4um: Rosie's new 9/11 theories: Steel moved, Command co

Title: Rosie's new 9/11 theories: Steel moved, Command co
Source: You Tube
URL Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0vJVhRocFQ
Published: May 20, 2007
Author: The View
Post Date: 2007-05-20 21:19:19 by Zipporah
Ping List: *9-11* Subscribe to *9-11*
Keywords: None
Views: 992
Comments: 88

She starts out by claiming that "ALL" the steel was removed and shipped off to "Canada" ... er ... "China", "right away". She says there is no metal to test. That is absolutely false. Hundreds of structural engineers and other investigators had plenty of time to visit the WTC site and see the steel insitu, before the steel was removed. Then it went to Fresh Kill where again they got to examine it and retain those samples they considered important to understanding what happened. And tens of thousands of pieces of steel are still being retained for historical purposes and future studies. Rosie is either uninformed or a partisan liar.

Next, in the video, she says that WTC 7 "got hit by nothing". She's either uninformed or a liar. It got hit by significant amounts of debris from the collapse of the towers. That debris ripped a huge hole out of the south side of building. According to the firemen who where on the scene, a 20 story high hole.

Then she claims there were "pools of molten steel" under all three buildings. Well I challenge you to name a single eyewitness who has actually and verifiably used the word "pool" to describe what they saw. I challenge you to name a single expert in fire or steel who says finding molten steel was impossible given the circumstances. I challenge you to tell us what kept any steel that was molten, molten for over 6 weeks after the collapse. Rosie seems to think it was bombs. Show me how that might work.

Next, she claims it took the towers "9 seconds" to fall and that is the same as "free-fall". Well her claim is FALSE. From numerous credible sources (including actual videos of the collapse which one can time) one can learn that the towers actually took about 15 seconds to collapse. One can look at hundreds of still images of the collapses and immediately see that there was debris free-falling much faster than the collapsing level of the towers were descending. She surely has to have seen these images. So Rosie is either a liar or hasn't bothered to apply the least bit of thought to interpreting what she saw or the least bit of energy into investigating the issue.

So not only do professionals in the areas of structures, demolition, materials, fire or macro-world physics NOT agree with Rosie. The facts of the matter don't either. All she is really doing is hurting the effort to find out what really happened on 9/11. There are good questions to ask but if *truthers* make no effort to stop idiots like Rosie from muddying the water with nonsense and lies, you will never find the truth. People like her are the *truth* movement's worst enemy.

WARNING:: Truth Movement members almost seem unable to post articles that aren't deceptive or contain outright lies about what happened to the WTC structures and the Pentagon. And they seem to have particular trouble dealing with visual materials that prove their claims false. Why is that?

They continue to claim the towers collapsed in 10 seconds when video clearly shows they took 15 seconds to collapse. They continue to claim the entrance hole in the Pentagon was less than 20 feet across when photos convincingly prove it was closer to 90 feet. They continue to make an assortment of similar, demonstrably false claims despite all efforts to get them to change their ways.

Why can't *truthers* face the truth? They (and we) will never find out what really happened on 9/11, if they can't do that. Because a *Truth Movement* cannot be founded on disinformation and outright lies. That should be obvious to all. But apparently they can't see that either. It is sad.

Actually I didnt.. my point being arguing every jot and tittle wasnt my point in posting this .. so you have no clue what I meant .. so I did not prove you 'point'

NOTICE: Because BeAChooser has been shown to repeatedly post spam and falsehoods, continued substantive response to his posts, including this one, is considered a waste of time. This NOTICE is the standard response to all BAC blather.

In the video, 911 Mysteries: Demolitions, at 42:30, it shows an in-uniform Port Authority cop stating, "You'd get below and you'd see molten steel. Molten steel running down the channel rims. Like you're in a foundry."

The Ground Zero site where the World Trade Center towers once stood was the focus of the visit by Prof. David Blockley and Dr Keith Eaton to New York, on the first leg of their North American tour. They discussed developments on the site with Pablo Lopez and Andrew Pontecorvo of Mueser Rutledge.

Dr Eaton said: ‘We were given a fascinating insight into what had been happening at the site. Our hosts, under the firm’s principal engineer George Tamaro (F), had been constantly involved at Ground Zero for several months. They had been called in as foundation engineers within a week of 11 September, and had spent several months examining the stability of the debris and the diaphragm wall all around the site, commonly known as the “bathtub” They had been key individuals in advising on the excavation of the site, with a great deal of care being needed before debris could be removed in order to maintain the stability of the original slurry walls.

‘They showed us many fascinating slides’ he continued, ‘ranging from molten metal which was still red hot weeks after the event, to 4-inch thick steel plates sheared and bent in the disaster’. Other images explained the concerns of the New Jersey authorities over the PATH train tunnels (which had linked the WTC site to New Jersey across the Hudson River). These tunnels were leaking after the disaster, and might have allowed a tremendous amount of water to flood through into New Jersey. A 10m mass concrete plug was placed in the tunnels, just in case.

Ground Zero General Manager, Peter Rinaldi of the New York Port Authority (the owners of the site) joined them for a visit to view Ground Zero and explained what is currently happening. Dr Eaton said: ‘He too had been closely involved for the past 11 months, and clearly these engineers are continuing to play a vital part of all the ongoing operations – and will continue to do so over the next couple of years’.

At a meeting with Les Robertson, the principal structural engineering designer of the World Trade Center towers, and his senior partner Saw- Teen See, at their offices close to Ground Zero, some of their key projects were discussed, including an amazing new tall building in Shanghai. ‘We naturally discussed aspects of the World Trade Center towers, and the effects it had had on Les and the practice’ said Dr Eaton. ‘It was very sobering, and poignant, to see the view from Les’s office, where the twin towers once stood.’

"Fires are still actively burning and the smoke is very intense," reports Alison Geyh, PhD. "In some pockets now being uncovered, they are finding molten steel."

Smoke constantly poured from the peaks. One fireman told us that there was still molten steel at the heart of the towers' remains. Firemen sprayed water to cool the debris down but the heat remained intense enough at the surface to melt their boots. Massive steel girders were sandwiched in with crushed concrete. Someone told us that they weighed 1,000 pounds a foot. The collapse left them all blackened and twisted. They are among the few recognizable items in the rubble. You find scant evidence of the hundreds of offices that were once part of the twin towers. Most the furniture and equipment was pounded into dust. -----

Read that, if you want to see how truly dishonest the so-called *Truth Movement* has become in pursuit of its agenda.

So right away, you see that once again a so-called *truth* movie lies about something that is obviously and easily determinable from videos taken that day. Why would they still be getting something as basic as this wrong more than a year after this was pointed out to the *Truth Movement*?

Particularly persuasive is the chapter on squibs. The video is very clear and compelling.

If you examine the available video of these puffs of concrete, you should take careful note of the manner in which they exit the building.

These puffs of dust and concrete happen in the reverse order of explosives. They exit the building and then increase in size over a short period. Almost as if they are being “squirted” out of the building.

As we stated before, explosives work the opposite way. The strongest point of an explosion is detonation. The dust cloud would then linger and perhaps disperse. It never increases its explosive strength over time.

As the buildings began to fall, a build-up of pressure caused a compression of air between floors. This pushed dust, smoke, debris and concrete out of small sections of the buildings side. NIST comments on this in their FAQ:
http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm

“As stated in Section 6.14.4 of NIST NCSTAR 1, the falling mass of the building compressed the air ahead of it—much like the action of a piston—forcing smoke and debris out the windows as the stories below failed sequentially. These puffs were observed at many locations as the towers collapsed. In all cases, they had the appearance of jets of gas being pushed from the building through windows or between columns on the mechanical floors. Such jets are expected since the air inside the building is compressed as the tower falls and must flow somewhere as the pressure builds. It is significant that similar “puffs” were observed numerous times on the fire floors in both towers prior to their collapses, perhaps due to falling walls or portions of a floor. Puffs from WTC 1 were even observed when WTC 2 was struck by the aircraft. These observations confirm that even minor overpressures were transmitted through the towers and forced smoke and debris from the building.”

Matt Komorowski: “The first thing I really felt was the incredible rush of air at my back. And maybe I felt it before everybody else, because I was the last guy.”

Matt Komorowski: “Gust of wind. Wind tunnel. It was the most incredible push at your back, that you can feel.”

These “squibs” also appear to be minimal in number and none are visible at the impact point. There is, however, ample evidence to suggest that the collapse of both towers was caused by the sagging trusses pulling the perimeter columns inwards.

So we are left with: a collapse that was not initiated by explosives, puffs of air that look nothing like explosions and aren't causing any visible structural damage; and explanations for the cause of these puffs of air and debris. Things do not look good for the “puffs = explosives” case right now.

9/11 Mysteries has switched between implosions and explosions several times throughout the film.

This alleged squib causes no visible damage to the sky-lobby band. A common answer to this remark is that “the explosion occurred within the building, therefore it is not visible”. The problem with that is the way in which the building collapsed. The core of each tower fell 15-20 seconds after the rest of the building. If explosions occurred deep within the building, the cores would have fallen down at the same time (or even before) the rest of the building. This did not happen.

nolu_chan is particularly guilty of this behavior. He should thank me for pointing out errors in Truth Movement claims so they can be refined till they can stand up against all criticism. But instead, having tried and failed to challenge the sourced facts, logic and visual material that I've posted, he has decided to post a silly notice about me and then try to ignore what I post. That won't change the facts. It's not going to stop my correcting bogus claims when I see them. This will not do anything but make *truthers* look even more ridiculous and pathetic.

More nonsense from the kook BeAChooser. He lies just about every time he posts. He he can't be dumb enough to believe the crap he posts, so why the heck do we put up with an obvious paid government shill? Ban his ass, not just his name, his IP as well. If he comes back, ban him again.

God is always good!
"It was an interesting day." - President Bush, recalling 9/11 [White House, 1/5/02]

It's very interesting that a few of the "squibs" or "powerful debris ejections" are right in the reinforced mechanical floors. They also appear elsewhere from 10 stories to 40 stories ahead of the explosive detonation belt.

Forget NIST's pancake, piston or pile driver theories. Here is a good quote about the kind of "science" carried out by NIST. Even though is isn't refering to NIST. It's perfect.

"I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period."

One look at the videos shows that their is no mass pile driving anything. All that is left is air, dust and debris that has been blown. Most of the mass/debris is outside of the building.

Recently, one of the darlings of the skeptic movement, Dr Frank Greening has come out and been highly critical of NIST. While he isn't on board with the explosive theory, he has downgraded the NIST report to nothing more than another theory, and not the explanation.

"I was real close to Building 7 when it fell down... That didn't sound like just a building falling down to me while I was running away from it. There's a lot of eyewitness testimony down there of hearing explosions. [..] and the whole time you're hearing "boom, boom, boom, boom, boom." I think I know an explosion when I hear it... — Former NYC Police Officer and 9/11 Rescue Worker Craig Bartmer

Oh dear, you're getting all upset again...and you didn't take your medicine either did you?

I asked you to clean your room, and until thats taken care of no bike riding for you.

The blond ditz that runs out that steel "weakens at 275 degrees" takes the cake - has she no oven or grill?

About that ditz, lodwick? Our side couldn't hire a better stooge. She's a blessing :)

All I know about her is that she's married to Tim Hasselbeck, a back-up QB for the NY Giants and she obviously doesn't cook her Thanksgiving turkey at temps above 275 degrees.

I wonder if someone had asked EVERY structural engineer and demolition expert in the world prior to 9/11 if it would work to bring down a structure like one of the twin towers by flying a large jet into the top third of it, how many would have said "Hey - that MIGHT work!"?????

BUT, demolition experts the world over should be VERY thankful to OBL, and those 19 Mooslim cohorts that set out to prove the worlds "experts" wrong!!! They showed that not only DOES it work, but with an extremely high success rate! In fact, 100% success rate (it would have worked on the Pentagon too, but that one was a little to "sprawled out")!

Just think of all the profit potential this has for demolition firms... Hell, all they need is to purchase some decommissioned aircraft; have it outfitted with remote control capability (Systems Planning Corporation - [Zakheim's old haunt] can help them with that, it's their specialty); buy 10,000 gallons of jet fuel (around 30 grand at today's prices); and in less than 2 hours have that sucker down!!!!! It'll save god-only-knows how many man-hours rigging buildings for weeks and months in advance, plus the costs of the explosives themselves, and the need for high paid professionals to handle those explosives. And that's for one of the world's LARGEST structures!! Why shit, if it's a small enough eye-sore (like a 20 story run-down old office they need to "take out" to make room for a parking lot for the new bank) they could probably even get by with a little old twin-engine Cessna - and get the job done REALLY dirt cheap!!!

Wonder when Controled Demolition Inc is gonna start using this newfound technology???

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

"When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one." Edmund Burke

Especially when they can demonstrate that this new procedure also can take any nearby bonus building insured for $800M, drop it into its own basement, eliminate incriminating documents held by the Government that could cost billions, and leave all the surrounding buildings standing.

Just goes to show - when you want technology done RIGHT, go ask the big thinker that motivates around on horseback and lives in caves...

Seems that now Kamala thinks the *Truth Movement* has been wrong the whole time they claimed the one sign of proof of a controlled demolition is that the towers collapsed into their own footprint. Now, all of a sudden, the videos show that "most of the mass/debris is outside the building." ROTFLOL!

You are right. Dr Greening is definitely NOT on board with the explosive theory ... or the microwave beam theory ... or the thermite bombs theory ... or the mini-nuke theory ... or the pod theory ... or the missile theory ... or the holographic planes-weren't- really-there theory. But he also isn't entirely pleased with NIST's efforts to deduce what happened either. And I have no problem with that view.

In fact, here is what he recently stated in a letter to JREF (http://mujca.com/jarry.htm ): "The model I based my calculation on was indeed quite crude, so I have endeavored to improve it by including the effects of variable column strength and mass shedding. I tested the improved model and found that the towers always exhibited a self-sustaining collapse for realistic values of the various input parameters."

In case you don't know, what he is saying is contrary to the continued claims of many in the *truth* community that the collapse would not have been self sustaining but would have require input via additional bombs all the way up and down the towers. Indeed, anyone who claims there were squibs seen in the video must believe that. Anyone who claims the tower could not have collapsed in even 15 seconds must believe that. Well, Dr Greening clearly does NOT.

"Nevertheless, while my model appeared to show that a gravity driven collapse of the Twin Towers was physically possible, I still had some doubts about collapse initiation. These doubts stemmed from the fact that my model assumes that the upper block of floors above the impact zone descends one storey under free fall, thereby providing more than enough energy to destroy the columns supporting the floor below and initiate a progressive collapse.

But did the collapse of each tower really begin with such a single floor failure? I studied the appropriate sections of the NIST Report seeking an answer to this question. It soon became apparent that the tipping of the upper section of each tower was a key feature of the collapse. Thus I began studying the tipping of WTC 1 & 2 and ultimately wrote two articles on this topic that were posted on 911Myths.

The research described in these articles showed that WTC 1 required almost 2 meters of downward displacement in the upper section of the building to initiate collapse. This is about two times the downward displacement required for the collapse of WTC 2, and six times NIST’s estimate of Dd(WTC 2) of about 30 cm based on its finite element computer model. In contrast, a simple energy analysis of the collapse shows that NIST’s small downward displacements lead to inferred collapse energies that are too low to be acceptable – we know the Twin Towers would not collapse that easily. Further, the geometry of a “Leaning WTC Tower” with an asymmetric downward displacement of 30 cm implies a tilt angle of less than ½ degree. Remarkably, however, NIST suggest that tilt angles before collapse initiation were more than 4° for WTC 1 & 2. Thus the NIST Final Report first underestimates the downward displacements within the Twin Towers, only to later overestimate the initial tilt angles to justify the collapse."

Now did you catch that last part? Dr Greening is right that there are inconsistencies in the NIST report related to the tilt. He says their calculations indicate a downward displacement on one side of the building of 30 cm which implies a tilt angle of less than 1/2 degree. But videos and photos do in fact show quite clearly that the angle was far more than 1/2 degree before the collapse of the rest of the floors began. What that means is that NISTs global structural models UNDERCOMPUTE the damage done to the structure by the impact and fires. The real world case tilted MORE than even their models say it did. And I have no problem with the notion that NIST's models undercomputed the damage done to and response of the structures. But Greening is still saying the overall behavior in NIST's models is quite consistent with what was actually observed. Whereas, what the *Truth Movement* claims happened ... IS NOT. So I'm curious as to why you would think Dr Greening is someone for your side to champion.

"A close look at the failure of WTC 2 shows that the collapse began with a tilting or rotational motion of the upper section of the Tower about a “hinge” at the 80th floor. This rotational motion, which commenced at a tilt angle ~ 2°, was caused by an almost instantaneous multi-column failure that eliminated the structural support on one side of WTC 2 near the impact zone. Once set in motion, the upper block moved with a nearly “free” rotational trajectory of a body pivoting under the constant force of gravity. This behavior was sustained at tilt angles up to about 20°. Thereafter the motion of the block changed somewhat although the suggestion that the tilting suddenly stopped is not correct. What appears to happen is that the upper section was continuously crushed near the 80th floor by its own momentum so that the rotation was no longer that of a rigid body. Eventually the "hinge" at the northeast corner failed and the descending block took on a more vertical motion. Interestingly, once the hinge failed, and the pivot became frictionless, the motion of the center of gravity is predicted to become vertical, causing a shift in the rotational axis, as observed."

Now in case you don't know, that is still essentially what NIST said happened and again contrary to what the *Truth Movement* claims happened. Dr Greening is not someone you should be holding up as an example to promote your views, Mark. He fundamentally disagrees with the claims you make and theories you espouse.

"For most of 2006 I switched my attention to two important aspects of the collapse of WTC 1 & 2: the pulverization of concrete and the sustained high temperatures of the rubble pile. First, I carried out an energy balance analysis of the collapse of WTC 1 that included the energy consumed in crushing concrete on one floor (234 MJ) and compared this to other contributions to the energy dissipated by the collapse. As expected, the plastic strain energy dissipated by the buckling of columns (284 MJ) was confirmed to be the largest drain on the kinetic energy driving the collapse, but the energy to pulverize the concrete was clearly an important additional energy sink. However, I also concluded that such energy sinks should be summed over two WTC floors per impact to allow for the simultaneous destruction of the uppermost floor of the lower fixed section, and the lowest floor of the descending section. Such an assumption leads to an energy decrement that still assures a self-sustaining progressive collapse of WTC 1 if the input kinetic energy is derived from a one-storey free fall of the upper block- a condition that must be modified in a tipping scenario."

Now if you read the above carefully, you will see that Greening says the NIST scenario does successfully account for pulverization of the concrete AND sustained collapse ... again, in direct contradiction to what the *experts* and followers of the *truth* movement claim. So thanks for bringing Dr Greening into this conversation.

"The sustained high temperatures of the rubble pile proved to be more problematic. The NIST Report indicates that about 100 tonnes of burning material and smoldering “embers”, at 500 - 700° C, fell into the rubble pile when the Twin Towers collapsed. Propagation of smoldering combustion within the rubble pile was sustained by the indigenous supply of live load “fuel”- consisting of office furniture, paper, textiles and plastic materials - and oxygen. Setting aside the issue of oxygen availability, let us consider how long the available fuel could last. The heat flux of a smoldering fire is typically ~ 8 kW/m2 from which we may calculate the average fuel consumption rate within the rubble pile. NIST estimate that there was initially about 50,000 kg of combustible material on each floor of WTC 1 & 2. If we assume that material from about 5 floors was consumed before the Towers collapsed, about 5,250,000 kg of “fuel” was initially available within the rubble from each Tower. It is a simple matter to show that this fuel would be able to sustain the rubble pile fires for no more than about 30 days. However, it was not until December 19th 2001, or 100 days after 9/11, that the Governor of New York, George Pataki, officially declared the WTC fires to be totally extinguished. We are left wondering what “stoked” the rubble pile fires beyond the expected 30 days."

Now first, note that Dr Greening is NOT saying the remnants of thermite bombs or undetonated thermite bombs fell into the rubble. He's simply saying that based on his estimates, the fire could not have sustained itself for 100 days so another explanation is needed.

First, the estimate of combustibles on each floor is a just an estimate. It might easily have been 20 or 30 percent more combustibles on average than what NIST concluded, especially if the fires got hot enough to cause items that otherwise might not burn to burn. And it isn't just tonnage that is important. It is the nature of the material in terms of how much heat is generated by those fires.

Second, he does NOT know how fast the fires were burning the material in the rubble pile with ANY degree of accuracy. He says the heat flux in a smoldering file is typically ~ 8 kW/m2. That is nothing more than a wag as far as applying it to the WTC site. It could just as easily have been twice or three times as much or half or a third that amount. And whether it can keep certain material molten for a given period also depends on how the combustibles are dispersed. There will be variations and some areas will end up with more than others. There could easily have been regions with two to three times as much combustibles as other regions. Perhaps that is why some areas still had molten metal months later but others did not. Also, very fine particles can create an insulating blanket, retaining the heat generated inside the rubble pile for much longer than he might have guessed. And, as Greening himself pointed out, the rubble pile contained all the materials needed for thermite like reactions to take place.

In short, I don't think you can for one minute claim that Dr Greening is in your camp, Mark, or that his speculations about what kept the fires going are anything more than rough speculation at this point. But he is right that someone at NIST should have looked at this since this is mighty interesting, if nothing else.

Actually, I think you are wrong, in part because some structural engineers and demolition experts came forward right after 911 saying that they knew right away that the towers were in trouble.

http://www.usatoday.com/community/chat/2002-04-29-klein.htm "Why the Towers Fell': Larry Klein ... snip ... I had a chance to listen to someone who specializes in taking buildings down (imploding them), and he stated that when he saw the damage to the Towers he knew they were coming down, and he tried to call the New York City emergency agency and couldn't get through."

And if you told the rest of those professionals what we now know ... that the planes would impact the building at nearly maximum velocity, that the impact would shatter numerous structural members and severely damage fireproofing coatings on the remaining steel, that the planes had nearly full fuel tanks, that the fire suppression systems would NOT be functional in the towers, that fire fighters would be unable to reach and fight the fires either ... then I suspect a great many more would have had doubts about the structures, too.

If these "engineer" and "demolition" experts really think that the towers were brought down due to the plane impacts and resulting fires then why is it that not a single one of these so-called "experts" have proved their theory with a real life model of the events of that day?

Answer: They can't, because they are really only experts at lying. Government stooges like yourself BAC patting each other on the back over 9/11.

God is always good!
"It was an interesting day." - President Bush, recalling 9/11 [White House, 1/5/02]

I wonder if they asked the on-scene firefighters and EMS personnel about what they saw, what those statements might look like. No... wait... they did ask... and they looked something like this....

Each name hyperlinks to the PDF of the complete witness statement. [Complete except for government redactions.]

We were there I don't know, maybe 10, 15 minutes and then I just remember there was just an explosion. It seemed like on television they blow up these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way around like a belt, all these explosions.

Somewhere around the middle of the World Trade Center, there was this orange and red flash coming out. Initially it was just one flash. Then this flash just kept popping all the way around the building and that building had started to explode. The popping sound, and with each popping sound it was initially an orange and then a red flash came out of the building and then it would just go all around the building on both sides as far as I could see. These popping sounds and the explosions were getting bigger, going both up and down and then all around the building.

I went inside and I told everybody that the other building or there was an explosion occurring up there and I said I think we have another major explosion. I don't know if we are all going to be safe here. I told them I can't force you, but I don't know if we are going to be safe here. I'm going to try to get as far away from this building as possible. Unbeknown to me, a half a block down was the water.

A. No. I know I was with an officer from Ladder 146, a Lieutenant Evangelista, who ultimately called me up a couple of days later just to find out how I was. We both for whatever reason -- again, I don't know how valid this is with everything that was going on at that particular point in time, but for some reason I thought that when I looked in the direction of the Trade Center before it came down, before No. 2 came down, that I saw low-level flashes. In my conversation with Lieutenant Evangelista, never mentioning this to him, he questioned me and asked me if I saw low-level flashes in front of the building, and I agreed with him because I thought -- at that time I didn't know what it was. I mean, it could have been as a result of the building collapsing, things exploding, but I saw a flash flash flash and then it looked like the building came down.

A. No, the lower level of the building. You know like when they demolish a building, how when they blow up a building, when it falls down? That's what I thought I saw. And I didn't broach the topic to him, but he asked me. He said I don't know if I'm crazy, but I just wanted to ask you because you were standing right next to me. He said did you see anything by the building? And I said what do you mean by see anything? He said did you see any flashes? I said, yes, well, I thought it was just me. He said no, I saw them, too.

I don't know if that means anything. I mean, I equate it to the building coming down and pushing things down, it could have been electrical explosions, it could have been whatever. But it's just strange that two people sort of say the same thing and neither one of us talked to each other about it. I mean, I don't know this guy from a hole in the wall. I was just standing next to him. I never met the man before in my life. He knew who I was I guess by my name on my coat and he called me up, you know, how are you doing? How's everything? And, oh, by the way did you ... It was just a little strange.

Q. On the television pictures it appeared as well, before the first collapse, that there was an explosion up on the upper floors.

A. I know about the explosion on the upper floors. This was like eye level. I didn't have to go like this. Because I was looking this way. I'm not going to say it was on the first floor or the second floor, but somewhere in that area I saw to me what appeared to be flashes. I don't know how far down this was already. I mean, we had heard the noise but, you know, I don't know.

As my officer and I were looking at the south tower, it just gave. It actually gave at a lower floor, not the floor where the plane hit, because we originally had thought there was like an internal detonation explosives because it went in succession, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then the tower came down.

It was weird how it started to come down. It looked like it was a timed explosion, but I guess it was just the floors starting to pancake one on top of the other.

As we're all walking to the back of the buklding through the freight -- not the freight -- the loading docks in the back of the building. We get to the back -- we don't even get to the back of the building. We start walking back there and then I heard a ground level explosion and I'm like holy shit, and then you heard that twisting metal wreckage again. Then I said shit and everybody started running and I stared running behind them, and we get to the door. For some reason, like straight out of a movie, two people ran through the door together and got stuck in the doorway, and I'm like, oh, my God, this is not the time. So they squeezed through and they got through and I squeezed through them and ran around them because I just wanted to see which way the towers were falling.

So at that point now, we were just waiting for patients and nobody was coming in. It was like, you know. Then we ran into another Lieutenant, Lieutenant Davis. I think he's from Battalion 4, if I'm not mistaken.

-- towers and I heard six loud explosions, and those six loud explosions changed my mind real quick and I went back over to the triage center and it was like you know what? Let me wait here. I had no helmet. I had nothing that would have protected me from anything that hit me in my head. So I stayed where I was at.

We were standing underneath and Captain Stone was speaking again. We heard -- I heard 3 loud explosions. I look up and the north tower is coming down now, 1 World Trade Center.

At that time, when I heard the 3 loud explosions, I started running west on Vesey Street towards the water. At that time, I couldn't run fast enough. The debris caught up with me, knocked my helmet off. I tumbled and then eventually I started running again. I made it behind a building on North End Avenue. I set up a triage area in that corner building and at that time I started treating patients.

At that time I started walking back up towards Vesey Street. I heard three explosions, and then we heard like groaning and grinding, and tower two started to come down.

There were some units there, along with a Battalion Chief and I gave them some instructions as to what to try to do. And while I was still in that immediate area, the south tower, 2 World Trade Center, there was what appeared to be at first an explosion. It appeared at the very top, simultaneously from all four sides, materials shot out horizontally. And then there seemed to be a momentary delay before you could see the beginning of the collapse

Then the building popped, lower than the fire, which I learned was I guess, the aviation fuel fell into the pit, and whatever floor it fell on heated up really bad and that's why it popped at that floor. That's the rumor I heard. But it seemed like I was going oh, my god, there is a secondary device because the way the building popped I thought it was an explosion.

While I was down at Battery Park, I finally got through on my phone to my father and said, "I'm alive I just wanted to tell you, go to church, I'm alive. I just so narrowly excaped this thing." He said, "Where were you? You were there?" I said, "Yeah, I was right there when it blew up." He said, "You were there when the planes hit?" I said, "No, I was there when it exploded, the building exploded." He said, "You mean, when it fell down?" I said, "No, when it exploded."

I still didn't realized what had happened. I totally thought it had been blown up. That's just the perspective of looking up at it, it seemed to have exploded out. But that I guess was the force of the upper stories collapsing down.

We heard a rumbling noise, and it appeared that that first tower, the south tower, had exploded, the top of it. That's what I saw, what a lot of us saw. We ran down underneath the Financial Center.

I can't tell you how long it was before it died down. I just felt like the darkness the loneliness and being alone was the worst thing I ever experienced in my life and not being able to breathe. There was no air. Whatever this explosion was simply sucked all the oxygen out of the air. You couldn't breathe and the feeling of suffocation, I can't explain no further on that.

In #6, I made a minor error and identified the speaker in the film as a Port Authority cop. I have found an online copy of that statement with some additional footage not included in the snippet on the DVD film.

"You'd get down below and you'd see molten steel, molten steel, running down the channel rails, like you're in a foundry, like lava."

Even NIST argues that no structural element in the Twin Towers saw a heat flux much higher than about 100 kW/m^2 for more than about 15 minutes.

As for NIST being CONSERVATIVE in its estimates of heating by the fires, if you read how case A and B were arrived at you will find that NIST made assumptions or changes to the FDS to achieve higher temperatures in going from case A to case B! For example, soffits were (arbitrarily) added to deliberately create a high temperature environment close to the ceilings in case B!

What was the justification for doing that? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

See NIST NCSTAR 1-5G and the discussion of the experimental and computer model UNCERTAINTY.

Uncertainty in the SFRM thickness was such that the uncertainty in the steel temperature was 20 % from this alone.

Now add the uncertainty from the thermo-physical properties of the materials in a truss assembly from things like the moisture content of the Blaze-shield...

Then add the uncertainty in the steel temperature due to the uncertainty in the heat release rate of 20 %...

Then look at Tables 12-9 and 12-10 and see variations of as much as 400 deg C in the predicted temperatures of a particular WTC 1 floor at a particular time.

Then see NIST NCSTAR 1-5F for an explanation of the difference between case A and case B and tell me if this is good science, or just self-fullfilling. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The dislodging of fireproofing is not proven. It is an hypothesis that allows NIST to calculate that the steel weakened sufficiently for the towers to collapse. But there is no PROOF this happened.... hence it is nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophesy.

In this respect the NIST study is not a scientific investigation of the collapse of WTC 1 & 2. It's a feel-good study about whether or not the Twin Towers met the applicable codes. Unfortunately for NIST the towers were built during code changes that resulted in a moving target for the designers (and NIST!). Some things that were ok at the start of construction were eventually not ok. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NIST has assumed conventional "fuels" were the only source of heat and are therefore stuck in the hydrocarbon flame temperature box. This limits the achievable air temperatures to about 1100 deg C (I think!). NIST realize this and even invoke the presence of "soffits" to trap more heat near the ceilings in case B -see NCSTAR 1-5F. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In NIST NCSTAR 1-2 we find figures showing the estimated damage to the floor trusses and floor slabs. For WTC 1 these show severe damage only to floors 95 and 96, with minor damage to floors 94 and 97. Nevertheless in NCSTAR 1-6 NIST show insulation damage to FIVE floors! More precisely, the diagrams, such as those in Figure 5-14, indicate that about 30 % of the insulation was "damaged" on floors 94, 95, 96 and 97, plus minor insulation damage to floor 98. How could floor 94 be as damaged as floor 95 when the damage estimate is based, as NIST clearly state, on this criterion?

"If the room furnishings were damaged or destroyed by the debris field, then the insulation on the steel trusses ABOVE these furnishings was assumed to be dislodged."

But this is not the only problem with NIST's analysis of insulation damage in the Twin Towers because NIST is very vague about the meaning of the term "insulation damage". I would assume that "damage" means partial destruction or removal. However, it appears that "damage" actually means "complete removal" when applied to the FDS model.

In this sense the NIST Report is not "CONSERVATIVE" as it claims to be. In fact, I would say that NIST removed insulation until heating of the steel sufficient to bring down the towers was achieved. This is why I claim that the NIST Report is a self-fulfilling prophesy. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My concerns are centered on the performance of passive fire protection materials on the truss assemblies in the collapse of WTC 1 & 2 and statements made by engineers in the NIST report on this VERY IMPORTANT topic.

So let's look closely at the NIST Report's statements on "damage" to the passive fire protection, or SFRM on the trusses in the Twin Towers, as in these quotes:

NCSTAR 1-2: "The aircraft impact damage to the EXTERIOR of the WTC towers could be visibly identified from the video and photographic records. However, no visible information could be obtained for the extent of damage to the INTERIOR of the towers."

"The extent of dislodged fireproofing was ESTIMATED by considering fireproofing damage only to structural components in the direct path of the debris."

"The truss floor system on floors 94 through 96 were damaged and sagged downward as a result of the impact loading."

So far so good...., but now we go to NCSTAR 1-6 to find more information on the question as to HOW NIST actually estimated the thermal insulation damage:

"The insulation damage estimates were conservative as they ignored possible damaged and dislodged insulation in a much larger region that was not in the direct path of the debris but was subject to strong vibrations during and after the aircraft impact. A robust criteria to generate a coherent pattern of vibration-induced disloging could not be established."

"Where partition walls and furnishings remained intact, the insulation was also ASSUMED to remain intact."

"This ASSUMPTION was consistent with the level of modeling detail... if substantial portions of the insulation were removed."

At this point I start to get the feeling that NIST is admitting that it really is unable to say anything definitive about the true extent of "insulation damage".

But "insulation damage" is key to NIST's explanation of the collapse of WTC 1 & 2.

Nevertheless, NIST's conclusions appear to be based on "estimates", "indications", "if" and "might have resulted in" statements and an almost total lack of meaningful experimental data! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The place to look for NIST's estimates of the loss of SFRM is NIST NCSTAR 1-5G. Here you will find diagrams indicating estimates of the "fireproofing damage" for WTC 1 & 2. Focussing on WTC 1 for simplicity, I would say that NIST's diagrams suggest that fireproofing was removed from over 25 % of the floor areas for floors 95, 96, 97 and 98. That would imply that about 25 tonnes of insulation was dislodged by the aircraft impacts!

NIST also estimate that, on average, accelerations of over 40 g's, and sometimes as high as 300 g's, were required to dislodge SFRM from planar steel surfaces by hard impact.

So much for the idea that the SFRM was easy to dislodge. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NIST's diagrams suggest that fireproofing was removed from over 25 % of the floor areas for floors 95, 96, 97 and 98. That would imply that about 25 tonnes of insulation was dislodged by the aircraft impacts." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

See NIST NCSTAR 1-5G and the discussion of the experimental and computer model UNCERTAINTY.

Uncertainty in the SFRM thickness was such that the uncertainty in the steel temperature was 20 % from this alone.

Now add the uncertainty from the thermo-physical properties of the materials in a truss assembly from things like the moisture content of the Blaze-shield...

Then add the uncertainty in the steel temperature due to the uncertainty in the heat release rate of 20 %...

Then look at Tables 12-9 and 12-10 and see variations of as much as 400 deg C in the predicted temperatures of a particular WTC 1 floor at a particular time. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NIST is not consistent in its reporting of the tilting of WTC 2 prior to collapse. Thus in Figure 9-14 (page 308) of Chapter 9 we read in reference to WTC 2 just before global collapse:

“The entire section of the building above the impact zone…began tilting as a rigid block about 7° - 8° to the east and about 3° - 4° to the south. …. The building section above impact continued to rotate to the east as it began to fall downward, and rotated to at least 20 to 25 degrees.”

However, on page 169 of the NIST Report, in a Section called Observations and Timeline of Structural Events, we read in reference to WTC 2, (See item 11 of Table 6-2):

“ The building section above the impact area tilted to the east and south. …. Rotation of approximately 4 to 5 degrees to the south and 20 to 25 degrees to the east occurred before the building section begins to fall vertically.”

Thus we see NIST claiming, on the one hand, that WTC 2 “rotated 20 to 25 degrees as it began to fall”, while on the other hand claiming elsewhere that WTC 2 “rotated 20 to 25 degrees before it began to fall.”

The suggestion that WTC 2 rotated by up to 25 degrees before it began to fall is very significant since it would indicate that the top of WTC 2 fell over rather than fell down! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In truth, the NIST Report is seriously flawed in many respects. It is inconsistent and contradictory in the way it treats the tipping of the upper section of each tower. It assumes that global collapse ensues without modeling the collapse. Its fire simulations generate such a wide array of temperature profiles as to be essentially useless. Its assumptions about the loss of thermal insulation are mere speculation. It ignores the important effects of massive releases of corrosive gases in the fires. Its metallurgical analysis of the steel is perfunctory. It ignores evidence (micron sized spheres) for the presence of molten iron in the towers prior to collapse. It mentions sulfidation, which it does not explain, while ignoring chlorination. And finally, NIST still cannot explain the collapse of WTC 7 after 6 years of trying. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

However, if any WTC collapse theory is to gain full acceptance it must, at the very minimum, be able to explain certain well-documented phenomena such as:

Most, if not all, of these phenomena have been quoted as being problematic in some way to the currently proposed collapse theories. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To who like the NIST Report - great! Then perhaps you could explain how NIST's collapse initiation mechanism works with maximum pre-collapse downward displacements of only 33 cm? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I think the collapse of the Twin Towers was extremely complex. That's why NIST took so long to come up with its collapse model. Trouble is the model itself gets so complex you start to lose any sense of cause and effect. It's a bit like these climate change models..... you can get a believable answer that may be completely wrong. So, I guess I am complaining about NIST's approach and failure to consider the collapse itself. I know that wasn't part of its mandate. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now the NISTIANs are convinced that theirs is the one and only TRUE STORY because they have studied what happened with their engineer's tool box. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NIST, in its fire simulations, tried very hard to get steel (>95 % iron) to temperatures above 1000 deg C but failed! This is not surprising because NIST was using kerosene or hydrocarbon/cellulosic-based fuels. NIST WANTED high temperatures to support the idea that the structural steel was weakened by heating effects.

Nevertheless, some steel appears to have melted in the WTC prior to the collapse of the buildings. Interestingly some of the NISTIANs posting on this site appear to be bothered by that, preferring to deny the physical evidence for molten iron. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Conspiracy theories only come from doubt. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am curious what Bush meant when he said we should not "tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories". --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It would probably be the bureaucrats at NISTthat would be the problem. The "we must have consensus" guys. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

However, I would say that the presence of molten iron in the WTC is inconsistent with the NIST Report’s conclusion that temperatures in the towers during 9/11 were well below the melting point of iron or steel."

Please explain why you now have no trouble with molten iron in the WTC because some "experts" say molten iron is to be "expected" in building fires; meanwhile NIST cannot generate temperatures within 400 deg C of the melting point of iron!

Which "experts" do you prefer to believe? --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

it is sadly lacking in some contentious areas. Thus, when it comes to the pulverization of the concrete, the ejection of debris, the chemical analysis of WTC dust, etc, the NIST Report is of little or no use.

Of course, there are those who would say that post-collapse initiation issues were of no interest to NIST but I would argue that this is simply not true! A good example would be the metallurgical examination of recovered steel samples. NIST concludes that the samples were in the debris pile at the WTC site when the corrosion products developed. Thus NIST asserts WITHOUT PROOF that the observed degradation of the WTC steel occurred AFTER THE COLLAPSE OF THE BUILDING. Interestingly, the FEMA Report is more equivocal on this topic. Thus in Appendix C of the FEMA Report we read in reference to the infamous sulfidation of the steel: “It is possible that the corrosion is the result of long-term heating in the ground following the collapse of the buildings. It is also possible that the phenomenon started prior to collapse and accelerated the weakening of the steel structure.”

I find it quite amazing that such an important issue remains unresolved to this day. But I guess it’s no more amazing than the fact that the cause of the collapse of WTC 7 also remains unresolved! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NCSTAR 1-5G, page 91: "It should be noted that there is a wide variation of time-temperature curves that hold at different points in the structure and that these curves DO NOT resemble those from a standard time-temperature curve used in furnace tests."

So it is good to see NIST spelling out this kind of discrepancy! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In this PREFACE we find GOALS and OBJECTIVES listed separately. Interestingly the GOALS appear to be engineering goals and the OBJECTIVES are more obviously scientific. So I guess NIST achieved it's engineering goals... but, ironically, failed on some scientific objectives?!?! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Georgie made that statement within a few days after the incident. What WONDERFUL prophetic powers he has!!! It's almost as if he KNEW what the "official explanation" would be, and that years of applied scientific study and critical thinking concerning the incident would result in questioning (AKA "outrageous conspiracy theories") that "official explanation".

Too bad his powers of prophecy failed to produce Iraqi WMDs. Oh well, not to fear, we needed to LIBERATE those poor Iraqis anyhow - er give them democracy - er raise their standards of living - er, er - well at least they're NOT in a civil war....

And as an aside - YOU GO IZZY!!!! You've been taking shit from those Palis too long! Give 'em a taste of their own medicine...

Hey - they're NOT supposed to believe their lying eyes and ears!!! They're supposed to believe what our government says (they would never lie to us would they?).

to me, it's as simple as that. NIST's explanation is utter and complete BS when it never addresses this.

Unless ALL the steel is preserved and the chain of custody of this evidence is preserved with it marked to denote where it was when removed, you have evidence tampering and evidence destruction.

Thank you kindly for listening while I explained why you are full of shit -- as usual.

Thesis: Official 9/11 story is an unproven conspiracy theory. http://911truth.org http://Justicefor911.org http://summeroftruth.org Probable-cause standards have been met for an unlimited investigation of unsolved crimes relating to the events of Sept. 11, including allegations of criminal negligence, cover-up, complicity or commission of the attacks by US officials and assets of intel services.

And more recently Poppy made an inappropriate and similar odd reference, but re: JFK's death, during Ford's funeral.

Referring to WTC 7, he said: "They told us to get out of there because they were worried about 7 World Trade Center, which is right behind it, coming down. We were up on the upper floors of the Verizon building looking at it. You could just see the whole bottom corner of the building was gone. We could look right out over to where the Trade Centers were because we were that high up. Looking over the smaller buildings. I just remember it was tremendous, tremendous fires going on. Finally they pulled us out. They said all right, get out of that building because that 7, they were really worried about."

Now I don' t think this firemen could tell you with absolute certainty that what he saw were explosions caused by explosives or thermite (as opposed to the rupture of structure members during buckling or gas being forced out of the structure by air compressed due to the collapse above it), but I bet he knows with a 100% certainty what a huge hole in WTC 7 and tremendous fires in it looked like ... things the *truth* movement has denied were the case in WTC 7.

For example, upon arriving at the WTC site which is well before the towers collapsed, she said "We could see the smoke coming out of the buildings, explosions, you know, dark smoke coming out of both buildings."

So even before the collapse ... in fact, long before the collapse, she was saying she could see "explosions". Is part of the truther theory that bombs or thermite were already going off in the towers? Or did Karin just use the word explosion loosely?

And here's some more of what she said about the first collapse: "My back was towards the building, trying to push everybody up. Grassy hill was there and up underneath that overpass, when somebody just simply shouted and have no idea who it was, it's blowing. I had no clue what was going on. I never turned around because a sound came from somewhere that I never heard before. Some people compared it with an airplane. It was the worst sound of a rolling sound, not a thunder. I can't explain it, what it was. All I know is -- and a force started to come hit me in my back. I can't explain it. You had to be there. All I know is I had to run because I thought there was an explosion."

Again, we find Karin using the word explosion quite loosely. Even when she "had no clue what was going on." A little later in the interview she says "I was unaware what was happening. I thought it was a major explosion. I didn't know the building was collapsing." And later still "Whatever this explosion was simply sucked all the oxygen out of the air."

So when she uses the word explosion in what nolu_chan quoted her saying some time BEFORE the second tower collapsed, why are we supposed to believe she was 100% certain it was due to explosives or thermite going off? What she interpreted as "explosions" were occurring long enough before the collapse that she had time to go inside another building, warn them, tell them she was going to get as far away as possible, take an injured fireman and 2 elderly ladies out of the building and another half a block further away. Then she had more conversations and is quoted in the interview thinking "So here these explosions were getting bigger and louder and bigger and louder and I told everybody if this building totally explodes, still unaware that the other building had collapsed, I'm going in the water". Then she and those she was with still had time to carry all the injured down to the water and get them on a boat.

And then once again, while facing away from the towers, a tower collapses and again she describes it as an explosion. So I'm sorry, nolu, but her use of the world explosion is not all that significant in terms of proving bombs or thermite were used. Your quoting her out of context does suggests something. What you are doing is called "quote mining", a dishonest tactic the *truth* movement has used to make folks believe people like Karin were really describing the use of explosives in the towers. In my opinion, you disrespect Karin and the others when you pull this stunt.

In talking about the first collapse he said: "At that point in time we heard a rumble, we heard a noise, and then the building came down. All we saw was dust and everything just started to get very chaotic. At that point in time all of us at the command post, firefighters, chiefs, myself, we turned around, we started to run south, down West Street towards Albany. Looking back over my shoulder, I realized that I wasn't able to outrun whatever was coming because it looked like a giant wave behind us, so I went up against a chain-link fence, I got down on one knee, I put my hands over my head to hold my helmet on so I wouldn't get hit in the head with anything, and we just proceeded to get clobbered with all kinds of debris. ... snip ... The air got very thick, very dirty. It was very difficult to breathe. I was choking. I proceeded to at some point in time -- again, I lost track of time -- to give an urgent or a Mayday message on the radio, which I subsequently listened to myself and I have a cassette of that, indicating that something had happened. I asked a dispatcher if they were aware of it because during the time that it got very black and very quiet, my radio cut out completely. Apparently the dust in the air cut the radio signal out. The radio just hummed for maybe about 30 seconds and then it came back on again. At that point in time I called Manhattan. I was answered. I asked them if they were aware of an explosion at the World Trade Center."

Tell us nolu ... does his use of the word explosion here indicate his certainty that explosives were used to bring the WTC tower down? And the portion you quoted has him saying he saw low level flashes "on the lower levels" of the building ... "like when they demolish a building". But tell us, NC ... when they deliberately demolish a building with flashes on the lower levels ... does it collapse from the top or the bottom? The bottom, right? But this one collapsed from the top down. Care to explain that? What would be the purpose of such lower level explosives?

You mean Edward CACHIA. Well notice that Mr Cachia said he "originally" thought it was due to internal detonation explosives. But I guess he no longer feels that way. Right? And he also had more to say than this one quote mined from his interview (http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/91102 51.PDF ):

"At that point in time, we're looking up at the north tower. I remember my officer saying, "I have a feeling this one is going to come down too." Just as he said that, that tower came down it looked like at the point of impact. We actually witnessed both towers coming down visually. We happened to be looking at that particular time. With that, the tower came down."

Why no mention of explosions during this collapse? Wouldn't that suggest the government brought down one with explosives but used something else for the other ... like a energy beam from space or the basement?

"Then a detective came up and said we're pulling back to Chambers. I'm like word? He's said yeah because Tower 1 is going to come down. He said the same thing. I was like all right. At that point I looked up at Tower 1 and I could see that she was leaning slightly but not much, and as I looked over to -- I looked at the tower, I looked at everybody else and everybody else is hauling -- everybody is walking up, walking south towards Chambers. So the officer offers me some water, I take it, starting to drink it as I'm walking, and I'm walking because he said we got to pull back."

And if you follow his description further, you'll find it was quite a while before that tower actually came down. So why was the tower leaning, NC, if it was bombs and thermite that did it? And you are quote mining again because in what you quoted, he was not suggesting for one moment that what brought the towers down was a ground level explosion. What he was saying is that he was for the second time hearing that sound of a towers debris hitting the earth ... that "twisting metal wreckage again". And you are again disrespecting a witness, NC, by using his quotes out of context.

Now I don't care to take the time to go through the rest of what you posted, but I bet the story is the same in each case. Because quote mining is what *truthers* do.

Yes, modeling is an uncertain business. But what Mark doesn't tell you is that fire code models are still widely regarded as the best means currently available of determining conditions inside complex burning structures. And note that despite all these uncertainities, the peak temperatures that steel samples were determined to have experienced agreed quite nicely with what the models computed steel would have seen in the locations from which those samples came.

Actually, there is quite a bit of evidence this happened. First, as pointed out in the NIST reports, visual imagery shows that fireproofing did come off structural elements in the towers. Second, engineers didn't suggest this happened without good reason. Those reasons are clearly identified in the NIST reports. To suggest that fireproofing wouldn't come off during a high speed impact is actually the more ridiculous notion. Which is why no real experts in steel and fireproofing or impact have joined Dr Greening or the *truth* movement in suggesting that.

Now readers should know that Mark in a previous discussion of this subject declared that NIST concluded "vibration played no role in shaking off the 2.2- 2.5 inches of upgraded SFRM". Well that was false. What NIST did was say that loss of fireproofing due to vibration was not included in the models. They said "insulation damage estimates were limited to areas subject to direct debris impact."

"The insulation damage estimates were conservative as they ignored possibly damaged and dislodged insulation in a much larger region that was not in the direct path of the debris but was subject to strong vibrations during and after the aircraft impact. A robust criteria to generate a coherent pattern of vibration- induced dislodging could not be established due to (1) the numerical noise inherent in the acceleration time-histories on structural components obtained from the aircraft impact analyses, and (2) lack of data on the strength of insulation materials under such a high rate of loading with sharp peaks in a very short duration. However, there were indications that insulation damage occurred over a larger region than that estimated. Photographic evidence showed insulation dislodged from exterior columns not directly impacted by debris (NIST NCSTAR 1-3C). The towers underwent a period of strong impact loading for about .6 to .7 s. Further, video analysis showed that WTC 2 vibrated for over 4 minutes after aircraft impact with amplitudes in excess of 20 inches at the roof top (NIST NCSTAR 1-5A). First person interviews of building occupants indicated that building vibrations due to aircraft impact were strong enough to dislodge ceiling tiles and collapse walls throughout the height of both WTC towers and to cause nearly all elevators to stop functioning (NIST NCSTAR 1-7)."

Now as to whether fireproofing would have been dislodged by direct impacts of plane debris, here are some excerpts from http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR 1-2.pdf (the final NIST report on this subject):

The aircraft impact simulation models included not only the structural components of the towers and aircraft, but also representations of the partition walls and building contents and furnishings (modular office workstations). The results of the analyses included damage to the partition walls, workstations, and structural elememts. Such damage estimates were crucial for the estimation of areas with dislodged insulation as explained in this section.

Estimates of the post-impact condition of the fire protection was based on criteria that considered damage to structural components, building partitions, and furnishings along with the debris field as calculated from the aircraft impact analyses. Estimates for the extent of dislodged insulation considered insulation damage to structural components only in the direct path of debris, as follows:

- Core columns had sprayed fire-resistance material (SFRM), gypsum wallboard enclosures, or a combination of both. Insulation was assumed to be dislodged from the columns if they were subject to direct debris impact that could fail wall partitions in the immediate vicinity. The representative bending strength of building partitions in the impact simulations was 500 psi (NIST NCSTAR 1-2), while the representative adhesion and cohesive strength of SFRM measured in the laboratory by NIST was generally less than 12 psi (NIST NCSTAR 1-6A). Gypsum column enclosures were also assumed to have a lesser representative strength than wall columns.

To consider that insulation on core columns was damaged, the predicted debris impact had to be sufficient to fail building partitions immediately in front of the columns. If the wall partitions remained intact in the core area after interactions with the debris field, then the insulation on core columns behind these partitions was assumed to remain intact. If wall partitions were damaged or destroyed by the debris field, then insulation on core columns behind these partitions was assumed to be dislodged over that floor height.

- To consider that insulation on exterior columns was damaged, the debris impact had to damage or destroy office furnishings (modular office workstations) adjacent to the columns. If the office furnishings remained intact after interaction with the debris field, then the insulation on the inside face of the exterior columns behind these furnishings was assumed to remain intact. If the room furnishings were damaged or destroyed after interaction with the debris field, then the insulation on the inside face of the exterior columns in the vicinity was assumed to be dislodged over that floor height. The other three faces of the exterior columns were protected by windows and/or aluminum cladding and were assumed to have no insulation damage.

- To consider that SFRM on floor trusses was damaged, the debris impact had to be sufficient to damage or destroy room furnishings (modular office furniture) in the same area of the affected floor. If the room furnishings remained intact, then the insulation on the steel trusses above the furnishings was assumed to remain intact. If the room furnishings were damaged or destroyed by the debris field, then the insulation on the steel trusses above these furnishings was assumed to be dislodged.

The insulation damage estimates were conservative as they ignored damage and dislodged insulation in a much larger region that was not in the direct path of the debris but was subject to strong vibrations during and after the aircraft impact (BAC - the rest of this paragraph was quoted earlier but basically it indicates that photographic evidence shows that vibrations were sufficient to dislodge insulation from structural elements not impacted by debris.)

Now apparently, it's Dr Greening's (and Mark's) opinion that debris which could destroy partitions and structural members in the analysis models could not remove sprayed on fireproofing with measured adhesive and cohesive strength of less than 12 psi? Frankly, I think this is yet another case of someone with no expertise in a given subject making claims he knows nothing about. Dr Greening should stick to chemistry ... such as the composition of thermite and the conditions underwhich thermite like reactions would occur. He only embarrasses himself, like that sub-atomic physicist named Jones embarrassed himself, when he makes declarations in areas for which he has little education and NO experience.

Now that isn't the first instance in which Mark has been dishonest in his description of NIST and the facts. Here's a direct quote by Mark in a previous discussion of the fireproofing and the temperatures reached in the fire:

"Even without SFRM, the time the office fires burned in the area of limited outer girder bowing, wasn't long enough to raise steel temperatures. The limited heating and suspected loss of SFRM to the perimeter columns played no role in the collapse. All steel tested from the fire zones bare this out.

Contrary to what Marked claimed, the steel tests actually validate the NIST modeling because the tested specimens did not come for the regions in the simulations where they found the highest temperatures. They came from regions in the models where similar temperatures to those determined for those test specimens were calculated. Second, the steel test procedures used were limited to specimens subject to relatively low temperatures (roughly 250 C) because they depended on paint still being on the specimens. Third, the detailed analyses done by NIST and reported in NCSTAR 1- 6 clearly show that the temperatures in structural members without fireproofing were indeed high enough for long enough to seriously weaken structural members.

"No matter what airliner impact case NIST plugged into the model A,B,C or D, no simulation produced the observable events of impact and the debris path."

"The exterior wall damage was the one structural system for which direct visual evidence of the impact damage was available. Therefore, the comparison of the calculated and observed exterior wall damage provided a partial validation of the analysis methodologies used in the global impact analyses. A comparison of the north exterior wall observed and calculated damage from the base case WTC 1 global impact analysis is shown in Figure E-28. The comparison of the calculated and observed damage indicated that the geometry and location of the impact damage zone were in good agreement. This agreement in the position and shape of the impact damage served to validate the geometry of the aircraft model, including the aircraft orientation, trajectory, and flight distortions of the wings."

"The comparison also indicated a good agreement in the magnitude and mode of impact damage on the exterior wall. The exterior wall completely failed in the regions of the fuselage, engine, and fuel-filled wing section impacts. Damage to the exterior wall was observed all the way out to the wing tips, but the exterior columns were not completely failed in the outer wing and vertical stabilizer impact regions. Failure of the exterior columns occurred both at the bolted connections between the column ends and at various locations in the column depending on local severity of the impact load and the proximity of the bolted connection to the impact. The agreement of both the mode and magnitude of the impact damage served to partially validate the constitutive and damage modeling of the aircraft and exterior wall of the tower."

"The comparison of the calculated and observed damage indicated that the geometry and location of the impact damage were in good agreement. This agreement served to validate the geometry of the aircraft model, including the aircraft orientation, trajectory, and flight distortions of the wings. The agreement of both the mode and magnitude of impact damage served to partially validate the constitutive and damage modeling of the aircraft and exterior wall of the tower."

"The calculated damage to the south wall from the more severe WTC 2 global impact analysis is shown in Figure E-54. A comparison of the south exterior wall observed (Figure E-46a) and calculated (Figure E-54) damage from the more severe WTC 2 global impact analysis indicated that the calculated and observed magnitude and mode of impact damage were still in good agreement."

"The observables available to help validate the global impact analyses included the following:

- Damage to the building exterior (exterior walls and floors in the immediate vicinity of the impact) documented by photographic evidence.

- Aircraft debris external to the towers (landing gear for WTC 1 and a landing gear and an engine for WTC 2) as documented by photographic evidence.

- Eyewitness accounts from survivors who were inside the towers (blocked or passable stairwells).

An example of such comparison was a detailed comparison between the observed and calculated damage (from the base case analysis) to the north wall of WTC 1 and the south wall of WTC 2. The comparison included the mode, magnitude, and location of failure around the hole creatd by the aircraft impact. The color code included in the following: (1) green circles indicating a proper match of the failure mode and magnitude between the observed and calculated damage, (2) yellow circles indicating a proper match in the failure mode, but not the magnitude, (3) red circles indicating that the failure mode and magnitude predicted by the calculation did not match that was observed, and (4) black circles indicating that the observed damage was obscured by smoke, fire or other factors. The comparisons shown in Figure E-62 and Figure E-63 for WTC 1 and WTC 2, respectively, indicate the overall agreement with the observed damage was very good."

Not all the observables were perfectly matched by the simulations due to the uncertainties in exact impact conditions, the imperfect knowledge of the interior tower contents, the chaotic behavior of the aircraft breakup and subsequent debris motion, and the limitations of the models. In general, however, the results of the simulations matched these observables reasonably well."

Mark is trying to paint a false picture of the NIST analyses. Just as he is trying to paint a false picture about the validity of statements by Dr Greening on subjects Dr Greening knows little about ... either through education or experience.

First of all, keep in mind that NIST did not assume that any SFRM was dislodged due to motions of the structure. Only due to impact. And second, how high of accelerations does Dr Greening think occur during a hard impact? Do the numbers that he quoted have anything to do with such estimates? NO.

It states that "for values representative of the upgraded thermal insulation on the floor trusses, an acceleration of about 80 g would be required to dislodge a 2.5 in. thick layer of well-bonded SFRM from a planar surface." For bars, the report states "the smallest required acceleration is about 40 g, which corresponds to a large bar having a thick layer of the higher density SFRM with low strength ... snip .... For a 1.2 in. diameter bar with 2.5 in. thickness of SFRM and density of 19 pcf, which are representative of the conditions of the upgraded insulation on the floor trusses, the acceleration required to dislodge the SFRM would vary from 55 g to 230 g, depending on the strength characteristics within the assumed ranges given above." Then it states "these models apply to members not directly impacted by debris."

The lesson is that one can get into serious trouble straying from one's area of expertise. Regardless of whether its Jones or Ryan or Woods or Greening.

Now perhaps Dr Greening should have looked at Appendix C of the above linked report. It's titled "Debris Impact Tests of BLAZE-SHIELD DC/F Sprayed Fire-Resistive Material".

It says "tests were performed to provide evidence regarding the assumption that, withing the debris field created by the aircraft impact into WTC 1 and WTC 2, the SFRM used for thermal insulation of structural members was damaged and dislodged." As far as the tests are concerned, the report states "the impact kinetic energies from the projectiles were significantly lower than those from actual impacting debris in the WTC towers due to differences in size (mass). However, when the impact kinetic energies were normalized by the impact area, the impact conditions used in the tests approximated those in the towers ...".

The report concludes that "based on the observations made in the ballistic impact tests, the SFRM was dislodged by direct impact with solid objects that had a kinetic energy per unit impact area approaching 10^^4 to 10^^5 ft lb/ft^^2 (10^^5 to 10^^6 J/m^^2). In addition, SFRM that was not dislodged after the debris impact lost its adhesion to the steel surface in all but one test. The SFRM on the steel plate was dislodged upon impact of the projectiles, except for the ballistic impact at a 60 degree angle to the plate. ... snip ... The tests results demonstrated that there was dislodgement of SFRM at locations subject to direct debris impact. ... snip ... In the WTC towers, where the debris fields were larger than the dimensions of steel componentes (i.e., such as trusses, beams, and columns), these testes show that SFRM would have been dislodged for a wide range of debris sizes and speeds. The test results support the assumption that, within the debris field created by the aircraft impact into WTC 1 and WTC 2, the SFRM used for thermal insulation of structural members was damaged and dislodged."

This is not proven. Not by a long shot. As I've demonstrated in several earlier threads.

I figured I would clue you in before you make an even bigger ass out of yourself than you already are (if at all possible) - but prior is the opposite of after.

ladybug, don't you think that what the experts said shortly after the collapse might be an indication of what they would have said before the collapse ... PROVIDED they knew all the facts we now know about the situation?

In other words (and I clarify this only because you seem to have had difficulty understand my reasoning the first time I stated it), if PRIOR TO 911, you told the professional engineering community around the world that large commercial jets would impact the towers at nearly maximum velocity, that the impacts would shatter numerous structural members and severely damage fireproofing coatings on the remaining steel, that the planes would have nearly full fuel tanks, that the fire suppression systems would NOT be functional, that fire fighters would be unable to reach and fight the fires ... then I suspect a great many more than "not a single one" would have had doubts about the structures surviving.

Now you once told me with great confidence that "there are structural engineers out there that KNOW that the official story is NOT POSSIBLE, but you will not listen to THOSE experts" so I'm challenging you to NAME some of those structural engineers who think the WTC towers were brought down by bombs or thermite or energy beams or nukes. Can you offer a name or are you just PRETENDING that there are structural engineers out there that agree with you and the rest of the 4um *truthers*? Last time I asked that question of you ... well ... you just vanished from the thread. Are we going to see a repeat performance, ladybug?

Anyone who knows me (there are a couple on the forum) knows for a fact that I do not spend as much time online in the summer time. I spend the vast majority of my time producing our own food, including vegetable gardens, milking goats and a cow, and even growing our own feed for the milk animals. I also make our own butter, and so on. So that means I have much less time to address your drivel than you may like.

As to "experts", for starters, it only takes common sense to realize something is definitely wrong with the official 9/11 story, but if you need an expert to tell you this, here is a site that has several educated folks that can put common sense into "big words" for people like you that only believe what the "officials" tell you.

I am sure you will find a list of excuses why these officials don't count, but I really don't care what ignorant people like you think.

My point regarding your reply to inniway's post is simple. If flying planes into buildings is such a sure fired way to make the damn thing fall into it's own footprint, then you find me an expert that thinks this is such a great idea. After all, it worked so well on 9/11 - they dropped 3 buildings with only 2 planes.

Until you can provide me with such an expert, there is no need for you to grace me with one of your precious little 15 posts for the day.

"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, p. 131

Richard Roth, an architect and partner in the firm of Emery Roth and Sons who had worked with Yamasaki wrote the following:

Not knowing the towers were readily collapsible and that the white paper was a fraud, and that many engineers knew the buildings were subject to total collapse failure, the insurance companies provided billions of dollars of coverage. The insurance companies evidently never heard of any of the many engineers who knew the buildings would collapse.

It should be noted that the firefighters did reach the impact zone in 2WTC. FDNY Chief Orio Palmer, who was a marathoner, led his group up to the 78th floor impact zone. He was the first to reach the impact zone of either tower.

At 9:52, Chief Palmer radioed, "We've got two isolated pockets of fire. We should be able to knock it down with two lines."

He added, "Radio, radio, radio that -- 78th floor, numerous 10-45 Code Ones." [On the 78th floor there were numerous dead civilians.]

If you ever have some time try finding and reading about the mysterious NIST "soffits".

But that's not the issue here. The issue is whether what experts throughout the world seem to think caused the WTC towers to collapse is correct or not. Now you said in a previous thread, with 100 percent confidence, that there are structural engineers out there who do not think the official explanation is correct ... who you seem to think support the notion of bombs or thermite or energy beams or nuclear bombs being the cause. And I'm challenging you to back that claim up. If you can't even name one such engineer, why should we believe any other claim you make?

Except, as far as I know, that site doesn't name one structural engineer who says WTC 1 or WTC 2 were brought down by something other than a plane impact and fire. That "journal" was in fact started by a sub-atomic particle physicist who spent the last 30 years doing nothing but studying sub-atomic particles and cold fusion. A sub-atomic particle physicist who claimed a paper he'd written was "peer reviewed", when in fact the only folks who'd reviewed it were a bunch of marxists who published papers on marxist economics. A sub-atomic particle physicist who it has been demonstrated time and again to have a great deal of trouble dealing with the reality shown in photos and videos. Who like you, dismisses every REAL expert in subjects like structural engineering, demolition, steel, concrete, fire, seismology and macro-world physics in the entire world. Who instead has surrounded himself with "educated folks" with majors like water treatment, dental materials, theology and philosophy who, like him, promote lies such as the towers collapsed in 10 seconds.

And therein lies the problem. You are quite happy letting the folks at the above site LIE to you about many facts surrounding 9/11. At least we know now that being lied to isn't the core reason why you joined the 9/11 *Truth* Movement.

Except the WTC towers did not fall into their own footprint. That's just another lie you've been willing to accept just because "truth* movement leaders made that claim.

I'm not the one who is lacking a REAL expert to back up what my views and claims.

Her dissertation involved the development of an experimental method to measure thermal stresses in bimaterial joints.

It would appear that Dr. Wood has at least three more engineering degrees, and one more structural engineering degree, than WTC structural engineer Leslie Robertson.

This is misleading. Skillings was not necessarily saying the structure would survive the fires. What he wrote can easily be interpreted to mean only that he thought the structure would survive the impact. And indeed it did.

Furthermore, it isn't clear who actually did this claimed impact analysis. Leslie Robertson, who by most accounts was the lead structural engineer on the project, said there was an analysis but only for an impact at relatively low speed (180 mph) based on the assumption that such a plane would only hit the towers if it was lost in fog. This load condition makes sense ... studying the survival of the towers for a high speed impact does not. No other building design had contemplated such a loading and no instance of a building impact other than a plane lost in fog had occurred.

Furthermore, Skillings memo was intended to calm concerns about a number of issues related to the towers. With that as it's goal, Skillings could very well have chosen to exaggerate the towers' claimed safety. And the White Paper did not contain any details beyond what was quoted by nolu regarding the impact analysis. Whatever real documentation there was for those calculations was apparently lost in the intervening 40 years.

Furthermore, keep in mind that the analysis tools available back in the early 60's to examine impact and fire problems were at best crude. They lacked the computers, the software, and, in many ways, even the physics and material underpinnings to state with any confidence that the towers would survive high speed impacts and the fires that would subsequently result.

This is another attempt to deceive. NC is trying to implant the notion in your mind that there were only two small pockets of fire at the impact level of the South Tower just 7 minutes before it collapsed. This is clearly false, as both photo and video evidence proves.

Furthermore, the complete transcript of Chief Palmer's remarks and other firemen who were on that floor at the time indicates that both group of firemen were trapped in the stairwells by the fires and thus could not have been in position to speak to the existence or size of the fires anywhere else in the impact level ... which by the way encompassed multiple stories above the 78th floor that Chief Palmer had not even reached when he made that call.

Keep in mind with anything posted by nolu_chan that the context ... what he isn't telling you ... matters a great deal. Or you will be misled.

What nolu_chan doesn't want to tell ladybug (... to keep her in the dark) is that Dr Wood's ENTIRE career has been spent studying dental materials. Her expertise (http://www.ces.clemson.edu/me/mefaculty/pdfs/Wood1.pdf) is in statics, not dynamics. In biological materials and composites, not steel, impact or fire. In moire interferometry ... as opposed to anything that would actually help one understand what happened to the towers that day. She is a member of the IADR (International Association for Dental Research), and the Academy of Dental Materials. ALL her published papers are on that subject. She doesn't even understand the concept of momentum as her billiard ball analysis proves. Her pet theory is that some star-war like energy weapon from space destroyed the towers. If you really want to see what a complete kook Dr Wood is, look at the following video:

In this video, Dr Greg Jenkins of DC 911Truth (and who has a PhD in physics) interviews her about her beam weapon theory. It starts off with him asking her what type of weapon would have done what she claims. She says she doesn't know. Then she doesn't want to get distracted by the figures for the energy required to "dustify" the structures.

Dr Jenkins starts to tell her his calculation about the amount of energy needed to evaporate the steel in the towers and she objects. She wants to talk instead about "nanofying" the structure instead. He asks if that's been done in the laboratory ... turn steel into dust. She says "uh-huh". He asks for details. And she starts waving hands. He tells her he doesn't know of a way to "dustify" steel in any situation. And her response is laughable.

Wood is way out of her depth. Since she can't seem to explain to Jenkins how it happened they move on to the issue of what happened which is where she says they need to focus before going further anyway. They discuss the issue of whether the debris pile is too small afterwords for it to have been a simple collapse. Based on a comparison of the collapsed volume to the original volume of other structures that have collapsed (like the KingDome) she says the height of the debris pile at the WTC should have been much higher ... somewhere around 12% of its original height, apparently ... which would be 15 stories. But it's not. It's much less, she says.

Jenkins points out that the King Dome collapsed inside it's foot print whereas the WTC towers did not. He tells her that the WTC collapsed in a radius six times its footprint. Then she claims that it was more like a million times its footprint because it went into the upper atmosphere. She keeps talking about the stuff in the upper atmosphere when the video started out by showing all of us with pictures from that day that no cloud went upward during the collapse. It's a priceless moment in this whole saga.

When he points this out during the interview she argues with him saying he didn't look at the pictures. She apparently thinks, because of the angle the tower was viewed at in one picture, that there was a column of dust rising upward into the atmosphere from the south tower. He points out that was smoke from the North Tower (which is proven at the beginning of his video). She then wisecracks ... "you mean the smoke from the smoke bombs?" and then insists that it is dust going up into the upper atmosphere. It just doesn't get any funnier ... except when someone like nolu_chan references her as an *expert*.

Dr Jenkins was clearly unprepared for such a silly response. Because he didn't have the other images they show at the beginning of the video clip handy to show her, he can't destroy her on camera. So instead he suggests they go back to the issue of how wide the collapsing debris spreads and she quips "because this wasn't working for you, you want to change to another subject?" Could Dr Wood be any more clueless?

And the interview goes downhill from there. She is so out there and so unable to grasp the reality of what she is looking at that Dr Jenkins (another 911 *truther*) ends up scratching his head in puzzlement as to why she doesn't see falling debris in a picture that clearly shows falling debris. She is so nutty that she finally insists the towers "did not collapse". And you just have to see the last couple minutes of the video when they show image after image of the debris that Dr Wood claims didn't exist. I love it when the truth movement makes fun of the truth movement. But it is a good sign.

BAC #34: Yamasaki's design for the World Trade Center was unveiled to the public on January 18, 1964, with an eight-foot model.[27] So there is NO POSSIBLE WAY that any White Paper from 1964 affected the DESIGN.
-- BeAChooser posted on 2007-04-20

BAC #45: The design of the major structural elements of the towers surely had to have been completed by February 1964.
-- BeAChooser posted on 2007-04-21

Unlike BAC bullshit, there is incontrovertible evidence (repeated once again below) that Leslie Robertson was not even a licensed professional engineer until January 6, 1965. Design work on the towers began in 1963 and the design was presented to the public in January 1964. Leslie Robertson has never had an engineering degree and did not yet have enough experience under the tutelage of Chief Engineer John Skilling to obtain a license. Robertson was not yet a junior partner in Skilling's engineering firm, much less a named partner. Absent a license, the only engineering document Robertson could sign before 1965 was the lunch list.

In addition, Glanz and Lipton write that, "every facet of the [WTC] design was almost a photographic expansion of something that Skilling and his staff had used on earlier jobs." That is earlier, as in still more years before Robertson gained enough experience under the tutelage of Chief Engineer John Skilling to obtain a license.

The articles in Engineering News Record from 1964 do not even mention Robertson's name, nor was there any reason to do so. Absent a license, Robertson could not submit anything without getting his Daddy's signature. No matter how many "accounts" BACpimp can find echoed on the net, nothing will change the documented fact that Robertson did not obtain a license as a professional engineer until 1965.

Source: New York State Education Department
Office of the Professions
License Information
04/29/2007

Name : ROBERTSON LESLIE E
Address : NEW YORK NY
Profession : PROFESSIONAL ENGINEERING

License No: 034360
Date of Licensure : 01/06/65
Additional Qualification :
Status : REGISTERED
Registered through last day of : 01/09

Name : SKILLING JOHN B
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 :

A series of articles from Engineering News Record from 1964 to 1971, refer to either John Skilling or Leslie Robertson. I have boldfaced each name in each instance and have left no instance unquoted from the linked source. Robertson did not receive a mention until 1971. Prior to that there are repeated references to John Skilling, but nary a mention of Robertson.

Architects are Minoru Yamasaki & Associates of Birmingham, Mich., and Emery Roth & Sons, of New York City. Structural engineers are Worthington, Skilling, Helle & Jackson, of Seattle.

The concept was explained to the New York Architectural League by John Skilling, a partner in Worthington, Skilling, Helle and Jackson, of Seattle, consulting structural engineers on the World Trade Center (see p. 124).

Walls resist wind. In designing the record-height towers against wind, Worthington, Skilling, Helle and Jackson adopted a scheme that does not rely on the core at all to take wind. Each tower will act as a vertical, cantilevered hollow tube. The giant Vierendeel trusses forming the loadbearing exterior walls will provide the required rigidity and strength to resist wind. All the horizontal shear will be resisted by the sides of the building parallel to the wind, and most of the overturning moment will be taken by the exterior walls normal to the wind. For economy in resisting the stresses, the wall columns will be made of high-strength steels, as indicated in the diagram above.

Minoru Yamasaki and Associates, Birmingham, Mich., and Emery Roth & Sons, New York City, are the Architects. Worthington, Skilling, Helle and Jackson, of Seattle, are, the consulting structural engineers; Jaros, Baum and Bowles, of New York City, the consulting mechanical engineers; and Joseph R. Loring and Associates, New York City, the consulting electrical' engineers. These firms were assisted in the design by the World Trade Center Planning Division under the direction of Malcolm P. Levy, and the PNYA engineering department, John M. Kyle,' chief engineer.

Fig . World Trade Center's towers will rise 1,350 ft in New York
Fig . Proposed skyscrapers will dominate the skyline of downtown Manhattan.
Fig . Floorbeams will span from exterior columns to elevator-core walls.
Fig . Structural consultant John Skilling.
Fig . Architects Richard (left) and Julian Roth and Minoru Yamasaki.

To maintain uniform column and spandrel dimensions, structural engineers Worthington, Skilling, Helle & Jackson, of Seattle, specified a variety of steel strengths and sections to resist varying stresses throughout the frame.

Monti on management. Monti operates from the 10th floor of a building overlooking the WTC site. Although he concentrates most of his attention in areas where things go wrong, he maintains constant communication with the main contractors, with the architects and with the engineering consultants, Skilling, Helle, Christiansen, Robertson, Seattle, on structural design; Joseph Loring & Associates, New York City, on electrical work, and Jaros, Baum & Bolles, New York City, on mechanical.

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.

The BAC challenge to ladybug was to offer a name of a structural engineer who thinks the WTC towers were brought down by bombs or thermite or energy beams or nukes.

Dr. Judy Wood holds a degree in structural engineering and holds the opinion that the towers were brought down by the means specified by BAC.

Challenge answered with the name of a structural engineer. Just for good measure, Dr. Wood also holds a masters in Engineering Mechanics, and a doctorate in Materials Engineering Science.

Explosive Testimony: Revelations about the Twin Towers in the 9/11 Oral
Histories

by David Ray Griffin

“[T]here was just an explosion [in the south tower]. It seemed like on television [when] they blow up these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way around like a belt, all these explosions.”
--Firefighter Richard Banaciski

“I saw a flash flash flash [at] the lower level of the building. You know like when they demolish a building?”
--Assistant Fire Commissioner Stephen Gregory

“[I]t was [like a] professional demolition where they set the charges on certain floors and then you hear 'Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop'."
--Paramedic Daniel Rivera

The above quotations come from a collection of 9/11 oral histories that, although recorded by the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) at the end of 2001, were publicly released only on August 12, 2005. Prior to that date, very few Americans knew the content of these accounts or even the fact that they existed.

Why have we not known about them until recently? Part of the answer is that the city of New York would not release them until it was forced to do so. Early in 2002, the New York Times requested copies under the freedom of information act, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration refused. So the Times, joined by several families of 9/11 victims, filed suit. After a long process, the city was finally ordered by the New York Court of Appeals to release the records (with some exceptions and redactions allowed). Included were oral histories, in interview form, provided by 503 firefighters and medical workers.¹(Emergency Medical Services had become a division within the Fire Department.²) The Times then made these oral histories publicly available.³

Once the content of these testimonies is examined, it is easy to see why persons concerned to protect the official story about 9/11 would try to keep them hidden. By suggesting that explosions were occurring in the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, they pose a challenge to the official account of 9/11, according to which the towers were caused to collapse solely by the impact of the airplanes and the resulting fires.

In any case, now that the oral histories have finally been released, it is time for Americans and the world in general to see what these brave men and women reported about that fateful day. If this information forces a reevaluation of the official story about 9/11, better now than later.

That said, it must be added that although these oral histories are of great significance, they do not contain the first reports of explosions in the Twin Towers. Such reports---from firefighters, reporters, and people who had worked in the towers---started becoming available right after 9/11.

These reports, however, were not widely publicized by the mainstream press and, as a result, have for the most part been known only within the "9/11 truth movement," which has focused on evidence that seems inconsistent with the official story.

I will begin by summarizing some of those previously available reports. Readers will then be able to see that although in some respects the newly released oral histories simply add reinforcement, they also are revelatory documents: Some of the testimonies are quite stunning, even to people familiar with the earlier reports; and there are now so many testimonies that even the most skeptical reader is likely to find the cumulative effect impressive.

Previously Available Testimony Suggestive of Explosions in the Twin Towers

The day after 9/11, a story in the Los Angeles Times, referring to the south tower, said: "There were reports of an explosion right before the tower fell, then a strange sucking sound, and finally the sound of floors collapsing."⁴

A story in the Guardian said that "police and fire officials were carrying out the first wave of evacuations when the first of the World Trade Centre towers collapsed. Some eyewitnesses reported hearing another explosion just before the structure crumbled. Police said that it looked almost like a 'planned implosion.'"⁵

"Planned implosion" is another term for controlled demolition, in which explosives are placed at crucial places throughout a building so that, when set off in the proper order, they will cause the building to come down in the desired way. When it is close to other buildings, the desired way will be straight down into, or at least close to, the building's footprint, so that it does not damage the surrounding buildings. This type of controlled demolition is called an "implosion." To induce an implosion in steel-frame buildings, the explosives must be set so as to break the steel columns. Each of the Twin Towers had 47 massive steel columns in its core and 236 steel columns around the periphery.

To return now to testimonies about explosions: There were many reports about an explosion in the basement of the north tower. For example, janitor William Rodriguez reported that he and others felt an explosion below the first sub-level office at 9 AM, after which co-worker Felipe David, who had been in front of a nearby freight elevator, came into the office with severe burns on his face and arms yelling "explosion! explosion! explosion!"⁶

Rodriguez's account has been corroborated by Jose Sanchez, who was in the workshop on the fourth sub-level. Sanchez said that he and a co-worker heard a big blast that "sounded like a bomb," after which "a huge ball of fire went through the freight elevator."⁷

Engineer Mike Pecoraro, who was working in the sixth sub-basement of the north tower, said that after an explosion he and a co-worker went up to the C level, where there was a small machine shop. "There was nothing there but rubble," said Pecoraro. "We're talking about a 50 ton hydraulic press--gone!" They then went to the parking garage, but found that it was also gone. Then on the B level, they found that a steel-and-concrete fire door, which weighed about 300 pounds, was wrinkled up "like a piece of aluminum foil." Having seen similar things after the terrorist attack in 1993, Pecoraro was convinced that a bomb had gone off.⁸

Given these testimonies to explosions in the basement levels of the towers, it is interesting that Mark Loizeaux, head of Controlled Demolition, Inc., has been quoted as saying: "If I were to bring the towers down, I would put explosives in the basement to get the weight of the building to help collapse the structure."⁹

Multiple Explosions

Some of the testimonies suggested that more than one explosion occurred in one tower or the other. FDNY Captain Dennis Tardio, speaking of the south tower, said: "I hear an explosion and I look up. It is as if the building is being imploded, from the top floor down, one after another, boom, boom, boom."¹⁰

In June of 2002, NBC television played segments from tapes recorded on 9/11. One segment contained the following exchange, which involved firefighters in the south tower:

Official: Battalion 3 to dispatch, we've just had another explosion.
Official: Battalion 3 to dispatch, we've had additional explosion.
Dispatcher: Received battalion command. Additional explosion.¹¹

Firefighter Louie Cacchioli, after entering the north tower lobby and seeing elevator doors completely blown out and people being hit with debris, asked himself, "how could this be happening so quickly if a plane hit way above?? After he reached the 24th floor, he and another fireman "heard this huge explosion that sounded like a bomb [and] knocked off the lights and stalled the elevator." After they pried themselves out of the elevator, "another huge explosion like the first one hits. This one hits about two minutes later . . . [and] I'm thinking, 'Oh. My God, these bastards put bombs in here like they did in 1993!"¹²

Multiple explosions were also reported by Teresa Veliz, who worked for a software development company in the north tower. She was on the 47th floor, she reported, when suddenly "the whole building shook. . . . [Shortly thereafter] the building shook again, this time even more violently." Then, while Veliz was making her way downstairs and outside: "There were explosions going off everywhere. I was convinced that there were bombs planted all over the place and someone was sitting at a control panel pushing detonator buttons. . . . There was another explosion. And another. I didn't know where to run."¹³

Steve Evans, a New York-based correspondent for the BBC, said: "I was at the base of the second tower . . . that was hit. . . . There was an explosion. . . . The base of the building shook. . . . [T]hen there was a series of explosions."¹⁴

Sue Keane, an officer in the New Jersey Fire Police Department who was previously a sergeant in the U.S. Army, said in her account of the onset of the collapse of the south tower: "[I]t sounded like bombs going off. That's when the explosions happened. . . . I knew something was going to happen. . . . It started to get dark, then all of a sudden there was this massive explosion." Then, discussing her experiences during the collapse of the north tower, she said: "[There was] another explosion. That sent me and the two firefighters down the stairs. . . . I can't tell you how many times I got banged around. Each one of those explosions picked me up and threw me. . . . There was another explosion, and I got thrown with two firefighters out onto the street."¹⁵

Wall Street Journal reporter John Bussey, describing his observation of the collapse of the south tower from the ninth floor of the WSJ office building, said: "I . . . looked up out of the office window to see what seemed like perfectly synchronized explosions coming from each floor. . . . One after the other, from top to bottom, with a fraction of a second between, the floors blew to pieces."¹⁶

Another Wall Street Journal reporter said that after seeing what appeared to be "individual floors, one after the other exploding outward," he thought: "My God, they're going to bring the building down." And they, whoever they are, HAD SET CHARGES. . . . I saw the explosions."¹⁷

A similar perception was reported by Beth Fertig of WNYC Radio, who said: "It just descended like a timed explosion, like when they are deliberately bringing a building down. . . . It was coming down so perfectly that in one part of my brain I was thinking, 'They got everyone out, and they're bringing the building down because they have to.'"¹⁸

A more graphic testimony to this perception was provided on the film made by the Naudet brothers. In a clip from that film, one can watch two firemen describing their experiences to other firemen.

Fireman 1: "We made it outside, we made it about a block . . . ."

Fireman 2: "We made it at least two blocks and we started running." He makes explosive sounds and then uses a chopping hand motion to emphasize his next point: "Floor by floor it started popping out . . . ."

Fireman 1: "It was as if they had detonated--as if they were planning to take down a building, boom boom boom boom boom . . . ."

Fireman 2: "All the way down. I was watching it and running. And then you just saw this cloud of shit chasing you down."¹⁹

As these illustrations show, quite impressive testimony to the occurrence of explosions in the Twin Towers existed even prior to the release of the oral histories. As we will see, however, these oral histories have made the testimony much more impressive, qualitatively as well as quantitatively. The cumulative testimony now points even more clearly than before not simply to explosions but to controlled demolition.

Testimonies in the Oral Histories Suggestive of Controlled Demolition

Several FDNY members reported that they heard an explosion just before the south tower collapsed. For example, Battalion

Chief John Sudnik said that while he and others were working at the command post, "we heard a loud explosion or what sounded like a loud explosion and looked up and I saw tower two start coming down."²⁰

Firefighter Timothy Julian said: "First I thought it was an explosion. I thought maybe there was a bomb on the plane, but delayed type of thing, you know secondary device. . . . I just heard like an explosion and then a cracking type of noise, and then it sounded like a freight train, rumbling and picking up speed, and I remember I looked up, and I saw it coming down."²¹

Emergency medical technician Michael Ober said: "[W]e heard a rumble, some twisting metal, we looked up in the air, and . . . it looked to me just like an explosion. It didn't look like the building was coming down, it looked like just one floor had blown completely outside of it. . . . I didn't think they were coming down. I just froze and stood there looking at it."²² Ober's testimony suggests that he heard and saw the explosion before he saw any sign that the building was coming down.

This point is made even more clearly by Chief Frank Cruthers, who said: "There was what appeared to be at first an explosion. It appeared at the very top, simultaneously from all four sides, materials shot out horizontally. And then there seemed to be a momentary delay before you could see the beginning of the collapse."²³

These statements by Ober and Cruthers, indicating that there was a delay between the explosion and the beginning of the collapse, suggest that the sounds and the horizontal ejection of materials could not be attributed simply to the onset of the collapse.

Shaking Ground before the Collapse

As we saw earlier, some people in the towers reported that there were powerful explosions in the basements. Such explosions would likely have caused the ground to shake. Such shaking was reported by medical technician Lonnie Penn, who said that just before the collapse of the south tower: "I felt the ground shake, I turned around and ran for my life. I made it as far as the Financial Center when the collapse happened."²⁴

According to the official account, the vibrations that people felt were produced by material from the collapsing towers hitting the ground. Penn's account, however, indicates that the shaking must have occurred several seconds before the collapse.

Shaking prior to the collapse of the north tower was described by fire patrolman Paul Curran. He was standing near it, he said, when "all of a sudden the ground just started shaking. It felt like a train was running under my feet. . . . The next thing we know, we look up and the tower is collapsing."²⁵

Lieutenant Bradley Mann of the fire department, one of the people to witness both collapses, described shaking prior to each of them. "Shortly before the first tower came down," he said, "I remember feeling the ground shaking. I heard a terrible noise, and then debris just started flying everywhere. People started running." Then, after they had returned to the area, he said, "we basically had the same thing: The ground shook again, and we heard another terrible noise and the next thing we knew the second tower was coming down."²⁶

Multiple Explosions

The oral histories contain numerous testimonies with reports of more than one explosion. Paramedic Kevin Darnowski, for example, said: "I started walking back up towards Vesey Street. I heard three explosions, and then we heard like groaning and grinding, and tower two started to come down."²⁷

Gregg Brady, an emergency medical technician, reported the same thing about the north tower, saying: "I heard 3 loud explosions. I look up and the north tower is coming down now."²⁸

Somewhat more explosions were reported by firefighter Thomas Turilli, who said, referring to the south tower, that "it almost sounded like bombs going off, like boom, boom, boom, like seven or eight."²⁹

Even more explosions were reported by Craig Carlsen, who said that while he and other firefighters were looking up at the towers, they "heard explosions coming from building two, the south tower. It seemed like it took forever, but there were about ten explosions. . . . We then realized the building started to come down."³⁰

"Pops"

As before, "pops" were reported by some witnesses. "As we are looking up at the [south tower]," said firefighter Joseph Meola, "it looked like the building was blowing out on all four sides. We actually heard the pops. Didn't realize it was the falling--you know, you heard the pops of the building. You thought it was just blowing out."³¹

"Pops" were also reported by paramedic Daniel Rivera in the following exchange:

Q. How did you know that it [the south tower] was coming down?

A. That noise. It was noise.

Q. What did you hear? What did you see?

A. It was a frigging noise. At first I thought it was---do you ever see professional demolition where they set the charges on certain floors and then you hear 'Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop'. That's exactly what--because I thought it was that. When I heard that frigging noise, that's when I saw the building coming down.³²

Collapse Beginning below the Strike Zone and Fire

According to the official account, the "pancaking" of the floors began when the floors above the strike zone, where the supports were weakened by the impact of the airplanes and the resulting fires, fell on the floors below. Some witnesses reported, however, that the collapse of the south tower began lower than the floors that were struck by the airliner and hence lower than the fires.

Timothy Burke reported that while he was watching flames coming out of the south tower, "the building popped, lower than the fire." He later heard a rumor that "the aviation fuel fell into the pit, and whatever floor it fell on heated up really bad, and that's why it popped at that floor." At the time, however, he said, "I was going oh, my god, there is a secondary device because the way the building popped. I thought it was an explosion."³³

This same twofold observation was made by firefighter Edward Cachia, who said: "As my officer and I were looking at the south tower, it just gave. It actually gave at a lower floor, not the floor where the plane hit. . . . [W]e originally had thought there was like an internal detonation, explosives, because it went in succession, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then the tower came down."³⁴

Other Indications of Controlled Demolition

Some witnesses reported other phenomena, beyond explosions, suggestive of controlled demolition.

The Appearance of Implosion: When a building close to other buildings is brought down by controlled demolition, as mentioned earlier, it typically implodes and hence comes straight down into, or at least close to, its own footprint, so that it does not fall over on surrounding structures.

As we saw above in the accounts that were previously available, both police and fire officials were quoted as saying that the towers seemed to implode. This perception was also stated in the oral history of Lieutenant James Walsh, who said: "The [north tower] didn't fall the way you would think tall buildings would fall. Pretty much it looked like it imploded on itself."³⁵

Flashes: Another common feature of controlled demolitions is that people who are properly situated may see flashes when the explosives go off. Assistant Commissioner Stephen Gregory said: "I thought . . . before . . . No. 2 came down, that I saw low-level flashes. . . . Lieutenant Evangelista . . . asked me if I saw low-level flashes in front of the building, and I agreed with him because I . . . saw a flash flash flash . . . [at] the lower level of the building. You know like when they demolish a building, how when they blow up a building, when it falls down. That's what I thought I saw."³⁶

Flashes were reported in the north tower by Captain Karin Deshore, who said: "Somewhere around the middle of the World

Trade Center, there was this orange and red flash coming out. Initially it was just one flash."³⁷

Demolition Rings: At this point, Deshore's account moved to another standard phenomenon seen by those who watch controlled demolitions: explosion rings, in which a series of explosions runs rapidly around a building. Deshore's next words were: "Then this flash just kept popping all the way around the building and that building had started to explode. The popping sound, and with each popping sound it was initially an orange and then a red flash came out of the building and then it would just go all around the building on both sides as far as I could see. These popping sounds and the explosions were getting bigger, going both up and down and then all around the building."³⁸

An explosion ring (or belt) was also described by firefighter Richard Banaciski. Speaking of the south tower, he said: "[T]here was just an explosion. It seemed like on television [when] they blow up these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way around like a belt, all these explosions."³⁹

A description of what appeared to be a ring of explosions was also given by Deputy Commissioner Thomas Fitzpatrick, who said: "We looked up at the [south tower] . . . . All we saw was a puff of smoke coming from about 2 thirds of the way up . . . . It looked like sparkling around one specific layer of the building. . . . My initial reaction was that this was exactly the way it looks when they show you those implosions on TV."⁴⁰

Horizontal Ejections: Another feature of controlled demolition, at least when quite powerful explosives are used, is that things are ejected horizontally from the floors on which the explosions occur. Such ejections were mentioned in the testimony of Chief Frank Cruthers above. Similarly, Captain Jay Swithers said: "I took a quick glance at the building and while I didn't see it falling, I saw a large section of it blasting out, which led me to believe it was just an explosion."⁴¹

Firefighter James Curran said: "When I got underneath the north bridge I looked back and . . . I heard like every floor went chuchu-chu. Looked back and from the pressure everything was getting blown out of the floors before it actually collapsed."⁴²

Battalion Chief Brian Dixon said: "I was . . . hearing a noise and looking up. . . . [T]he lowest floor of fire in the south tower actually looked like someone had planted explosives around it because . . . everything blew out on the one floor. I thought, geez, this looks like an explosion up there, it blew out."⁴³

These reports by Curran and Dixon conform to what can be seen by looking at photographs and videos of the collapses, which show that various materials, including sections of steel and aluminum, were blown out hundreds of feet.⁴⁴ Such powerful ejections of materials are exactly what would be expected from explosions powerful enough to cause such huge buildings to collapse.

Dust Clouds: The most visible material ejected horizontally from buildings during controlled demolition, especially buildings with lots of concrete, is dust, which forms more or less expansive dust clouds. Some of the testimonies about the collapse of the south tower mention that it produced an enormous amount of dust, which formed clouds so big and thick that they blocked out all light.

Firefighter Stephen Viola said: "You heard like loud booms . . . and then we got covered with rubble and dust, and I thought we'd actually fallen through the floor . . . because it was so dark you couldn't see anything."⁴⁵

Firefighter Angel Rivera said: "That's when hell came down. It was like a huge, enormous explosion. . . . The wind rushed. . . , all the dust. . . and everything went dark."⁴⁶

Lieutenant William Wall said: "[W]e heard an explosion. We looked up and the building was coming down right on top of us. . . . We ran a little bit and then we were overtaken by the cloud."⁴⁷

Paramedic Louis Cook said that after the debris started falling, "everything went black" and "you couldn't breathe because [of] all the dust. There was just an incredible amount of dust and smoke." He then found that there was, "without exaggerating, a foot and a half of dust on [his] car."⁴⁸

The kind of dust clouds typically produced during a controlled demolition can be seen on videos of the demolition of Seattle's

Kingdome and the Reading Grain Facility.⁴⁹ If these videos are then compared with photos and videos of the collapses of the Twin Towers,⁵⁰ it can be seen that the dust clouds in the latter are even bigger.⁵¹

Timed or Synchronized Explosions: Some people said that the collapses had the appearance of timed, synchronized demolitions. Battalion Chief Dominick DeRubbio, speaking of the collapse of the south tower, said: "It was weird how it started to come down. It looked like it was a timed explosion."⁵²

Firefighter Kenneth Rogers said: "[T]here was an explosion in the south tower. . . . I kept watching. Floor after floor after floor. One floor under another after another and when it hit about the fifth floor, I figured it was a bomb, because it looked like a synchronized deliberate kind of thing. I was there in '93."⁵³

Debates about Controlled Demolition

Given so many signs that the buildings had been brought down by controlled demolition, we might expect that debates about this issue would have taken place. And they did.

Firefighter Christopher Fenyo, after describing events that occurred after the first collapse, said: "At that point, a debate began to rage because. . . many people had felt that possibly explosives had taken out 2 World Trade, and officers were gathering companies together and the officers were debating whether or not to go immediately back in or to see what was going to happen with 1 World Trade at that point. The debate ended pretty quickly because 1 World Trade came down."⁵⁴

Firefighter William Reynolds reported on a conversation he had with a battalion chief: "I said, 'Chief, they're evacuating the other building; right?' He said,'No.' . . . I said, 'Why not. They blew up the other one.' I thought they blew it up with a bomb. I said, 'If they blew up the one, you know they're gonna blow up the other one.' He said, 'No, they're not.' I said, 'Well, you gotta tell them to evacuate it, because it's gonna fall down and you gotta get the guys out.' . . . He said, 'I'm just the Battalion Chief. I can't order that.' . . . I said, 'You got a fucking radio and you got a fucking mouth. Use the fucking things. Empty this fucking building.' Again he said, 'I'm just a Battalion Chief. I can't do that.' . . . Eventually this other chief came back and said, 'They are evacuating this tower.' . . . And sometime after that . . . I watched the north tower fall."⁵⁵

As both accounts suggest, the perception that the south tower had been brought down by explosives may have resulted in fewer lives being lost in the north tower collapse than would otherwise have been the case.

Why Testimony about Explosions Has Not Become Public Knowledge

If so many witnesses reported effects that seemed to be produced by explosives, with some of them explicitly saying that the collapses appeared to be cases of controlled demolition, why is this testimony not public knowledge? Part of the answer, as I mentioned at the outset, is that the city of New York refused to release it until forced to do so by the highest court of the state of New York

But why did we have to wait for this court-ordered release to learn about these testimonies? Should not they have been discussed in The 9/11 Commission Report, which was issued over a year earlier? This Report, we are told in the preface, sought "to provide the fullest possible account of the events surrounding 9/11." Why does it not include any of the testimony in the 9/11 oral histories suggestive of controlled demolition?

The answer cannot be that the Commission did not know about these oral histories. Although "[t]he city also initially refused access to the records to investigators from . . . the 9/11 Commission," Jim Dwyer of the New York Times tells us, it "relented when legal action was threatened."⁵⁶ So the Commission could have discussed the testimonies about explosions in the oral histories. It also, in order to help educate the public, could have called some of the firefighters and medical workers to repeat their testimony during one of the Commission's public hearings. But it did not.

Why, we may wonder, have the firefighters and medical workers not been speaking out? At least part of the reason may be suggested by a statement made by Auxiliary Lieutenant Fireman Paul Isaac. Having said that "there were definitely bombs in those buildings," Isaac added that "many other firemen know there were bombs in the buildings, but they're afraid for their jobs to admit it because the 'higher-ups' forbid discussion of this fact."⁵⁷

Would we not expect, however, that a few courageous members of the fire department would have contacted the 9/11 Commission to tell their story? Indeed. But telling their story to the Commission was no guarantee that it would find its way into the final report---as indicated by the account of one fireman who made the effort.

Firefighter Louie Cacchioli, who was quoted earlier, testified in 2004 to members of the Commission's staff. But, he reported, they were so unreceptive that he ended up walking out in anger. "I felt like I was being put on trial in a court room," said Cacchioli. "They were trying to twist my words and make the story fit only what they wanted to hear. All I wanted to do was tell the truth and when they wouldn't let me do that, I walked out."⁵⁸

That Cacchioli's experience was not atypical is suggested by janitor William Rodriguez, whose testimony was also quoted earlier. Although Rodriguez was invited to the White House as a National Hero for his rescue efforts on 9/11, he was, he said, treated quite differently by the Commission: "I met with the 9/11 Commission behind closed doors and they essentially discounted everything I said regarding the use of explosives to bring down the north tower."⁵⁹

When reading The 9/11 Commission Report, one will not find the name of Cacchioli, or Rodriguez, or anyone else reporting explosions in the towers. It would appear that the Commission deliberately withheld this information, as it apparently did with regard to Able Danger⁶⁰ and many other things that should have been included in "the fullest possible account of the events surrounding 9/11."⁶¹

The definitive report about the collapse of the towers was to have been provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). According to Rodriguez, however, this investigative body was equally uninterested in his testimony: "I contacted NIST . . . four times without a response. Finally, [at a public hearing] I asked them before they came up with their conclusion . . . if they ever considered my statements or the statements of any of the other survivors who heard the explosions. They just stared at me with blank faces."⁶²

In light of this report of NIST's response, it is not surprising to find that its final report, which in the course of supporting the official story about the collapses ignores many vital issues,⁶³ makes no mention of reports of explosions and other phenomena suggestive of controlled demolition.

Conclusion

It is sometimes said that the mandate of an official commission is, by definition, to support the official story. Insofar as that is true, it is not surprising that neither NIST nor the 9/11 Commission saw fit to discuss testimony suggestive of explosions in the Twin Towers, since this testimony is in strong tension with the official story.

At least most of those who offered this testimony did not, to be sure, mean to challenge the most important element in the official story about 9/11, which is that the attacks were entirely the work of foreign terrorists. For example, firefighter Timothy Julian, after saying that he "thought it was an explosion," added: "I thought maybe there was a bomb on the plane, but delayed type of thing, you know secondary device."⁶⁴ Assistant Commissioner James Drury said: "I thought the terrorists planted explosives somewhere in the building."⁶⁵

The problem, however, is that a bomb delivered by a plane, or even a few explosives planted "somewhere in the building," would not explain the many phenomena suggestive of controlled demolition, such as explosion rings and other features indicating that the explosions were "synchronized" and otherwise "timed." As Mark Loizeaux, the head of Controlled Demolition, Inc., has explained, "to bring [a building] down as we want, so no one or no other structure is harmed," the demolition must be "completely planned." One needs "the right explosive [and] the right pattern of laying the charges."⁶⁶

The 9/11 oral histories, therefore, create a difficult question for those who defend the official story: How could al-Qaeda terrorists have gotten access to the Twin Towers for all the hours required to place all the explosives needed to bring down buildings of that size? It is primarily because they force this question that the testimony about explosions in the towers is itself explosive.

Notes

Jim Dwyer, "City to Release Thousands of Oral Histories of 9/11 Today," New York Times, August 12, 2005. As Dwyer explained, the oral histories "were originally gathered on the order of Thomas Von Essen, the city fire commissioner on Sept. 11, who said he wanted to preserve those accounts before they became reshaped by a collective memory."

Jim Dwyer, "Vast Archive Yields New View of 9/11," New York Times, August 13, 2005.

These oral histories are available at a NYT website ( http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/html/ nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/met_WTC_histories_full_01.html ).

Los Angeles Times, September 12, 2001.

"Special Report: Terrorism in the US," Guardian, Sept. 12, 2001.

Greg Szymanski, "WTC Basement Blast and Injured Burn Victim Blows 'Official 9/11 Story' Sky High," Arctic Beacon. com, June 24, 2005.

Greg Szymanski, "Second WTC Janitor Comes Forward With Eye-Witness Testimony Of 'Bomb-Like' Explosion in North Tower Basement," Arctic Beacon.com, July 12, 2005.

"We Will Not Forget: A Day of Terror," The Chief Engineer, July, 2002.

Christopher Bollyn, "New Seismic Data Refutes Official Explanation," American Free Press, Updated April 12, 2004 ( http://www.americanfreepress.net/09_03_02/NEW_SEISMIC_/new_seismic_.html ).

Quoted in Dennis Smith, Report from Ground Zero: The Story of the Rescue Efforts at the World Trade Center (New York: Penguin, 2002), 18.

"911 Tapes Tell Horror Of 9/11," Part 2, "Tapes Released For First Time," NBC TV, June 17, 2002 ( www.wnbc.com/ news/1315651/detail.html ).

Greg Szymanski, "NY Fireman Lou Cacchioli Upset that 9/11 Commission 'Tried to Twist My Words,'" Arctic Beacon. com, July 19, 2005. Although the oral histories that were released on August 12 did not include one from Cacchioli, the fact that he was on duty is confirmed in the oral history of Thomas Turilli, page 4.

Dean E. Murphy, September 11: An Oral History (New York: Doubleday, 2002), 9-15.

BBC, Sept. 11, 2001.

Quoted in Susan Hagen and Mary Carouba, Women at Ground Zero: Stories of Courage and Compassion(Indianapolis: Alpha Books, 2002), 65-66, 68.

John Bussey, "Eye of the Storm: One Journey Through Desperation and Chaos," Wall Street Journal, September 12, 2001 ( http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/040802pulitzer5.htm ).

Alicia Shepard, Cathy Trost, and Newseum, Running Toward Danger: Stories Behind the Breaking News of 9/11, Foreword by Tom Brokaw (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 87.

Quoted in Judith Sylvester and Suzanne Huffman, Women Journalists at Ground Zero (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 19.

For the video of this conversation, see "Evidence of Demolition Charges in WTC 2," What Really Happened ( http:// www.whatreallyhappened.com/wtc2_cutter.html ).

Oral History of John Sudnik, 4 (for where to find the 9/11 oral histories of the FDNY, see note 3, above).

Oral History of Timothy Julian, 10.

Oral History of Michael Ober, 4.

Oral History of Frank Cruthers, 4.

Oral History of Lonnie Penn, 5.

Oral History of Paul Curran, 11.

Oral History of Bradley Mann, 5-7.

Oral History of Kevin Darnowski, 8.

Oral History of Gregg Brady, 7.

Oral History of Thomas Turilli, 4.

Oral History of Craig Carlsen, 5-6.

Oral History of Joseph Meola, 5.

Oral History of Daniel Rivera, 9.

Oral History of Timothy Burke, 8-9.

Oral History of Edward Cachia, 5.

Oral History of James Walsh, 15.

Oral History of Stephen Gregory, 14-16.

Oral History of Karin Deshore, 15.

Ibid.

Oral History of Richard Banaciski, 3-4.

Oral History of Thomas Fitzpatrick, 13-14.

Oral history of Jay Swithers, 5.

Oral History of James Curran, 10-11.

Oral History of Brian Dixon, 15. Like many others, Dixon indicated that he later came to accept the official interpretation, adding: "Then I guess in some sense of time we looked at it and realized, no, actually it just collapsed. That's what blew out the windows, not that there was an explosion there but that windows blew out."

See, for example, Eric Hufschmid's Painful Questions: An Analysis of the September 11th Attack (Goleta, Calif.: Endpoint Software, 2002); Jim Hoffman's website ( http://911research.wtc7.net/index.html ); and Jeff King's website

( http://home.comcast.net/~jeffrey.king2/wsb/html/view.cgi-home.html-.html ), especially "The World Trade Center Collapse: How Strong is the Evidence for a Controlled Demolition?"

Oral History of Stephen Viola, 3.

Oral History of Angel Rivera, 7.

Oral History of William Wall, 9.

Oral History of Louis Cook, 8, 35.

The demolition of the Kingdome can be viewed at the website of Controlled Demolition, Inc. ( http://www.controlled demolition.com/default.asp?reqLocId=7&reqItemId=20030317140323 ), that of the Reading Grain Facility at ImplosionWorld.com ( http://implosionworld.com/reading.html ). I am indebted to Jim Hoffman for help on this and several other issues.

See the writings of Hufschmid, Hoffman, and King mentioned in note 44.

For a calculation of the energy required simply for the expansion of one of the resulting dust clouds, see Jim Hoffman, "The North Tower's Dust Cloud" ( http://911research.wtc7.net/papers/dustvolume/volume.html ). Hoffman concludes that gravitational energy would have been far from sufficient.

Oral History of Dominick DeRubbio, 5. DeRubbio, at least professing to accept the official interpretation, added, "but I guess it was just the floors starting to pancake one on top of the other."

Oral History of Kenneth Rogers, 3-4.

Oral History of Christopher Fenyo, 6-7.

Oral History of William Reynolds, 8.

Dwyer, "City to Release Thousands of Oral Histories of 9/11 Today."

Randy Lavello, "Bombs in the Building"; Prison Planet.com ( http://www.prisonplanet.com/ analysis_lavello_050503_bombs.html ).

Greg Szymanski, "NY Fireman Lou Cacchioli Upset that 9/11 Commission 'Tried to Twist My Words'" Arctic Beacon. com, July 19, 2005.

Greg Szymanski, "WTC Basement Blast and Injured Burn Victim Blows 'Official 9/11 Story' Sky High," Arctic Beacon. com, June 24, 2005.

See MSNBC, "Officer: 9/11 Panel Didn't Pursue Atta Claim" August 17, 2005 ( http://www.msnbc.msn.com/ id/8985244&&CM=EmailThis&CE=1 ), and Philip Shenon, "Navy Officer Affirms Assertions about Pre-9/11 Data on Atta," New York Times, August 22, 2005.

For other items, see David Ray Griffin, The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions (Northampton: Interlink, 2005).

Greg Szymanski, "WTC Basement Blast and Injured Burn Victim Blows 'Official 9/11 Story' Sky High," Arctic Beacon. com, June 24, 2005.

See Kevin Ryan, "Propping Up the War on Terror: Lies about the WTC by NIST and Underwriters Laboratories," in David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott, eds., 9/11 and the American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out (Northampton, Mass.: Interlink Books, Fall 2006), and 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/essays/nist/index.html ).

Oral History of Timothy Julian, 10.

Oral History of James Drury, 12. Liz Else, "Baltimore Blasters," New Scientist 183/2457 (July 24, 2004), 48 ( http://archive.newscientist.com/secure/ article/article.jsp?rp=1&id=mg18324575.700 ). Surprisingly, after explaining how precisely explosives must be set to ensure that a building comes straight down, Loizeaux said that upon seeing the fires in the Twin Towers, he knew thatthey were "going to pancake down, almost vertically. It was the only way they could fail. It was inevitable." Given the fact that fire had never before caused tall steel-frame buildings to collapse, let alone in a way that perfectly mimicked controlled demolition, Loizeaux's statement was doubly puzzling. His company, incidentally, was hired to do the cleanup of the WTC site after 9/11.

I could not have written this essay without the amazingly generous help of Matthew Everett, who located and passed on to me most of the statements in the 9/11 oral histories quoted herein.

David Ray Griffin is professor emeritus of philosophy of religion and theology at the Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University, where he taught 31 years. He has published some 30 books, including The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 (Interlink Books, 2004) and The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions (Interlink Books, 2005).

911truth.org hereby grants to all readers of this website permission to link to any and all articles found in the public areas of the website, www.911truth.org, so long as the full source URL (http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20060118104223192, in this case) is posted with the article.

4 ft soffit: a slab of gypsum drywall 4 feet wide and perhaps one-half to three-quarters of an inch thick.

[nc note - adjust the variables until the building falls. By adjusting the variables, this methodology could provide faux proof that a bumblebee could fly into the wall of a tower and knock it over. Note that they were the sole judge of what was within the realm of "physical reality." The surreal Bush administration discovered the "physical reality" that maltreatment is not torture unless it causes organ failure or death. By this surreal Bushian definition, piercing the subject's liver with a knitting needle repeatedly would not be torture if the subject lived and did not suffer organ failure.]

[nc note - the wallboard soffit was apparently indestructible. The ceiling soffit was assumed to all be dislodged and without effect.]

[nc note - if there was furniture damage in an area, all fire protection in the area was considered dislodged.]

Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers.
G Charles Clifton, HERA Structural Engineer
17th September 2001, revised 19th September,
minor revision on impact force made 8th October,
minor revisions made 11 December (see elaboration (below))

Executive Summary
Extracted from
NIST NCSTAR 1-5 (Draft)
Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the
World Trade Center Disaster
Reconstruction of the Fires in the
World Trade Center Towers (Draft)

[nc note - The NIST Final Report at p.120 below changed "not enough of the ceiling system in place to provide significant thermal protection" to "assumed that the ceiling tiles in the impact and fire zones were fully dislodged."]

What people need to know is, if there was ANY damage, say a broken desk, NIST then ASSUMES 100% damage of the entire area.

In NISTs cartoon world, the soffits are as important as the removal of 100% of the fireproofing. NIST needs these to jack up and prolong the thermal gas temps from the trumped up multiple workstation burn tests.

Just think of this, in the tweeked up severe cases, NIST "adjusts" the aircraft speed, size, weight and angle, then decreases the towers capacity.

The aircraft destroys 5 floors(9 floors in the computer model)of floor slabs, trusses, office contents, SFRM, cement board, gypsum, severs and damages massive core girders and outer collumns, BUT low and behold, somehow the "magical" soffits remain.

The NIST reports conclusions are false. Period. It covers the governments story and also covers its own ass. There is enough truth and evidence in the report in case NIST comes under fire, NIST can claim, "We had the evidence, but our conclusons were wrong."

To the extent that it's physically possible to reduce a building over 1300 feet high with around 4,000,000 sq. ft. of floorspace into a pile of rubble (the amount of area that rubble would occupy) - yes, they DID fall into their own footprints...

From your reply (#28) to me you claim that we now know that the planes had nearly full fuel tanks, and that the fire suppression systems would NOT be functional in the towers.

How much fuel DID get "dumped" into each tower? From all accounts I have been able to find, the estimate is around 10,000 gallons. How much of that 10,000 gallons was consumed in the huge fireball OUTSIDE the building in the second impact? SOMETHING other than office furniture was the fuel source for that fireball... According to Boeing's website, a 767 can carry 23,980 gallons of fuel. Considerably more than the reported 10,000
The range (according to the Boeing website) of a 767 would be able to fly from New York to Beijing. Yet the destinations were from East Coast to West Coast. For economic reasons, they would not fuel that flight to maximum capacity as that would cut back on a considerable amount of weight, thus making take-off easier and burning less fuel...

WHY would fire suppression systems NOT be functional??? IF it were because the main water line feeding the sprinkler system was severed by the impact of the plane the result would be a helluva "gusher" from the water pressure on the line... OR was the firewater line just "conveniently" turned off???

Yes, that much is quite clear from viewing the ancillary NIST documents. They assume that -all- fire protection was completely removed and had no effect, and they assume that the plasterboard walls remained intact and were indestructible. The fire and hot gas presumably took out the steel beams before it was able to take out the indestructible plasterboard walls.

As you noted, The aircraft destroys 5 floors (9 floors in the computer model) of floor slabs, trusses, office contents, SFRM, cement board, gypsum, severs and damages massive core girders and outer collumns, BUT low and behold, somehow the "magical" soffits remain. It seems that I missed that most obvious point. Apparently the magic soffits were made of the same stuff as that dude in the Terminator movie... after the plane went through it just reassumed the shape of a wall.

Oh well, I now know more about soffits than I did a couple of days ago. Curiously, I found little or no mention of soffits in various sources and had to go the the original primary source material to post what I did.

The two tower models included the core columns, the floor beams, and the concrete slabs from the impact and fire zones to the highest floor below the hat truss structure: from the 89th to the 106th floor for WTC 1 and from the 73rd floor to the 106th floor for WTC 2. Within these floors, aircraft-damaged structural components were removed. Below the lowest floors, springs were used to represent the stiffness of the columns. In the models, the properties of the steel varied with temperature, as described in Section 5.5.2. This allowed for realistic structural changes to occur, such as thermal expansion, buckling, and creep.

The forces applied to the models included gravity loads applied at each floor, post-impact column forces applied at the top of the model at the 106th floor, and temperature histories applied at 10 min intervals with linear ramping between time intervals.

Under these conditions, the investigators first determined the stability of the core under impact conditions and then its response under thermal loads:

The composite floor model was used to determine the response of a full floor to Case A and B thermal loads for WTC 1 floors and Case C and D thermal loads for WTC 2 floors. It included:

Exterior wall models were developed for the south face of WTC 1 (floors 89 to 106) and the east face of WTC 2 (floors 73 to 90). These sections were selected based on photographic evidence of column bowing.

Many of the simulation conditions were similar to those for the isolated core modeling: removal of aircraft-damaged structural components, representation of lower floors by springs, temperature-varying steel properties, gravity loads applied at each floor, post-impact column forces applied at the 106th floor, and temperature histories applied at 10 min intervals with linear ramping between time intervals.

The global models were used for the two final simulations and provided complete analysis of results and insight into the subsystem interactions leading to the probable collapse sequence. Based upon the results of the major subsystem analyses, impact damage and thermal loads for Cases B and D were used for WTC 1 and WTC 2, respectively. The models extended from floor 91 for WTC 1 and floor 77 for WTC 2 to the roof level in both towers. Although the renditions of the structural components had been reduced in complexity while maintaining essential nonlinear behaviors, based on the findings from the component and subsystem modeling, the global models included many of the features of the subsystem models:

The inclusions of creep for column components was necessary for the accuracy of the models, but its addition also greatly increased the computation time. As a result, the simulations of WTC 1 took 22 days and those of WTC 2 took 14 days on a high-end computer workstation. The results of these simulations are presented in Section 6.14.

NISTs "adjustments" were worked backwards, meaning NIST had the towers falling way too fast in their computer reality. The towers were falling in half their real time. This is where NIST started "mixing & matching" cases to get their times closer to the 56 min for the WTC 2 and 102 min for the WTC 1.

This wasn't science or a forensic investigation, it was a computer research project.

Very little is known about these soffits, but they are critical in NIST getting their computer thermal gas temps to 1700-1800F.

In the one out of 12 workstation burn test that NIST releases the gas temps, the temps are tweeked up because NIST doubles the known fuel in the area, installs the soffits, then over ventilates to to their desired outcome.

NIST also ran their furnace tests at 2012F. No temps were even near this at the WTC. NIST claims it took around 13 min to heat a core collumn at 2012F to reach 650C. NIST removed all the sfrm from one side of the girder to get this result.

NIST couldn't get its story straight on this, as a lead engineer stated it took 30 min at 1100c to reach 550c in their core tests. Now, which is it? 13 min to reach 650c, or 30 min to reach 550c?

I believe around 4500-5000 gals were claimed to be left after the fireball, and this was burned off in minutes.

That doesn't mean he wasn't the lead structural engineer on the project. You don't have to be a partner to be the lead structural engineer on a project. Nor must you have been the visionary who chose the design concept in order to be the lead structural engineer who carried it to completion. Nor do you have to be the boss of the design firm to be the lead structural engineer on a project that firm has with someone. As you well know, I can and have posted credible source after credible source (and I could have posted many more) saying that he was the lead structural engineer on the WTC project. Saying he was the engineer who was on site in NYC where the design was done. Saying he was the project engineer. Are all those sources part of the conspiracy, nolu? Are all of them now lying to us? Is that *your* theory? Is your theory that only conspiracy websites tell the truth? ROTFLOL!

So what? Perhaps when Skillings ran things, he liked the limelight and therefore took credit, even where it was undeserved. That's not unheard of, is it? Curiously, none of those who also worked on the towers at the time have come forward to dispute the claim that Robertson was the lead structural engineer. Some have come forward to confirm it. Are they all part of the conspiracy too, nolu? Have they been paid off? Are they living in fear of Robertson? Are conspiracy website owners the only honest people on earth any more? ROTFLOL!

Well good for you, nolu. If you want to stand there and claim Judy Woods has ANY demonstrated competence in structures, steel, concrete, fire, impact or dynamics ... noting all that I noted about her in a previous post ... go right ahead. If you truly want to leave your credibility in shambles, I have no objection.

And Steven Jones has a PhD in physics. But does he have competence in any of the areas related to buildings, demolition, impact, fire, steel, concrete, seismology or macro-world events? No. He, like Wood, has spent his ENTIRE career working on something TOTALLY unrelated to any of those topics ... sub-atomic particles and cold fusion. With nary a paper or project involving anything other than sub-atomic particles. But if you want to insist that makes him competent to challenge a world full of professionals who do have competence in buildings, impact, demolition, fire, steel, concrete, seismology and macro-world physics ... go right ahead. I have no objections if you want to destroy your own credibility in this manner.

Nevertheless, her ENTIRE career has been devoted to dental and biological materials, and statics. One need only look at her billiard ball analogy of the WTC collapse to understand how little she grasps physics and dynamics. One need only watch her performance in that video to see her KOOKiness and total disconnect from reality. But if you want to champion her as your expert, NC ... go right ahead. You'll only end up destroying the truth movement's credibility. But perhaps that is your goal. Who do you work for, nolu?

As I pointed out and proved earlier in this thread (post #38), the statements of Banaciski and Gregory that are quoted by Griffin are good examples of *quote mining* ... taking a portion of what someone says out of context to suggest they are claiming something which they clearly were not. Neither of these two are shown anywhere in any forum to believe that the collapse of the towers was a deliberate demolition. They were only describing what it looked like in the heat of the moment and with imperfect understanding of what was really happening. When the rest of what they said is considered, one sees that they loosely use the term explosion even in instances where they are clearly not suggesting a demolition, that they aren't claiming that explosives were used to bring down the buildings, and one will find that many portions of their descriptions are very inconsistent with notion of demolitions. Quote mining is a dishonest tactic that Griffin and nolu_chan seem to engage in repeatedly in their efforts to deceive the unwary about 9/11.

This is just another example of dishonest quote abuse. Here is some of what Griffin and nolu_chan leave out of what he said:

A. Right, because I ran back. Not too bright of me, of course. I ran right back in, and I was right -- I could actually touch the building when it collapsed, the second time when it collaped. But again, I was prepared because I heard that same noise. It was like a waterfall noise. That's when I ran.

And no where in his interview does he suggest bombs were what actually brought the towers down or that anyone other than terrorists in planes were responsible.

So, nolu ... do you want to claim that the manner in which the WTC towers actually collapsed (from the top down) is consistent with Mark Loizeaux statement about putting explosives in the basement (which, by the way, is again taken out of context)? Go right ahead ... because that does nothing but hurt your credibility.

You want to continue this game of quote mining and quote abuse? Go right ahead ... because that does nothing but hurt your credibility. Here is why ...

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/005885.htm "Consider how the conspiracists have abused 20-year veteran New York City firefighter Louie Cacchioli. A People magazine article attributed this quote about WTC 7 to Cacchioli after the attacks: "We think there was [sic] bombs set in the building." But Cacchioli told Popular Mechanics he was misquoted: "I said, 'It sounded like a bomb.' I tried to explain what I meant [after the fact], but it was already out there." Cacchioli has been contacted repeatedly by people hoping he will say there were bombs in WTC 7, but he refuses to do so. According to the book, Cacchioli is "distressed at the inaccurate use of his name in conjunction with conspiracy theories.""

Now I'm not going to bother addressing all the other eyewitness statements that are listed in your spam. I'm willing to bet that anyone who investigates will find more instances of quote mining and that very few of those people actually think bombs brought down the towers. If you and the rest of the *truth* movement were the least bit honest ... the least bit interested in the "truth" ... you'd remove the instances of quote abuse from your lists and articles. The fact that you won't is telling. So I'll not waste any more time on this with you. I've said my piece. I'll simply issue this warning to readers of this thread or any thread where you post:

Why can't *truthers* face the truth? They (and we) will never find out what really happened on 9/11, if they can't do that. Because a *Truth Movement* cannot be founded on disinformation and outright lies. It can not be founded on quote abuse. That should be obvious to all. But apparently they can't see that either. It is sad.

No, they did NOT fall into their own footprint. You do know what the term "footprint" means, don't you, innieway? Or is your knowledge about that just as flawed as your knowledge about steel? The foot print of a building is NOT an area with a diameter more than three times the width or depth of a building. "Fall into their own footprint" is a catchy phrase that folks who haven't bothered to actually look at the videos of what happened or who don't begin to understand what they saw in those videos say over and over in lieu of real thought and understanding. Pathetic.

We know the planes had enough fuel to make a transcontinental flights. "Full" was probably a poor choice of words.

Yes, we now know that the fire suppression systems on the floors in question were not functional (as a result of the damage done by the impacts).

The issue was what engineers would likely have said about the prospects of the building IF they knew ahead of time that jet fuel would START large fires and that fire suppression systems would not be available to fight them? You are trying to follow this conversation, aren't you, innieway?

Perhaps you should take the time to actually read the NIST reports about this subject.

with the caption "Previously molten metal was found "flowing like lava" by the FDNY in the basements of all 3 WTC High-rises. Surely everyone who has signed his petition and claims to be an *expert* is sufficiently well informed to know that's not a photo of molten steel. No? They aren't? ROTFLOL!

Here's another example of Gage's dishonesty and the evident gullibility of all those who supposedly have joined his organization. The website shows this image:

" a="a" about="about" above="above" accomplished="accomplished" across="across" agreed="agreed" ahead="ahead" an="an" and="and" are="are" area="area" at="at" be="be" because="because" been="been" being="being" beyond="beyond" bother="bother" bottom="bottom" building="building" but="But" by="by" called="called" can="Can" caption="caption" caption:="caption:" clearly="clearly" clueless="clueless" collapse="collapse" collapsing="collapsing" columns="columns" conspiracy="conspiracy" contrary="contrary" could="could" crush="crush" debris="debris" democrats)?="democRATS)?" diameter="diameter" diameter.="diameter." did="did" didn't="didn't" distributed="distributed" do="do" during="during" either="either" equally="equally" example="example" explosives."="explosives."" fact="fact" fall="fall" first="first" first?="first?" floors.="floors." folks="folks" free-fall="free-fall" ft.="ft." got="got" ground="ground" happened="happened" have="have" image:="image:" implied="implied" in="in" is="is" just="just" left="left" level="level" lie.="LIE." look="look" material="Material" metal"="metal"" molten="molten" most="most" nearest="nearest" no="no" not="NOT" noted="noted" notions="notions" of="of" on="On" one="one" only="only" or="or" out="out" over="over" pancaked="pancaked" photo="photo" physicists="physicists" preconceived="preconceived" reached="reached" removing="removing" shows="shows" side="side" speed!="speed!" speed".="speed"." speed.="speed." src="http://www.ae911truth.org/images/gallery/freefall.jpg" stacked="stacked" states="states" steel="steel" story="story" suggesting.="suggesting." that="that" the="the" there="There" these="these" they="they" they've="they've" this="this" though="though" thrown="thrown" to="to" tons="tons" too="too" tower="tower" tower!="tower!" towers="towers" until="Until" up="up" virtually="virtually" was="was" website="website" well="well" what="what" what's="What's" will="will" with="with" would="would" â€”="—">

with the caption "It takes thousands of degrees to bend steel like this without buckling." This is a lie. Steel need only be softened then have force applied to it (say during a violent collapse) for something like this to happen.

The site claims that "Steven Jones, PhD physicist discovers previously molten iron spheres in the WTC dust which blanketed lower Manhattan. Sizes are up to 1/16" diameter. The findings are corroborated by EPA but not explained." False. The EPA expert that Dr Jones quoted concerning these spheres has published a report explaining them. And it's an innocuous explanation.

The website claims WTC 7 collapsed in 6.5 seconds. FALSE. The east mechanical room on the roof disappeared into the roof more than 6 seconds before Mr Gage claims the collapse began.

The website repeats the lie that "pull" is an industry term meaning "demolish". It repeats the lie that Silverstein told the NYC fire commander to "'pull' WTC 7".

Get the idea, folks? Gage is as dishonest as conspiracists come. If he's who you seek out for the *truth*, you will be deceived AND USED. Just as NC, Kamala and innieway are trying to deceive and use you.

The truth is that Gage's website is filled with one distortion or lie after another.

It claims that 60 architectural and engineering professionals have joined it. But if you look at the names provided on the website, about 34 are architects (and there is a difference between an architect and a structural engineer). Many of the others are listed as electrical engineers, or mechanical engineers, or avionics engineers, or quality engineers, or urban planners, or water resource engineers, or manufacturing engineers, or land surveyors, or construction engineers, or chemical engineers. Let's examine the few that are listed as being structural or civil engineers:

Was he really a structural engineer? Here's what his own son said about him: http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Akol_Kem_386453870.aspx "His father, Haluk was an architect who came from Istanbul in 1945." And note that would make him over 80 years old.

I can't find anything on the web about him. Nothing at the University of Texas either. Who does he work for? What has he been working on since graduation? When was that?

Elsewhere, he's listed as belonging to ASCE and being a project coordinator. But again, what is his actual experience. Is it water treatment? Foundation engineering? Road construction? Without knowing more, it's impossible to tell whether he actually has any relevant qualifications.

The Scholars for 9/11 *Truth* website claims he is a "naval aviator, commercial pilot, structural engineering". But what engineering work did he ever actually do to merit the claim of being a structural engineer? At the http://patriotsquestion911.com/#Muga site we find he lists himself as a retired aviator and pilot. But there is no mention of being a structural engineer. Why not? You are claiming he's an expert in that regard ... right?

At http://www.topcomp.ca/bb/2007-04-23.mp3 has an interview with him where we learn that (1) he was born in Dallas Texas, (2) he got his degree at the Southern Methodist University, (3) he retired as a naval aviator in 1985, (4) he retired as a commercial pilot in 1991, (5) and he loves to join 911 truth organizations (member of at least half a dozen). Again, there is no mention of his doing structural engineering at any time in his life. Why not?

A little over half way through that interview, the interviewer makes several false claims. He says there was "a visible lack of wreckage around the site of the hole" in the Pentagon. But there was wreckage in numerous photos. Lots of it. The interviewer says "there was no indication that the large turbine engines on each wing of the plane had impacted the sides of the Pentagon. There would have been some mark or small holes or something in the side of the Pentagon. The momentum of those heavy engines would have carried forward with the plane hitting in the side of the pentagon at over 200 mph and made some mark but there was nothing there." This is absolutely false as the photos I've posted have repeated proven. Here are some again:

The distance from the left edge of the left side hole to the right edge of the right side hole was at least 70-80 feet. Some sources say is more than more than 90 feet across. The diameter of the fuselage of a 757 is about 13 feet. The outer edge of the engines on a 757 are at most 20 feet from the outer wall of the fuselage. So clearly, the engines hit the structure within the boundaries of the hole in those photos, proving the interviewer is a liar.

And Ted Muga, claimed structural engineer, is asked about this and doesn't correct him. No, instead he claims the plane wreckage and contents (fuselage fragments, wing fragments, seats, etc) should have been strewn all over the front of the pentagon. He says that the engines didn't damage the building but should have. He claims that the fuselage and most of the rest of the plane (other than engines and landing gear) couldn't have damaged the building ... that the fuselage and wings should have shattered on impact. He says "there is absolutely no evidence at all that a large commericial aircraft had gone in there." Well that is absolutely FALSE. So clearly Ted is NOT the structural engineer he (or some conspiracy site) claims. Clearly, he's completely ignorant of the facts about the damage that occurred. He is too lazy to even look at widely available photos that prove what he claims is wrong. Or he is too incompetent to understand them. Ted Muga would rather regurgitate the LIES of the interviewer because he, like the interviewer, has an agenda so the truth doesn't matter to him. And you folks consider him an expert. What can one do but laugh. ROTFLOL!

In other venues, he claimed to have "worked in structural steel for years" and "studied major structural collapses." But all we really know about this guy is what he claims. We don't know where he's worked. We don't know what degrees he has. And the http://www.dca.ca.gov/pels/l_lookup.htm site for searching California Professional Engineers returns no hits under that name.

Again, there is no other reference to this person on the web than this. We have no idea if this a real person, where he got his degree, where he's been practicing engineering, what projects he's been involved in or what he actually thinks.

ROTFLOL! Apparently, Rob Tamaki is not an expert in buildings. He's on the Small Water and Waste Systems Committee for B.C. (http://www.bcwwa.org/committees/dwmc/documents/technicalguidelines.pdf ). He works for P.S. Turje & Associates Ltd. in Vancouver. Come on, nolu ... this just makes you folks look desperate. It's an embarrassment to the *truth* movement.

BAC, you rely on "experts" that lie and then you ROFLOL because you think you have proved something. The only thing you have proved is that you can't think for yourself and continently rely on "experts" who believe that the government's theory is correct. You are cherry picking experts that support the government's theory and then calling everyone else kooks. You may need to rely on "experts" to form conclusions about what happened to the towers on 9/11, but many people do not.

If the truth of 9/11 hits the main stream news one day then what the heck will you do? Act dumb and pretend you didn't know the truth? Or will it be an act?

The truth is coming out, or at least a closer version of it, of that I am sure. If they didn't want it to come out they wouldn't have screwed up 9/11 so badly.

God is always good!
"It was an interesting day." - President Bush, recalling 9/11 [White House, 1/5/02]

While you do not have to be a partner to be the lead structural engineer, you do have to be a licensed engineer. As you are well aware, Robertson's lack of such a license disqualified him to be the lead structural engineer. He eventually became the WTC engineer after completion of construction.

He was not eligible to obtain a license as a Professional Engineer when the design work was done. Robertson did not obtain a license until 1965. THAT means he was not eligible to be the lead structural engineer of record before that time.

And as BeAChooser has authoritatively stated, "The design of the major structural elements of the towers surely had to have been completed by February 1964."

Source: New York State Education Department
Office of the Professions
License Information
04/29/2007

That's not a requirement to be project manager or the lead engineer. The license is only required to sign the drawings and take responsibility. Skilling could have done that without ever having been involved in most of the design.

Furthermore, I have yet to see a drawing that was signed so that we don't know when the drawings were actually signed or who signed them. Care to investigate that, nolu?

This is obviously false since you indicated he got his license in January of 1965, no one has come forward to say he wasn't working on the towers then, and tower construction didn't actually begin until March 25, 1966 ... when demolition began on the 26 vacant buildings at the WTC site. Ground breaking for the towers didn't begin until August 1966. In fact, Tower 1 was not completed until 1972 and Tower 2 was not completed until 1973.

It is impossible to lawfully hold that position in New York without first obtaining a license as a Professional Engineer.

And as BeAChooser has authoritatively stated, "The design of the major structural elements of the towers surely had to have been completed by February 1964."

If you honestly think for one second that even if CDI had been hired to "demo" a building that height, they could have reduced it to the pile of rubble it was reduced to AND keep that pile of rubble within the actual length by width dimensions of the building then you are even MORE IGNORANT than your blather makes you appear... That is why I said "To the extent that it's PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE"

Just how big do you think the firewater line in each building was? I promise you it wasn't some dinky 2" line. Have you ever seen a water line burst under pressure? A lot of water is gonna be going somewhere...

Perhaps you work for NIST. That would certainly explain why you're so fucking adamant about supporting NIST and this administration's lies, and (like this administration) refusing to answer (by dodging) logical questions which so far have yet to be answered...

No need. The major structural elements of the towers surely had to have been completed almost a year before Robertson had enough training, under the tutelage of the master, John Skilling, to become a licensed professional engineer.

Galatians 3:29 And if ye [be] Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

That's not something I have ever claimed. But that is something that many members of the so-called *truth* movement have claimed on more than one occasion. In fact, if you watch that video I linked of Dr Wood being interviewed, you will even hear her say the material falling outside the perimeter of the towers was not debris. ROTFLOL!

BAC, you are an illiterate person. But I'm sure you're quite literate in the language of a republican bath house.

Galatians 3:29 And if ye [be] Christ's, then are ye Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

"they do this in Pakistan. a christian can be merely accused of saying insulting things about Islam/koran/mohammed. and then found guilty. based strictly on a muslim's word. regardless of christian's testimony." What's with all the excess periods, RJ? Why don't you capitalize the first word of sentences?

"don't post an article critical of a Gold Star Mother!!!" Wouldn't a literate person know by now that Cindy Sheehan is NOT a Gold Star Mom?

" They indoctrinated with poison against our country, and so are the Mexicans." Gee ... did you forget the "are" before indoctrinated?

"Please don't think I don't participate in trying to make the system work, I've tried to educate many people. It earns me enemies & grief. and I do vote." You do seem to have a problem with commas and periods ... for someone soooooo literate.

Why are you homophobic, Red? Do you think it's a sin? Mind you, I'm not saying I'm gay or not gay. I'm just curious why you keep making comments about "gays" and "fags" (your word). You know, don't you, what a psychologist would say about that?

I'll give you that much, you are OK with words. You just aren't that good with logic.

God is always good!
"It was an interesting day." - President Bush, recalling 9/11 [White House, 1/5/02]

Explosive Testimony: Revelations about the Twin Towers in the 9/11 Oral Histories

by David Ray Griffin

Previously Available Testimony Suggestive of Explosions in the Twin Towers

Multiple Explosions

Shaking Ground before the Collapse

Multiple Explosions

"Pops"

Collapse Beginning below the Strike Zone and Fire

Other Indications of Controlled Demolition

Debates about Controlled Demolition

Why Testimony about Explosions Has Not Become Public Knowledge

Conclusion

Explosive Testimony: Revelations about the Twin Towers in the 9/11 Oral
Histories