the Twin Towers; ... snip ... Published: Nov 06, 2001" http://www.civil.columbia.edu/wtcforum/ "Forum on the Technical Implications of the World Trade Center Collapses ... snip ... Organizer: Professor Rene B. Testa ... snip ... Sponsored by the Department of Civil Engineering & Engineering Mechanics at Columbia University through the Center for Hazards and Risk Research at Columbia University together with the Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems (ICIS) at New York University ... snip ... Speakers: ... snip ... Leslie Robertson, Leslie E. Robertson Associates, Mr. Robertson is the engineer OF RECORD for the World Trade Center Towers" Care to try again, NC? Your problem is that you are just too lazy to go look at what each of those organizations has said about Mr Robertson. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000B7FEB-A88C-1C75-9B81809EC588EF21 "Robert Fowler, senior engineer at the structural engineering firm of McNamara and Salvia. Fowler was then a junior member of the WTC's engineering firm of record, Worthington, Skilling, Helle & Jackson, later renamed Skilling Helle Christiansen Robertson. ... snip ... Leslie E. Robertson, then the project manager, was the engineer most responsible for the superskyscraper's design, Fowler noted." "THE ENGINEER MOST RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SUPERSKYSCRAPER'S DESIGN." Now if that isn't the lead or head engineer, what is that?
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(a) 1962 Despite all your SPAM, you either "forgot" or you were unable to answer the question. Try again. Perhaps Chooser, unable to choose, needs more choices.
He never converses, listens and answers and provides interesting threads of thought on 9 11, he just spams and rants. He is oblivious to anything but his hatred of this forum, his ego, and core agenda of supporting the war on terror. He appreciates the false flag operations beause the perpetrator's motives to change the climate of the United States to make it condusive to stripping rights and creating war are his motives too.
BAC - please explain how the major structural designs in the WTC were incorporated into previous structures designed by John Skilling. "City in the Sky, The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center," James Glanz and Eric Lipton, Times Books, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2003, First paperback edition 2004, ISBN: 0-8050-7691-3, pp. 123-4 The World Trade Center, the agency said, "required engineering ingenuity from foundation to roof." The truth was a little more prosaic. As outlandish as his design sounded to the Eastern engineering establishment, including the Port Authority's own hardheaded engineering department - which was deeply offended by Mal Levy's decision to have an outside firm do the work - every facet of the design was almost a photographic expansion of something that Skilling and his staff had used on earlier jobs. As far back as 1957, Skilling and Nathaniel Curtis, the New Orleans architect, designed a thirteen-story office tower in Pittsburgh that was among the first modern high-rises whose exterior walls would be built to resist all the lateral forces caused by wind - a system close to the "tube" concept of the World Trade Center. This design let Skilling and his engineers build fifty-seven-foot "clear spans," or floor spaces unencumbered by columns, just like the trade center. The design also used newly available high-strength steel, as the trade center would. Even the conversion of Yamasaki's pinstripes into structural elements had already been done in the IBM Building in Seattle, a twenty-story, 272-foot high-rise completed in 1963. The steel pinstripes, separated by less than 3 feet, were encased in prefabricated concrete covers, like the prefabricated steel panels of the trade center. Perhaps the most striking parallel, though, was embedded deep inside the Washington Building in Seattle. Ordinarily, the steel girders and beams supporting the floors get in the way of the ductwork, plumbing, and electrical wiring that must thread their way through the space between the ceiling of one story of the building and the floor of the next. From other engineers, Skilling borrowed the idea of using torches to cut a zigzagging pattern along the length of the support beams, sliding one of the halves a few inches horizontally and welding the pieces back together again. This "castellated beam" method left gaps for the ductwork to fit through, and it let Skilling reduce the total height of each story in the Washington Building by nearly a foot. He and his staff took the idea a step further in their design for the World Trade Center: they proposed replacing the beams entirely with airy, weblike networks of thin steel bars and angle irons called bar-joist trusses. Corrugated decking would be placed atop these floor trusses so that concrete could be poured on it to create the floors. The ductwork could run without obstruction, and the diaphanous floor trusses would complete a design for the World Trade Center without precedent in its feathery, ethereal lightness. Skilling engineers calculated that for every cubic foot of space inside the Empire State Building, that skyscraper weighed 17 pounds; the World Trade Center would weigh just 10.5 pounds a cubic foot, lighter by an amazing 38 percent. As with all of the Skilling innovations, the trusses came with several twists. First of all, the trusses that actually went into the building would be stouter than any similar support system ever devised, with cross-bracing and a redundant design unknown in the ordinary bar-joist trusses that are common in warehouse construction. Second, the trusses would be built in such away that the concrete of the floors would also add to the structural integrity of the system. Still, Skilling and his engineers had, once again, gone into a structural realm where no one else had been.
"City in the Sky, The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center," James Glanz and Eric Lipton, Times Books, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2003, First paperback edition 2004, ISBN: 0-8050-7691-3, pp. 131-3 "Salient points with regard to the structural design of The World Trade Center towers" was the low-key title on the white paper in the Port Authority's files. Below the title were eleven numbered points on the structure, beginning with: "1. The structural analysis carried out by the firm of Worthington, Skilling, Helle & Jackson is the most complete and detailed of any ever made for any building structure. The preliminary calculations alone cover 1,200 pages and involve over 100 detailed drawings." At the end of the three-page document was the notation "MPL.fg" above the date "2-3-64" - meaning that the white paper had been typed for Malcolm P. Levy by his secretary, Florence Grainger, on February 3,1964. Some of the numbered points gave routine summaries of the expected characteristics of the twin towers' engineering design. But halfway down the first page, the paper contained this astonishing statement: Whatever the origin of the white paper, it suggests clearly that the Skilling firm - whether with or without the assistance of Port Authority engineers is not specified - looked at what would happen if a Boeing 707 or a McDonnell Douglas DC-8 rammed the World Trade Center. What those engineers discovered - and failed to discover - would become fateful nearly forty years later. The engineers found, in essence, that the Skilling firm's "total concept" would not just give the twin towers a huge margin of reserve strength to help them survive the initial impact: the peculiarities of their design would let them act almost like a living being to resist overall failure and collapse even when grievously damaged by the plane. But those same engineers, all of them either working for the Port Authority or, like Skilling, under contract to it, did not think through the doubts that Rosaleen Skehan and her Fire Department friends were already starting to raise. That could hardly be a surprise, considering that Levy was seemingly orchestrating the entire operation. Levy had made his views on fire safety painfully clear to Skehan. Exactly how the notion of studying a plane impact originally came about remains uncertain. Except for the three-page white paper, there is no known description of the study that might reveal the detailed calculations that the engineers carried out and the assumptions that they made. But over the years, Skilling and others said enough about the calculations that a little mathematical sleuthing easily fills in at least some of the gaps. There were probably two basic phases to the study. The first looked at the force that the impact of a Boeing 707, the largest commercial plane flying at the time, would exert on the structure and compared it to the force produced by the kind of windstorm that the towers were engineered to withstand. (Damage inflicted by the smaller DC-8 would most likely be less severe than what the 707 could deliver.) The second phase took into account the hole the plane would cut and tried to figure out whether the tower would collapse because of that breach. The first part of the calculation would have been quite simple. The towers had been designed to withstand the forces of windstorms with gusts of at least 120 miles an hour. Specifically, they were supposed to hold up against at least forty-five pounds of lateral force on every square foot without shearing off and toppling. Each tower would be about 1,350 feet tall and 209 feet across on each face: 282,150 square feet. So if a wind sufficient to exert forty-five pounds per square foot of force was blowing directly against one of the faces, that would be about 13 million pounds, all told. And the tower should stand, with a standard safety margin of perhaps 30 to 40 percent to spare. To figure out if the plane had a chance of tipping the tower over, Mal Levy's engineers needed to estimate how much force the collision might produce. A Boeing 707 made a B-25 look like an insect by comparison. With a tip-to-tip wingspan of 131 feet and a fuel capacity of more than twenty thousand gallons, a fully loaded 707 can weigh 300,000 pounds on takeoff, and its cruising speed is about 600 miles per hour. The engineers knew that parts of the little B-25 flew all the way through the limestone-encased Empire State Building and out the other side. So it might have been reasonable to assume that the bigger, faster 707, after plowing into the much more compliant facade of a World Trade Center tower, would not come to a complete stop before it reached the opposite side of the floor, 209 feet away. It is a complicated problem to figure out precisely how hard the plane might push on the tower during a collision, but given the plane's known weight, initial speed, and stopping distance, any freshman engineering student could come up with a rough estimate. The number turns out to be 17 million pounds, probably within the safety margin. Levy's engineers had discovered that not even a speeding 707 would shear off one of the towers. But would the hole punched out by the plane cause the tower to collapse? If the hole ran from wingtip to wingtip, then more than half the columns on one entire facade could be cut - more than thirty crucial structural supports - potentially endangering the stability of the structure. The engineers found that the tower would have an even more remarkable kind of resiliency to protect it against a total collapse because of those lost supports. The tightly spaced columns above the damage, each connected to the next by the spandrel plates, would spontaneously form an arch over the hole. The technical term is a Vierendeel truss - the same type of archlike structure that supports many pedestrian bridges or other light bridges. The Vierendeel trusses would be so effective, according to the engineers' calculations, that all the columns on one side of a tower could be cut, as well as the two corners and several columns on the adjacent sides, and the tower would still be strong enough to withstand 100-mile-per-hour winds. The basic study had been completed by February 3, 1964, the day Levy's white paper was typed.
Now if that isn't the lead or head engineer, what is that? To answer your question, what you stated was more diversionary bullshit. The question you keep avoiding is your claim that Robertson was the "Lead Structural Engineer of record." You said it, and it has a specific connotation. During 1962, 1963, and 1964, Robertson was not eligible to be a licensed Professional Engineer in New York, much less the "Lead Structural Engineer of record" for the WTC project. "Men of Steel, The Story of the Family that Built the World Trade Center," Karl Koch III with Richard Firstman, Three Rivers Press, New York, 2002, First Paperback Edition, ISBN: 1-4000-4950-4, pp. 194-5. Robertson had dropped out of high school and joined the Navy at sixteen, eventually returning home and going to college at Berkeley. He turned the training he'd received in electronics in the service into an early career designing electrical systems for factories. Then he advanced to structural engineering and spent some time designing offshore oil-drilling rigs before returning to the West Coast and joining the Skilling firm in 1958. "Then John Skilling, almost beyond belief, was willing to entrust the design for the World Trade Center to me, when no one in their right mind would entrust a thirty-four-year-old engineer with it." Not to mention a thirty-four-year-old who had no degree in engineering, structural or otherwise. Robertson had gotten a bachelor's degree in science and everything else was on-the-job training. [nc - Robertson born 1928. Joined Navy at 16, 1944. Exit Navy 1948. Four years college exit 1952. 12 years experience as engineer not earlier than 1964. For licensing as a Professional Engineer, NY permitted 4 years of education in the engineering field to be counted toward experience, otherwise required 12 years experience. It appears Robertson obtained a license in 1965 when he had enough experience (training under John Skilling) to meet the minimum qualifications to be a licensed Professional Engineer in the state of New York.]
BAC - where the hell did the steel go? "Men of Steel, The Story of the Family that Built the World Trade Center," Karl Koch III with Richard Firstman, Three Rivers Press, New York, 2002, First Paperback Edition, ISBN: 1-4000-4950-4, pp. 375-6. Until it stopped taking regular deliveries in March of 2001, the 3,000-acre Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island was the largest garbage dump in the world. Six months later, it became almost a city of misery and destruction, the place to bring the wreckage and remains of all the life that was obliterated that Tuesday morning in September. One day a few months after the attack, I drove out there and met up with a friend, a trucker who had been hired by the city to haul away all the scrap metal. I had called him with two purposes in mind. Seeing the landfill was only the second one. Mainly, I wanted him to tell me his recollections of how he had gotten the floor panels to the Trade Center during the tugboat strike of 1969. It was none other than Tom Petrizzo, the man who stopped traffic on half the bridges in the metropolitan area for twenty-two straight nights. Tom picked me up at the gate and started driving around the landfill, pointing out the sobering sights. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of crushed vehicles, including row after row of destroyed fire trucks. There had to be enough to outfit the entire fire department of a medium-sized city. We passed pieces of wreckage from one of the jets. "The fuselage of the plane, the motors, and the wheels are back there," Tom said. "See those guys inside here?" He pointed to a tent. "They're all FBI agents, NYPD, or ATF. They're finding wallets, watches, all kinds of jewelry and personal belongings. This is the coroner's area here. There was so much being found at the beginning they had refrigerator trailers." Tom drove on to an area that he said had been a mountain of steel a couple of months earlier. "It was about thirty feet high," he said. Now most of it was gone, shipped out to Hugo Neu Schnitzer in Jersey City, the biggest scrap metal dealer in the country. By now a lot of it was on its way to China to be melted down and recycled. "There had to be three hundred thousand tons," Tom said. "How many tons in the two buildings?" "Two hundred thousand," I said. "In both buildings? Impossible." "That's what it was," I assured him. "That's what I got paid for." "Some of the columns that came in here were bent like U-turns," Tom said. I asked him if he'd seen any floor sections. "No, that's what I don't understand," Tom said. "I didn't see one goddamn floor deck come here with a bar joist in it. They must have disintegrated. Because they did not get here. And I handled this from day fuckin' one." "Did they send you any decking that was loose, no joists?" I asked. "None," Tom said. "None? Well, that's impossible. There were six thousand of them." "There's stuff crumpled up, but go identify it as a floor deck if you can. Impossible. A lot of guys come and ask me, they know I was involved in bringing 'em over, but Karl, not one came where I could say, 'Oh, here's one.' I could not show anybody a floor deck and say, 'This is what I hauled over.'" I couldn't believe it. Not one goddamn floor panel.
Damn... it must be humbling to find that David Ray Griffin is right and BAC is out to lunch again. "Debunking 9/11 Debunking, An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory," David Ray Griffin, Olive Branch Press, 2007, ISBN: 978-1-56656-686-5 p. The PM authors next suggest that the engineers, in constructing the towers, perhaps forgot to think about the fact that any planes hitting the towers would have fuel that would start big fires. They quote Leslie Robertson, called "(John] Skilling's chief colleague in the WTC project," as saying: "We... designed for the impact of [a Boeing 707]. The next step would have been to think about the fuel load, and I've been searching my brain, but... I don't know if we considered the fire damage that would cause." [138] However, perhaps Robertson, instead of simply searching his brain, should have searched to see what Skilling said. At least the PM authors should have done this, because, although they present Robertson as "Skilling's chief colleague in the WTC project," Skilling was the one in charge. Robertson was at the time a junior member of the firm (Worthington, Skilling, Helle, and Jackson). And Skilling, as I pointed out in Chapter 3, had thought about the fire damage, saying that if one of the towers were to be hit by a plane loaded with jet-fuel, "there would be a horrendous fire" and "a lot of people would be killed," but "the building structure would still be there." [139] [138] D9/11M 31, quoting Robertson's statement as provided in the New Yorker, 19 November 2001. [139] John Skilling's statement is quoted in Eric Nalder, "Twin Towers Engineered to Withstand Jet Collision," Seattle Times 27 February 1993. It is partially quoted in James Glanz and Eric Lipton, City in the Sky: The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center (New York: Times Books,/Henry Holt, 2003) 138.
[BAC] The White Paper contained ONLY that statement. Nothing else to back it up. That they would have looked at a 600mph crash as a design load is ridiculous. They didn't really have the tools back in 1963 to confidently determine what would happen in that case.
#157. To: nolu_chan (#155)
If Robertson was the Lead Structural Engineer "of record,"
produce that record.
#158. To: BeAChooser (#157)
#159. To: Paul Revere (#158)
Explain a symmetric collapse of a building with asymmetric
damage.
It cannot be done without
explosives to make it happen.
#160. To: BeAChooser, all (#159)
Then you should have no trouble naming structural engineers and demolitions experts who agree with you that the WTC towers were brought down by explosives.
#161. To: BeAChooser, Jethro Tull, Christine, Honway, Robin, Aristeides, Red Jones, Diana, Kamala, honway, SKYDRIFTER, Critter, innieway, Paul Revere, Ferret Mike, RickyJ, bluedogtxn (#157)
http://www.heimer.com/frameset/offsite.asp?url=http://www.op.nysed.gov/profengb.htm
http://www.heimer.com/pe/index.html
#162. To: Paul Revere, ALL (#160)
Only because it serves my purpose to hoist you on your own retard, I'll give you one, Beach hoser: Van Romero.
* Develop groundwater activation model that can be used to optimize the design for acceleration production of tritium with DOE.
* Seismic source investigation, modeling and characterization of currently deployed explosive sources, design and computational testing of improved explosive sources, experimental verification and validation of improved sources - Western Geophysical (students - recruiting, post-doc and graduate in Geophysics).
* Resusable blast test fixture, investigate explosive impact on wide-body aircraft with FAA.
* Course in Explosives Surety for the Chemical Engineering Department
#163. To: nolu_chan (#161)
Looking at your non-response SPAM, I accept that you CANNOT produce any actual record showing that Robertson was the Lead Structural Engineer "of record."
On the surface, it clearly seems he's a BushCo/government shill as evidenced by his undying support of the "official story" of the 9/11 tragedy, and subsequent "war on terror". HOWEVER, he READILY admits that there are SERIOUS UNANSWERED QUESTIONS concerning the "entirety" of the event (aside from the actual building collapses). I posed some of these "serious questions" to him in this reply, (along with some common sense logic and reasoning raising doubts about the "official collapse story"); and he totally REFUSES to answer or even ATTEMPT to answer any ONE of them. This can only be construed as an admission to himself (if nothing else) that there is something seriously wrong with the "official story of 9/11"...
BushCo/BAC are children of Satan...
John 8:44 Ye are of [your] father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.
#164. To: BeAChooser (#162)
#165. To: BeAChooser (#157)
#166. To: BeAChooser (#157)
#167. To: nolu_chan, all (#161)
NONE of the links you provided goes to a web page that says anything about Robertson or his being the Lead Structural Engineer of record.
He is not now, nor has he ever been, a licensed Structural Engineer in New York. There is no such thing as a licensed Structural Engineer in the state of New York. Robertson is a licensed Professional Engineer in New York.
However, in 1964, John B. Skilling WAS a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of New York. In 1964, of the two, ONLY John Skilling could have been the Engineer of record.
#168. To: beachooser, nolu_chan, Robin, Minerva, Christine, Honway, Aristeides, Red Jones, Diana, Kamala, All (#157)
#169. To: BeAChooser, Jethro Tull, Christine, Honway, Robin, Aristeides, Red Jones, Diana, Kamala, honway, SKYDRIFTER, Critter, innieway, Paul Revere, Ferret Mike, RickyJ, bluedogtxn (#167)
[BAC #167]
However, in 1964, John B. Skilling WAS a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of New York. In 1964, of the two, ONLY John Skilling could have been the Engineer of record.
Source: Leslie E. Robertson Associates (LERA)
Professional Engineer - New York. Licensed or eligible in all 50 states. N.C.E.E.
Civil Engineer - California. Licensed or eligible in all 50 states.
First Class Architect and Professional Engineer, Japan
Honorary degree, Doctor of Science, University of Western Ontario, 1989
Honorary degree, Doctor of Engineering, Lehigh University, 1991
Honorary degree, Doctor of Engineering, Notre Dame University, 2003
Office of the Professions
License Information
04/29/2007
Address : NEW YORK NY
Profession : PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERING
License No: 034360
Date of Licensure : 01/06/
Additional Qualification :
Status : REGISTERED
Registered through last day of : 01/09
Address :
Profession : PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERING
License No: 039286
Date of Licensure : 06/08/62
Additional Qualification :
Status : DECEASED 03/05/98
Registered through last day of :
#170. To: BeAChooser, ALL (#169)
New York allowed a licensed Professional Engineer in California to legally practice in New York. Ever hear of "comity"? Apparently not.
#171. To: innieway, ALL (#163)
His link in response #154 is invalid - it doesn't work - it leads to nothing.
And at least 1 of the "links" in his #157 produced the same results...
(As an aside - I find the NORAD stand-down to be of key significance in bearing forth the "official 9/11 lie"... When famed golfer Payne Stewart's charter flight went off course and started going north from the Panhandle of Florida, within 20 minutes NORAD had 2 fighters scrambled and on that situation like flies on shit. They were looking into the cockpit of the charter flight and reporting that the crew was unconscious - and stayed with that flight until it crashed. Yet for some reason, on 9/11 NORAD cannot manage to get even one fighter scrambled when 4 commercial airliners are flying off course for over an hour and a half - AND headed towards some of the most highly restricted airspace in the world????? BULLSHIT!!!!! Yet this is a topic BAC adamantly avoids.)
For the sake of argument, lets pretend the collapses occurring on 9/11 happened exactly for the reasons given in the "official story" and for no other reason. That still does NOT explain any of the other "serious questions" such as those I posed to him in the link above.
BushCo/BAC are children of Satan...
#172. To: nolu_chan, ALL (#166)
Propping Up the War on Terror: Lies about the WTC by NIST and Underwriters Laboratories
Kevin Ryan
#173. To: BeAChooser (#171)
#174. To: nolu_chan, ALL (#169)
Before moving to New York, Robertson was a resident of Washington, not California.
As you have reminded everyone many times, Robertson had moved to New York. He was not an out-of-state resident.
An engineering license is only valid in the state in which it is issued. While it may be easier for someone who holds a license in one state to obtain a license in another state, said engineer must nevertheless obtain a license in each state for which he chooses to practice.
Robertson obtained his New York State license on January 6, 1965.
Until he was licensed as a Professional Engineer in the state of New York, he could not act as a Licensed Professional Engineer.
#175. To: BeAChooser (#174)
#176. To: BeAChooser (#174)
Address : SEATTLE WA
Profession : PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERING
License No: 040112
Date of Licensure : 05/24/63
Additional Qualification :
Status : NOT REGISTERED
Registered through last day of :
Address : NOT ON FILE
Profession : PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERING
License No: 040201
Date of Licensure : 10/07/63
Additional Qualification :
Status : NOT REGISTERED
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#177. To: BeAChooser (#174)
Interesting research, NC. Happen to know who actually signed the drawings?
#178. To: BeAChooser (#174)
And what are you going to do with this info?
#179. To: BeAChooser (#172)
What can I do at this point in time but laugh?
#180. To: nolu_chan (#177)
"Happen to know who actually signed the drawings?"
Not Robertson as he was not legally qualified to do so.
#181. To: BeAChooser (#180)
Depends on when the final drawings were signed.
http://wtc.nist.gov/media/Public%20Transcript%20021204%20Final1_withlinks.pdf
February 14, 1964: The Port Authority held a press conference to counter Wien’s contention the WTC Towers would be unsafe if hit by a plane. They produced countless engineering reports on the subject. The book’s authors [Glanz and Lipton, City in the Sky] indicate the press was quite unkind to Wien and others that questioned the WTC design.
#182. To: nolu_chan, ALL (#181)
According to BAC #45: "The design of the major structural elements of the towers surely had to have been completed by February 1964."
Robertson was not licensed until 1965.
Of course, Skilling was licensed in 1962, and Worthing and Christiansen were licensed in 1963.
Perhaps after Skilling signed for and submitted all of the MAJOR structural elements of the tower design about a year before Robertson was eligible to sign anything, Robertson was permitted to supervise the construction of the towers according to the drawings signed by Skilling and Robertson could have signed for some MINOR modifications.
The impact scenario that was considered is a Boeing 707 traveling at 600 miles an hour.
There's another document a month later that considers an aircraft impact at the 80th floor of one of the towers.
According to BAC delusion #149, that translates to, "In 1964 (and even today) large commercial planes didn't fly 600 mph at 1000 feet above a city. So NOONE was considering that a design load for buildings until 9/11."
#183. To: BeAChooser (#182)
[nc] If Robertson was the Lead Structural Engineer "of record," produce that record.
#184. To: BeAChooser (#182)
-- BAC #45
#185. To: nolu_chan, ALL (#184)
[nc] Robertson was not licensed until 1965.
[BAC #182] That doesn't mean he wasn't the one who did the analysis Skilling mentioned.
It -does- mean that he was not the "Lead Structural Engineer of Record" or "Head Structural Engineer or Record" which is the LIE you repeatedly told.
It also means that your entire spam list consists of discredited sources.
Robertson obviously had no need for a license until 1965, a year after BeAChooser determined that "[t]he design of the major structural elements of the towers surely had to have been completed."
Until a year after BeAChooser determined that "[t]he design of the major structural elements of the towers surely had to have been completed," Robertson could not sign a damn thing.
#186. To: BeAChooser (#185)
"The design of the major structural elements of the towers surely had to have been completed by February 1964."
-- BAC #45
#187. To: BeAChooser (#185)
[BAC #185]
If Robertson was the Lead Structural Engineer "," produce that record.
#188. To: BeAChooser (#185)
Worthington and Christiansen was licensed in New York in 1963
Robertson was licensed in New York in 1965. [BAC #45]
(b) 1963
(c) 1964
(d) 1965 or later
(e) None of the above, there was no "Lead Structural Engineer of Record."
#189. To: nolu_chan, ALL (#188)
The question posed at #157 was, "If Robertson was the Lead Structural Engineer "of record," produce that record."
You cited source after source that you purported said "Lead Structural Engineer of record."
Now your SPAM list is reduced to, "'of record' in some of those cases."
Of course, you posted no quote or citation to anything but the name of an organization. For example, "Columbia University" did not say anything unless it issued from the organization and not just some internet comment from someone at Columbia University. So it is with all those unidentified purported "citations."
As for your links, not a solitary one provides so much as a mention of Robertson or the lead structural engineer of anything.
Scientific American says he was. [nc - the editorial staff of Scientific American says he was what? The "Lead Structural Engineer of Record" or the coffee and donut fetcher?]
#190. To: BeAChooser (#189)
QUESTION: In what year was somebody, anybody, first designated as the "Lead Structural Engineer of Record?"
(b) 1963
(c) 1964
(d) 1965 or later
(e) None of the above, there was no "Lead Structural Engineer of Record."(f) BeAChooser does not know.
(g) BeAChooser cannot choose.
(h) BeAChooser refuses to choose.
(i) BeAChooser cannot admit that there must have been a Lead Engineer before 1965 and it could not have been Robertson.
#191. To: nolu_chan (#190)
#192. To: BeAChooser (#189)
#193. To: BeAChooser (#189)
3. The buildings have been investigated and found to be safe in an assumed collision with a large jet airliner (Boeing 70/ - DC 8) travelling at 600 miles per hour. Analysis indicates that such collision would result in only local damage which could not cause collapse or substantial damage to the building and would not endanger the lives and safety of occupants not in the immediate area of impact.
#194. To: BeAChooser (#189)
THE ENGINEER MOST RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SUPERSKYSCRAPER'S DESIGN."
#195. To: BeAChooser (#189)
#196. To: BeAChooser (#189)
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