Part of the conspiracy? (2)
So how did the BBC report that Building 7 at the World Trade Centre had collapsed around half an hour before it did so? My earlier posting on the subject has attracted a lot of interest so we've been doing more investigating within the BBC to put together the sequence of events.
Five and a half years have passed so it's quite difficult to answer every outstanding question. But we do know quite a bit more than we did on Tuesday, as a result of checking the BBC archives and what other media were doing at the time. I've also read through some of the reports published after 9/11 to help put together the sequence of events.
Back to 11 September itself. The Twin Towers had collapsed. Other buildings were known to be damaged. Building 7 was on fire. But this was also a very confusing picture - remember we had started the day with reports that a light aircraft had struck the first tower, and at one stage there was talk of ten hijacked jets in the air. It's in the nature of rolling news that events unfold in front of you and confusion turns to clarity. It's important to remember that context when looking more closely at what happened between about 4.10pm (EDT) and 5.20pm when Building 7 finally collapsed.
CNN's chronology of events published at the time confirms they reported the building on fire and a clip from a CNN bulletin, widely available on the web, hears from a reporter at about 4.15pm EDT, 9.15pm in the UK, who says: "We're getting information that one of the other buildings... Building 7... is on fire and has either collapsed or is collapsing... now we're told there is a fire there and that the building may collapse as well."
Other American networks were broadcasting similar reports at this time and the reports from FEMA and NIST both make it clear the building was on fire during the course of the day.
One senior fire officer was quoted in a subsequent interview as saying there was a "bulge" in the building and he was "pretty sure it was going to collapse". During this time, our staff were talking directly to the emergency services and monitoring local and national media… and there was a fairly consistent picture being painted of Building 7 in danger of collapse. Producers in London would have been monitoring the news agency wires - the Associated Press, Reuters, etc - and although we don't routinely keep an archive of agency reports, we're sure they would have been reporting the same as the local media.
At 4.27pm, a BBC reporter, Greg Barrow, who is in New York, appears on our radio news channel, BBC Radio Five Live, and says: "We are hearing reports from local media that another building may have caught light and is in danger of collapse." He then responds to a follow-up question by saying "I'm not sure if it has yet collapsed but the report we have is talking about Building 7."
At 4.53pm, on the same radio station, the programme's presenter, Fi Glover says "25 minutes ago we had reports from Greg Barrow that another large building has collapsed just over an hour ago."
At 4.54pm, the BBC's domestic television news channel, BBC News 24, reports the same thing. Presenter Gavin Esler says: "We're now being told that yet another enormous building has collapsed... it is the 47-storey Salomon Brothers building."
And then at 4.57pm on BBC World (according to the clips available on the web) presenter Phil Hayton says: "We've got some news just coming in actually that the Salomon brothers building in NY right in the heart of Manhattan has also collapsed."
Because three BBC channels were saying this in quick succession, I am inclined to believe that one or more of the news agencies was reporting this, or at least reporting someone saying this.
At 5pm, News 24 repeated the news in its top-of-the-hour headlines sequence and then at about 5.10pm (again according to the clips on the web), Phil Hayton on BBC World says "More on the latest building collapse in NY - you might have heard I was talking a few moments ago about the Salomon building collapsing and indeed it has... it seems this wasn't the result of a new attack but because the building had been weakened during this morning's attack."
Some of the respondents to my earlier blog have suggested this must mean he had inside knowledge - that not only did he know the building had collapsed, he knew why.
Well in one sense that's true - for about an hour, it had been reported that the building was on fire and in danger of collapse. But he did qualify it by saying "it seems" and once again I think there's a danger of reading too much into what I believe was a presenter merely summarising what everyone had been saying during the previous hour.
Of course, with hindsight we now know that our live shot showed the building still standing in the background. But again I point to that confusing and chaotic situation on the ground - the CNN reporter who had talked about the building "either collapsed or is collapsing" also had it clearly in shot behind him, but he acknowledged he couldn't see very clearly from where he was standing. As we know, the building did collapse at 5.20pm, with the first pictures of that being broadcast on News 24 at about 5.35pm.
So that's what we know we reported. To me it paints a consistent (and reasonably conclusive) picture.
I should also mention the missing tapes. As you'll see from the details above, the absence of the BBC World tapes hasn't made much difference to our ability to look back at what happened. We have all the tapes of other BBC channels (and I now know that quite a few of you have your own copies of BBC World, which is an interesting discovery... ).
Some of you find it hard to believe we didn't keep the BBC World tapes... but we had several streams of news output running simultaneously on the day, both on radio and television as well as online and we have kept all the tapes from BBC News 24 and Radio Five Live, as well as all the BBC One bulletins. Obviously I wish we'd kept hold of the World tapes alongside all the others, but we didn't... and I don't know whether they were destroyed or mislaid. But as a result of this week's events, I have asked our archivists to get hold of copies of our original material from the organisations which do have them.
And just to be clear, the BBC policy is to keep every minute of news channel output for 90 days (in line with the Broadcasting Act in the UK). After that we are obliged to keep a representative sample - and we interpret that to mean roughly one third of all our output. We also keep a large amount of individual items (such as packaged reports or "rushes" - ie original unedited material), which we use for operational reasons - such as when we come to broadcast fresh stories on the subject. We do not lack a historical record of the event.
I've spent most of the week investigating this issue, but this is where we have to end the story. I know there are many out there who won't believe our version of events, or will raise further questions. But there was no conspiracy in the BBC's reporting of the events. Nobody told us what to say. There's no conspiracy involving missing tapes. There's no story here.
Comments
Nice try Richard, but this doesn't add up.....So now your ''news'' are based on other news channels, without daring to verify the validity of the said news....very professionnal, sir. This is a pathetic dammage control lie, and you shpuld be ashamed of yourself. I wonder how can you sleep at night, I really do.....
you are bang on right there is no story in the missing bbc tapes and thank-you for doing your best to find out what happened.
The real story is the inability of the bbc to look into 9/11 and 7/7 and do a proper investigation.
The real story is where are the bbc?
where are the journalists?
From reading these comment boards a lot of people are very unhappy with the newsmadia, the gatekeepers of the newsagenda dont want this story, for whatever reasons.
If you take any news outlet to task on this you get ridiculed and sidestepped. yet more and more people are asking questions.
Mr. Porter why does the bbc seem to only report news rather than seek truth.
please explain
"There's no story here"....
I have always believed that to be the case, Richard! There were only frantic 'rushes' at the time - little corroboration and everyone in a tabloid panic to scoop the breaking bites and footage. There was absolutely 'no story' at the time. No vetting, no editing just 'splash it all over!' in the interests of instant messaging. There is no craft in 24-hour TV News reporting, it's become a race against time - and better judgement.
I think the 9/11 'asynchronisms' were the most illuminating wxamples of breaking news gone wrong - with nothing more sinister than that. However, much should be learned from the peril of on-the-fly composition of reports that will inevitably be engraved for posterity - in peoples' minds if not in recoverable local archive.
I cringe almost every time I see the 'Breaking News' banner caption! Perhaps 24-hour news should be completely 'bannered'! ;-)
okay Richard,
Let's say this dubious but unquestionable report isn't more spin.
A smal fire, no outstanding structural damage to that building, not when you see other buildings that stood after a much a worse pounding from the 2 towers debris.
Prior knowledge that the building was going to collapse, an hour before it happened, yet no sense at all that either tower was in imminent danger of coming down...who were the specialists that made the assesment of building 7? Why were their skills not applied to monitoring the two towers?
the only 3 skyscrapers in history to collapse due to fire did so that day....
The fact that you yourself clearly state that the American government agencies are not releasing information that would help everyone resolve the issue....this amounts to the American Government toying with people's emotion for political ends, morally irresponsible behaviour that our own Government defends
These issues should make you cringe as a journalist when imagining your report equates to much more than dsinformation, get it right and research deeply or take your childish kaleidoscope away from real issues, save your inanities for the dwellers of lala-land, that's your true audience
Well said Richard,
Hopefully, I can get some supporting information in before you are once again flooded with nonsense
Many conspiracy fantasists will go on about the FEMA report (which was premilinary and which led to the more detailed NIST report which will be published later this year) saying that the collapse initiation due to diesel fires had "a low probability of occurring". They take this to mean that it wasn't obvious that the building was going to collapse. It means nothing of the sort. The signs of the collapse developed over a long period - they were the bulge, the flames and smoke, and the creaking and leaning of the building. What FEMA is talking about is the events which led to these signs.
It was obvious to the FDNY fire crews at the scene as the day progressed that the building was going to collapse. That is why they cleared an area around the building several hours before the collapse. Anybody who claims that the only people who knew the building was going to collapse must have been told by the people who were going to demolish the building has to include the firefighters in the subsequent cover-up.
Regarding the initiating event - just because something is unlikely, doesn't mean it didn't happen. By definition, accidents and disasters are unlikely, they are things that weren't expected (otherwise they could have been avoided).
As far as having the WTC7 building behind you when you say it's going to collapse. Who, before 9/11, knew which building was which in the complex? Who even knew there were buildings other than the towers?
Ultimately the fantasists want to believe so badly that they will continue to misrepresent and twist everything you say on this issue. You are quite correct to ignore them from now on. They'll sit behind their keyboards and grumble and the world will carry one unchanged.
There are some useful WTC7 links here:
http://www.counterpunch.org/darkfire11282006.html
http://www.911myths.com/html/wtc7___silverstein.html
http://www.debunking911.com/pull.htm
http://wtc.nist.gov/progress_report_june04/appendixl.pdf
http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_ch5.pdf
http://www.911myths.com/WTC7_Lies.pdf
So you respond by saying you are incompetent idiots instead of being part of the 9/11 conspiracy? Well, I suppose we'll have to stop seeing BBC News in either case.
Just another in a long string of amazing coincidences related to 9/11 then, eh? How convenient for Bush and Blair, and yet so troublesome for those living on 90% of the world's oil reserves.
To get this straight, the BBC staff didn't have time to look at the video of their own reports that day, but they did have time to scoure the airwaves for fuzzy statements from other network reports, finding one or two describing the possibility of the first ever fire-induced collapse of a tall building. They then decided to simply report those statements, repeatedly and confidently mind you, not as heresay, but as if they described an actual event that had transpired.
And 25 minutes later, voila - they became true.
Do you ever think about any of it?
Everyone who finds this explanation inadequate should immediately:
a) download and archive the footage (to hard drives, CD's, DVD's, etc.).
b) download and archive this blog and its text.
I would also like to direct to Matthew that question as to why the mysterious collapse of WTC7, at a rate of freefall thus defying the possibility of its collapse being due to that pancake theory, was completely ignored by the 911 Commission. Did they forget all about it in their conclusive investigation?
Ok, let's take your explanation at face value. It still seems strange that all copies of this bulletin were wiped off googlevideo as soon as they were going up. I guess that could simply be a face-saving gesture but it still smacks of suppression.
Also, this whole episode rmeinds me of the saying "who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?"
I would like to know why the BBC was lying about the structure of the world trade centres within hours of them coming down. Claiming that and i quote
"now unlike conventional sky scrapers which have lots of interior columns to give strength to the building the exterior walls of the world trade centre bore most of the load, so the direct attacks were enough to weaken the buildings and lead to their collapse."
In case you don't know what video I am talking about. You can find it here.
http://stage6.divx.com/content/show/1134882?user_id=245557
I have many questions about this. Why did the BBC feel the need to even explain this when no investigation had been done ?
Did the BBC realise the 'facts' they were giving about the WTC building structures were totally incorrect, and in fact the opposite of what they were saying was true ? If no one was telling you to say these things why were you lying to the public ? Another 'cock up' ?
The questions keep coming, and the answers are far from satisfactory.
And actually according to your own website and i shall quote
"All transmitted/published media content will be kept for at least five years to fulfil legal requirements and to enable re-versioning and re-use
"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/foi/docs/historical_information/archive_policies/media_management_policy_overview.htm
So where does the figure of 90 days come from ?
Wait....you said no one told you what to say, yet in the same article you say:
1) Because three BBC channels were saying this in quick succession, I am inclined to believe that one or more of the news agencies was reporting this, or at least reporting someone saying this.
and..
2) CNN's chronology of events published at the time confirms they reported the building on fire and a clip from a CNN bulletin....
Other American networks were broadcasting similar reports at this time and the reports from FEMA and NIST both make it clear the building was on fire during the course of the day.
Talk about Doublethink.
You wrote:
"Because three BBC channels were saying this in quick succession, I am inclined to believe that one or more of the news agencies was reporting this, or at least reporting someone saying this."
We want to know which one, that's the whole point of this. Basically your reply is: "Somebody probably told us, but we can't remember who". This is not satisfactory. Which news agency? You need to find the report. If you don't normally archive agency reports, then why not ask the agencies to have a look at their archives for you? And knock it off this with "part of the conspiracy" while you're at it.
We all know the BBC isn't exactly pro-Bush, but the conspiracy theorists would have us believe that the BBC colluded in his plot to destroy the WTC and launch a war on Islamic countries and end democracy and freedom at home.
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight
I find myself in rare agreement with the BBC on this issue. The conspiracy theorists will not square up to a simple fact here: conspirators would not have had anything to gain by informing a news agency in advance that the building was going to collapse. On the contrary, they would then have had the strong likelihood of forewarned journalists snooping around while they were trying to surrepstitiously implode the building. There is no basis in logic here and no basis in fact.
But I must say, Mr. Porter, that you are a master of understatement when you claim, "My earlier posting on the subject has attracted a lot of interest." I'd say that "a frantic tide of condemnation" would be closer to the truth. The conspiracy theorists know the BBC to be both contemptuous of the Bush administration and sympathetic to radical Islam and were no doubt fully expecting the recent 9/11 "Conspiracy Files" documentary to endorse their conspiracy theories. They feel that the BBC has let the side down and they are furious.
There may, however, indeed be a conspiracy here - though on a much more minor key. Whoever "mislaid" those BBC World tapes could well have conspired to save BBC staff the embarrassment of having their monumental blunder on file for posterity.
Does the BBC have any opinion as to why in their supposedly in-depth investigation, the 911 Commission completely failed to mention the collapse of the Salomon building; a building that collapsed at a rate of freefall? Was it also total incompetence that led to this collapse of a 47 storey being completely forgotten? Or was it that no explanation is feasible other than the obvious one that fits the observable facts beautifully, ie controlled demolition? And why does the BBC accept such obvious duplicity? As Orwell famously wrote, "In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act". Sadly, the BBC, like so much of the mainstream media, appears to have little willingness to buck the trend. And as Aldous Huxley wrote in Brave New World Revisited, "The media is in the hands of the power elite."
'I've spent most of the week investigating this issue, but this is where we have to end the story.'
wake up richard you do not control the news anymore.
I'm sorry but your behaviour and commentary on this issue has been reprehensible and pathetic.
No one is accusing you of having been part of the conspiracy to blow up WTC building 7, but covering for the people who may have is sickening. Do you not care about the nearly 3,000 victims of that day?
May God have mercy on your souls.
I read Richard Porter's response hoping he'd be able to clarify the events in that confusing and frankly worrying video that everyone and his dog has shown me. I have always thought the conspiracy theorists to be largely attention-seeking paranoid Michael Moore wannabes, but this one just seems too difficult to adequately explain away.
Mr Porter, you've dug yourself quite a hole. Better get looking for that "lost" tape.
What is with this rediculous straw man fallacy you keep making Richard? No ones suggesting the BBC was part of any conspiracy. We just want to know who your source was. Because the only 3 steel skyscrapers that have collapsed from "fire," all happened on the same day, how was it that you immediately concluded building seven was going to completely collapse? That doesn't make sense. Is it the result of terrible journalism?
"One senior fire officer was quoted in a subsequent interview as saying there was a 'bulge' in the building and he was 'pretty sure it was going to collapse.'"
Can you provide us his name and where he is quoted as saying that? Also if that quote was from a subsequent interview that still leaves the question unanswered. Who was the source that told you building 7 was going to collapse, which led to the first of your premature reports, which then led to Jane Standley reporting it?
Your not answering the question. All your doing is providing non-answers.
WHO WAS YOUR ORIGINAL SOURCE?
I'm sure that this week has been eye-opening for you Richard. What can you take away from this experience? Well perhaps at the very least I can suggest that it indicates how poorly regarded your industry has become if so many are eager to accept that the BBC are involved in a cover-up. So much doubt and mistrust, how has it come to this? Also you might have come to the conclusion that there are a hell of a lot of passionate people in this world, ready to go to quite extraordinary lengths to get their point across. You should take heart on this however. Someone once said that people have become apathetic towards politics, I think they were wrong, don't you?
Has anyone reading this thread actually watched the building fall? If not, please do so now. I'll wait. Just go to YouTube and search for WTC7, or click my name above.
Now, can you possibly say that a building with a "bulge" or other structural damage can fall uniformly straight down? Have you ever played Jenga? What happens when you lose? Buildings fall OVER, not DOWN, unless they are DEMOLISHED.
Prove me wrong.
Please stop invoking the "BBC is not part of any conspiracy" line in response to reader complaints. Nobody is suggesting for a moment that you are part of some larger conspiracy and to imply such a thing is at best disingenuous and at worst deliberately misleading.
While you seem to have provided sufficient evidence that BBC World's premature report of WTC7's collapse was a simple matter of gross incompetence and nothing more, you have yet to provide answers to some very important questions:
1. Who is responsible for the 'cock-up' which led to the loss of BBC World News' 9/11 footage?
"I don't know whether they were destroyed or mislaid." just doesn't cut it!
2. What are the circumstances surrounding the 'cock-up' which led to the loss of BBC World News' 9/11 footage?
3. Who cut reporter Jane Standley's live feed from NYC at 5:18pm (EST) on 11/09/01?
4. What are the circumstances surrounding the disruption of Jane Standley's live feed from NYC at 5:18pm (EST) on 11/09/01?
Sorry, Richard, there IS a story here!
Mr. Porter,
You wrote: "But we do know quite a bit more than we did on Tuesday, as a result of checking the BBC archives and what other media were doing at the time."
So do you, or do NOT, have the entire video archives from that time segment? Which is it? The 911 video with the time stamp of Jane standing there with the WTC-7 in the background---you have that? Is THAT what you checked? Either way, it doesnt look too good.
Douglas Herman, USAF veteran and 911 critic of the cock-eyed cover up.
This is just more smoke and mirrors. You are waffling around avoiding the pertinent questions.
The BBC was the ONLY station (or group of stations) that was reporting WTC7 "HAD COLLAPSED" before it did.
You ALSO reported WHY it fell, unlike any other station. This is a question that even NIST *STILL* can't explain properly.
We are just asking you for the source and the original materials. Stop whining about being "part of a conspiracy"
If it was just a one-off cock-up (which would be no big thing with the amount of stress on that day) we don't need to worry. Many other news stations had reported the same, as Richard says. Basically, the BBC found themselves on the end of a Chinese whisper.
HERE IS THE POINT --
1. Several buildings were on fire that day, however, only one of them which did not get hit by a plane collapsed -- WTC 7.
2. Why would _any_ news organization report that a given building, out of the THOUSANDS of buildings in NYC, and the DOZENS on fire that day, had 'collapsed' when in fact it didn't?
3. Someone got the rumor floating over an HOUR before WTC 7 collapsed. The point is that the rumor just happen to GUESS the ACTUAL building out of DOZENS of buildings that could have collapsed? The statistical probability of this is astronomically low. Occam's Razor tells us that the simplest explanation is that the person(s) who got the rumor going an hour beforehand had foreknowledge of the event. The BBC needs to find out who planted this information with the press!
Come on Richard. No story here? I take it you are a bright fellow, so obviously you can't possibly be serious.
First you publish severely biased 'conspiracy files hit piece' that is bloody far from decent journalism. It was that bad that it alone counts as some level of conspiring against general public. Now, after that fiasco you come here telling that all 9/11 tapes are mysteriously lost and basically confirmed that BBC one way or the other had prior knowledge of WTC7 coming down (event that no-one in the 100 year-old history of steel frame buildings could not expect). Event was that improbable that it has taken more than 5 years for several organizations to come out with even a semi-plausible explanation for. Now, let's look at the Occam's Razor: I can explain every single thing experienced on site by controlled demolition in 15 minutes without NIST or FEMA.
We all know well who's political agendas 9/11 served best. Now, if there indeed is no conspiracy, prove it. Provide as much hard evidence as you can and present it in a unbiased quality documentary. Would be really nice if you could start off from the criminal investigation conducted by US government and end it with a proper explanation on why the towers fell (all of them) that takes into account basic newtonian laws of physics. Ask Steven Jones to contribute. He would probably love to.
Please don't make BBC another Fox News. We already have enough of that crap with strictly political agendas.
You explanation is right out of Mr. Orwell's book. 2 + 2 = 5 and the laws of physics were suspended because we must have faith in our institutions.
WTC 7 had fire damage to a single corner of its structure. This infers the building should have collapsed into that corner in a terribly asymmetric way. However, the building collapsed in a perfectly symmetric way by falling directly onto its footprint. The huge steel supports and columns in the 3/4 of the building that were NOT on fire completely failed at the same exact time as the 1/4 of the building that was on fire. This cannot be. And I don't even think FEMA can ignore this. I think the final report (due out later this year) will blow the door open on this, and we'll finally know the full story.
"I've spent most of the week investigating this issue, but this is where we have to end the story."
How arrogant. You are supposed to represent your viewers, us. We'll decide when to end the story thanks. You can choose not to engage if you wish, you haven't for the last 5 years.
As Mr. Chavez said: Smell the sulphur folks. BBC is no longer a source we can look to for the truth. The Fox News virus has infected a once trusted resource. As an architect I can only tell others that buildings don't normally explode like volcanos, unless helped.
These conspiracy theories are for idiots. Let them troll the internet and fantasise about the BIG conspiracy, which would have involved thousands of people, imaginary people, robots, time machines, remote control airplanes and on and on. Why bother trying to debunk them?
BBC MEDIA MANAGEMENT POLICY
Reference: http://www.bbc.co.uk/foi/docs/historical_information/archive_policies/media_management_policy_overview.htm
"01-01 The following components to be retained:-
· Two broadcast standard copies of all transmitted/published TV, Radio and BBCi output – one to be stored on a separate site as a master
· One browse-quality version for research purposes, to protect the broadcast material · All supporting metadata to enable research and re-use
· A selection of original (i.e. unedited) material for re-use/re-versioning purposes · Hardware/software/equipment to enable replay/transfer of the media"
How can you possibly loose (at least) three copies from this historic day? It's even stored at two separate sites! If the case that it wasn't archived at all; what about the Broadcasting Act?
"03-01 All media and metadata must be stored securely in the correct conditions to minimise damage and degradation, following industry best practice"
Has this been done in this case, and if not, why? If has been done, how come you made a 'cock-up'? What can be learned from this incident to prevent this from happening again in the future?
"04-01 All transmitted/published media content will be kept for at least five years to fulfil legal requirements and to enable re-versioning and re-use"
You say that "the BBC policy is to keep every minute of news channel output for 90 days"
Why doesn't 04-01 apply to this?
Even though you may not want to answear this questions, I hope you will publish my comment at least for others to see.
Thank you for posting again and thank you for you explanation thus far. I think you would agree the subject of what happened on 9/11 is very important to many people for various reasons.
I do not believe the BBC was part of any conspiracy but I do believe there is very much still a story here, although the BBC's part in it is very nearly complete.
There is one more piece of information required.
You said that you "believe that one or more of the news agencies was reporting this, or at least reporting someone saying this".
Please continue your fine investigation to it’s logical conclusion, in the true spirit of investigative journalism that the BBC is so famous for, and find out:
1. Which news agency reported this or at least someone saying it?
2. If possible exactly what was reported by the agency and when?
I think the BBC will then be able to completely vindicate itself of ‘conspiracy’ accusations, and show the world what fine investigative journalism it is capable of.
Hello Mr. Porter,
You're a good bloke to give it another go here.
There's a few things I notice in all the damage control blather. I hope you don't mind if mention some of it.
1. You keep denying the BBC is part of the conspiracy. I'm happy you realize there was a conspiracy in play on 9-11-2001. If I were you, though, I'd stop shouting quite so loudly that you weren't part of it. Nobody was thinking that before. They might start, though, if you keep protesting so much!
2. You spend a good bit of time in this second blog to prove that folks other than the BBC had foreknowledge of WTC7's collapse. We knew that already! The recently unearthed BBC video just cements the knowledge. It's irrefutable evidence. So, you don't have to present hearsay evidence to convince us. What you could do, though, is help us source the information. Yes, other news agencies besides yours got the "memo" too. And yes, we will ask them too, about where they got it. My guess is we'll continue to ask you, too, until you tell us.
3. As for your comments about BBC policy regarding saving output... last blog you said you had "cocked-up" and lost the footage. Now you are saying you never kept it anyway because you didn't have to and anyway there were lots of other bits of footage still about you could look at. So, uhm, which is it? A cock-up? Or a normal discarding of redundant footage?
4. I do appreciate the time you've taken over these last few days to investigate whatever it is you've investigated. It's certainly better to have some sort of response instead of none whatsoever. But I take issue with your last sentence, "There's no story here." The events of 9-11-2001, taken in bits or as a whole, comprise the biggest story in my lifetime so far, and that's more than half a century. You may determine you will say no more, but good sir, you are not the decider when it comes to determining whether or not there is a story here.
I have one final question. How does it make you feel to know that your fine organization was just another tool in creating the official public myth about 9-11? I don't know, sir, but if it were me, I think I'd be mad as hell.
Someone wrote in a post: "The conspiracy theorists will not square up to a simple fact here: conspirators would not have had anything to gain by informing a news agency in advance that the building was going to collapse."
My analysis indicates that Flight 93, which was shot down over Pennsylvania, was going to target WTC 7. This would have given the plotters the 'evidence' they needed to explain why WTC 7 collapsed. However, the plane never made it to its destination, and the building collapsed ANYWAYS, because of the pre-positioned explosives waiting to ignite. The plotters had to scramble to explain why the building would be collapsing despite the fact that no plane hit it. So the rumor is planted with the new agencies.
Mr. Porter:
Thank you for your follow up to all these inquiries. I am unable, however, to dignify your response with my own follow up. I can only say that if I was "on the fence" about a 911 Conspiracy before this huge karmic payback, the BBC and CNN have most assuredly put me on the side of the "Truthers." so...Lightworkers, Onward and Upward we go!
JUST ANSWER THE QUESTION!
Who told the newsdesk that WTC7 had collapsed?
Your explanation still doesn't cover why Google Video and YouTube have been fighting like mad to keep the relevant clips of the BBC's blunder off the Internet. And as far as I can tell, there has been a media blackout on this issue, even from your rivals, when it should have been big news to begin with.
Mr. Porter
Here is what you have to do. Sit down, take few deep breathes and then, watch all the available videos on web of the controlled demolition of WTC7. Now, you will understand the reality. Then, plug back you automatic pilot and continue denying it.
What append with investigative journalism? Oh yeah, I know, The Conspiracy Files...
Somehow it is pretty convenient that the BBC reports today it has struck a deal with YouTube/Google Video.
"Mr Highfield said the BBC would not be hunting down all BBC-copyrighted clips already uploaded by YouTube members - although it would reserve the right ... to have content removed ... that had been edited or altered in a way that would damage the BBC's brand."
See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6411017.stm
I have an idea of what you would like to see removed.
Reminds me of my management class, chapter on crisis management: do take some action, publicize it with similar tags to shift the focus (and the debate). Textbook procedure. Nice try, but you cannot take over the Internet - if we live in a democracy, that is. I sometimes wonder.
"you might have heard I was talking a few moments ago about the Salomon building collapsing and indeed it has"
Where is the qualifier in this iron clad certainty-filled statement? The "it seems" only applies to the explanation, which is so much in line with the later official version. You are being dishonest here, Roger, don't you think? The real question was and still is, who were your sources? Why do you try to avoid answering it at any cost?
Dear Miss TV Person,
What did you think when that building behind you collapsed in one giant rush of 47-Story Steel Mass? Merely minutes AFTER you reported that it had ALREADY collapsed?
Maybe not knowing which building was which, did you not ask someone, "What building was that?"? And when you found out the it was in fact WTC7, the very 47-Story Structure which you ALREADY said had fallen, how did that make you FEEL?
Mr. Porter,
No one is suggesting you, nor the BBC are "part of the conspiracy," as your strawman argument suggests. We'd just like to know what news agencies or wire agencies your reporters/producers got the false information from, and then from whom they got the information, and so on... I thought all newsfolk were naturally curious. Does following this incorrect information trail not stir some interest in anyone in your organization? You say you've spent your whole week on this issue. I assume you mean spending your time defending the BBC. Why not spend some time as an actual reporter investigating the questions behind the issue at hand, rather than acting as a public relations representative?
Who was the original source, please?
I'm not surprised a few mistakes were made by the BBC on a hectic day like 9/11.
That's life.
Compare this to the many mistakes in documentaries like Loose Change or 911 Mysteries. They had all the time to check the facts, and yet their final products contain mountains of errors.
Some double-standards from the CTists here.
To those who ask why the 9/11 commission didn't address WTC 7: that's what NIST is doint right now.
Richard, how unfortunate that after all your research the truth has not come out yet. But at least you have shown us your great sense of humour.
Have a nice weekend and a cold beer.
Richard the main question that the BBC or any other news agency has never answered/tried to answer or is willing to investigate is, "What debris reached WTC7 that caused such massive structural damage?" Was it pieces of a building? Parts of the airplane? Why are other WTC buildings torched and damaged, with obvious floor to roof fires, still standing?
While no one has said you were part of the conspiracy the reluctance to give us anything but the administrative line as an explanation to that day leaves most of us with only one possible answer...that being, you may not have been a part of it, but you sure aren't interested in discovering the truth about it either.
The BBC will never recover. This propaganda network is an enemy of the people.
If it was just a one-off cock-up (which would be no big thing with the amount of stress on that day) we don't need to worry. Many other news stations had reported the same, as Richard says. Basically, the BBC found themselves on the end of a Chinese whisper.
The tape that would be of interest is the tape of of the camera in NY. That camera would have recorded the collapse of WTC7 just a few minutes after the signal to UK was mysteriously "lost".
The idea that Jane would have no recollection of giving a report of a building collapse, only to have that building collapse just outside her window within minutes. That's not something you would forget... ever.
Sorry, BBC is still covering up.
Mr Porter, the reason why this whole fiasco is important is this:
The perpertrators of 9/11 Reichstag Fire had to build a "Public Myth", and convince the public that the building came down solely due to fire and not for any other reason.
They had to associate, in our minds, the planes crashing into the buildings with the buildings later collapsing.
In order to do this, they needed to push their explanations right from the beginning, into the mainstream media (includint the BCC) that the building came down due to structural failure and fire, and not for any other reason.
When this explanation is repeated time and again, especially in the moments very soon after the attack when people are mentally very 'open to suggestion', it becomes part of the accepted 'myth' and difficult to challenge. It is an accepted psychological technique.
That is why it is jarring to see videos of BBC reporters, amongst others, as soon as the buildings collapsed, try to explain (having obviously been briefed) how and why the buildings came down, referring in unnatural ways to structural failure, fire and design and so on.
We're not saying that the BBC or its reporters were in on the conspiracy, but we are saying that they were used and abused, like other media outlets, by those responsible in order to push an 'official narrative'.
That's what it's basically about. That and your dismissive and arrogant ad-hominem attacks, and your weak expanations (we lost the tapes, really gov!) are reasons why we are angry.
BTW: You should be interested to know the academic background of Philip Zelikow, the guy who was in charge of the 9/11 commission. His area of expertise is the creation and maintenance of, in his words, ‘public myths’ or ‘public presumptions’ which he defines as ‘beliefs (1) thought to be true (although not necessarily known with certainty) and (2) shared in common within the relevant political community.’
Zelikow, in his academic work and elsewhere he has taken a special interest in what he has called ‘searing’ or ‘molding’ events (that) take on transcendent’ importance and therefore retain their power even as the experiencing generation passes from the scene….
See Wikipedia.
"There's no story here." Is that as in "Nothing to see here, move along folks"? Is that not slightly patronising? How, precisely, have you answered the questions regarding the source of the report? The nearest I can see from what you have written summarises to "Hearsay regarding the possibility of the building's imminent collapse led to our reporting that it had collapsed." What a very odd admission from a puported news organisation.
People are demanding to know (because it IS a story) where the reports came from that the building had collapsed.
The BBC is in a position to substantially assist with the investigations into 911 by providing evidence in support of such statements as "there was a fairly consistent picture being painted of Building 7 in danger of collapse." Merely citing one unnamed fire officer does not cut it. In any case there is a 47 story difference between "in danger of collapse" and "has collapsed."
It is precisely because the FEMA and NIST reports are suspect that such questions are being so actively pressed. Citing them does nothing to support your case.
The regimes in America and the UK have lied consciously and consistently in order to bring about war in Iraq - committing what Chief Justice Jackson called "The supreme crime" - bribing and blackmailing other states for support, so we have every right to demand integrity and incisiveness from those who claim to report the truth. Do not satisfy yourself with the answers you have given; they are mere speculation and, by that measure, are no more satisfying than the speculation that gave rise to this enquiry. Are your reports always based on rumour and supposition? We have a right to know.
Richard,
Would it be possible for the BBC to get copies of the key 1GB source files from www.archive.org? They say that they'd be happy to provide you with the files. If you could authenticate them (though I'm not sure how if you've misplaced the original footage) that would help clear up concerns about the integrity of the files given that there is at least one report that an associated .xml file at the site may have been edited on 18th of February (the date of the BBC 911 Conspiracy episode). It seems that the archive have been subject to a few hiccups in recent times due to the servers having been moved (see link at end), and the recent BBC broadcast has of course ruffled a few feathers in the 911 community. There is some concern about the timings given that BBC WORLD does not have a time stamp. There is also a BBC NEWS 24 clip circulating the web which seems to have a time stamp which is allegedly 21:50 BST (16:50 EDT). The BBC WORLD file at www.archive.org file (http://ia311517.us.archive.org/2/items/bbc200109111654-1736/V08591-16.mpg) appeared to have an associated EDT 1654-1736 (-4 hrs from GMT) in the *link* to the available file but the file itself has a separate filename and there is no information in the 41 minute clip which can be used to definitively establish the actual time of broadcast.
If the BBC could authenticate a) the time of broadcast of these two clips b) confirm that the files have not been maliciously audio/video edited and c) confirm whether any of the key footage was either greenscreen, looped or overlaid, it might help clear this matter up for all concerned - for some at least as at present, too many are just assuming authenticity.
http://www.archive.org/iathreads/post-view.php?id=106772
In reference to this, by Bryan:
" The conspiracy theorists will not square up to a simple fact here: conspirators would not have had anything to gain by informing a news agency in advance that the building was going to collapse."
Yes, they certainly would. If the inside job squad realized by noon that WTC7 was never going to fall down on its own from fire and debris, it would have been very smart to promote a back story of a 'weak building' throughout the afternoon in the media, so that when they did set off the controlled demolition and people ( like Dan Rather did ) looked at it and said, "Huh? What just happened?", a story would be in place that defused the normal surprise people would have when they see a 47 story building sucked into the ground in 7 seconds.
The first RULE OF HOLES:
When you're in one... STOP DIGGING!
"There's no story here."
I think that’s not for you to say. I also spend last week looking into 9/11 and what happened in regards to WTC7, and things just don’t add up.
I can understand that this report that WTC7 had already collapsed, almost half an hour ahead of time, has sparked such a stir because its just to much.
What’s still missing in your response is where the report originated. Who send the report that the building had collapsed as a result of damage and fires?
There is no point in trying to engage irrational people in rational debate. These conspiracy nuts are not interested in facts, only their own feeble imaginations and the possibility of being lifted out of well-deserved obscurity by being controversial for a while.
Stop wasting time and money addressing a tiny number of your web viewers that insist on claiming that the sky is pink with red dots.
Many of us over here in the colonies have enjoyed British comedies for years as far superior to the pap produced by the US networks. I applaud you for your latest installation. This rivals anything that even the biting "Hot Metal" could ever come up with. I can see this in the next Blackadder series...
Baldrick: Um, sir, I'd like to report that the big building what used to be beside WTC 1 and 2 has fallen down rather nastily.
BlackAdder: Do you mean that rather large edifice over your left shoulder that appears to be fully intact, Baldrick?
Baldrick: (looking back over his shoulder and pointing) Yes sir, that one. It fell down about 30 minutes ago....
Percy: Well hijack my missile - What an amazing mirage!
Baldrick: Sir, I have a cunning plan...
Also, could you please review your news feeds and see if the score of tomorrow's Liverpool/ManU match is there anywhere and post it this evening? That would give me a few hours to make a wager or two.
"No story here"
Very strange attitude for a news organisation. SOMEONE reported the building collapsed. Either you know who reported that, or you don't. If you don't, then your reliability and integrity as a news source is in serious question and you've just provided proof of the biggest complaint people have about MSM - that you are just a mouthpiece repeating anything you're told without bothering to verify or actually check the facts.
If you DO know who made that report and aren't saying, then you definitely are part of A conspiracy because you're covering up facts.
Given that the collapse of building 7 is probably the most damnign evidence that SOMETHING was awry with the official story (even more so than the miraculously ridiculous assertions of the survival of passports while the black boxes didn't survive, there definitely IS a story here sir, and if you choose to ignore it, then your credibility as a news agency is ... nonexistant.
Lose/Lose for you? Yes it is. But if you had any integrity you'd suck it up, and report the story regardless. After all, isn't that what a news agency is supposed to do? Or is saving face a higher priority than investigating and reporting?
Richard,
I can tell by this latest blog that you are still on damage control trying to find a way out of this mess. That is understandable.
Here is a question I have not seen asked yet. Since it obvious you are not going to admit any wrong doing because of all the chaos of 9/11 then why won't you at least investigate now? I don't understand how so many people can have so many questions yet NONE of these questions are ever addressed. Why does the "official" story get countless articles and air-time from the media but nothing of this subject? It is very suspicious to say the least.
Please just answer me that. There is obvious questions that people want investigated. So, I beg of you, INVESTIGATE!!!
To repeat, just so it doesn't become lost in the sheer number of comments to follow:
BBC's own Media Management Policy:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/foi/docs/historical_information/archive_policies/media_management_policy_overview.htm
also includes:
"Selection criteria for long-term archiving:
Historical. Material of events (actuality) covering all subject areas, including politics, foreign affairs etc. Includes content generated by News."
90 days? Laughable.
I would have given you the benefit of doubt if you had gone about finding and exposing the original source of the premature "breaking news", like any serious investigative journalist would do.
Now with these two blog comments you've exposed yourself, not necessarily as part of any conspiracy, but definitely as part of the cover-up.
Something has definitely changed at the Beeb in the aftermath of Dr. Kelly's death.
Gina, that they are supposedly trying to address the ignoring of the collapse of WTC7 some five and a half years later should tell you all you need to know about how screamingly obvious a government conspiracy this is. Do you think it slipped their collective mind back then? Give me a break.
Richard,
The truth will set you free.
Regards,
Bruce
Gina states,
"Compare this to the many mistakes in documentaries like Loose Change or 911 Mysteries."
I'm aware of a few problems with "Loose Change", but you now ad "911 Mysteries" to your list of movies with "many mistakes".
I'll bite. Let's see your list of mistakes for "911 Mysteries".
What is wrong with you people?! Do you people not understand the ADVANTAGE of getting your news 20 minutes into the future? I'll bet if NORAD would have been tuned to the BBC, we wouldn't even be having this discussion right now.
Ending the story? Its only just begun..
You report the mysterious collapse of a building 20 minutes before it actually happens and you expect us to believe you guys didnt have some form of foreknowledge?
You have alot of explaining to do.
WHO WAS YOUR ORIGINAL SOURCE?
Gina, whater were the "many mistakes" contained with in 9/11 Mysteries. Everyone knows Loose Change is filled with errors even the creators know that. That is why they are making a final cut. But 9/11 Mysteries filled with a "mountain of errors." I've never heard that claim before. Please do continue. What are the numerous errors in 9/11 Mysteries?
BBC-
No, you are not part of a conspiracy. You don't have to be. It seems more like you are a pawn. Unwittingly.
That should make you want to disclose your source. Doesn't it annoy you, at least? To be a pawn?
Who in the world could know a building would collapse, so certainly? and so early? Especially when it's unprecedented...
C'mon, WHO?
Mr. Porter:
(Yes, I expect to be censored, but as long as some troll at BBC reads this, I'm satisfied).
Those of us with half a brain don't believe you. It is quite sad what you have become over on that side of the Atlantic. It was bad enough that the US became a fascist state-we are a young country, haven't had foreign enemies invade us, our people are fairly ignorant. I expected more from Europeans. I notice that no other European governments or press are speaking up about the obvious lies of 911. A truly sad world it has become, we that read "1984", you traitors to humanity have no conscience. Oh, you "nonbelievers", pull your heads out. 911 proved the evil of power, the sickness of the modern state-obviously topics beyond your range. We Truthers will have to take over your pitiful realities.
Here's how the BBC can make amends. Track down the firefighters who were allegedly warning of the impending collapse of Building 7. Interview them and have them give a detailed explanation of why they would have been specifically concerned about the structural integrity of Building 7, given the fact that fires have never brought down a steel frame building and that we know of no similar warning regarding the other far more seriously damaged buildings of the WTC complex. Were they surprised by the manner in which the building collapsed? If not, why not? What did they see that day and what in their background knowledge of building design would have allowed them to predict such a thing?
Now, my dear Gina. Are you seriously trying to compare the work of BBC journalists to a couple of college kids working without a budget from their computers? That would be shameful if it wasn't so laughable. Particularly since Dylan Avery et. al. have gotten a helluva lot more right about 9/11 than your beloved BBC, whose bum you seem to be curiously attracted to
There is a lot of home work to be done by the BBC. After a shameful documentary on 9-11, in which you tried to avoid all the critical issues, and this story on Building 7 it is time to return to JOURNALISM.
Why not interview the firemen that heard the explosions in Buiding 7, the owner Mr Silverstein (He said: 'We had to PULL the building) and the office of the maire Giullianni.
Come up with something real! No story telling anymore!
That's it?? That's all you found out?? How about . . .
Who first told the news services that the building was about to collapse? What was the initial source? Why did they think a steel structure building would collapse due to fire? That's unheard of, you know.
Dig deeper, Mr. so-called "journalist"! Do your job. Put some people on this who can study it for more than one lousy week.
911 was a massive spiritual event. What we are seeing in 911 is the separation of humanity into 2 groups: the sheep and the goats. Sheep not meant here in the perjorative sense. The goats will fight tooth and claw to supppress the truth because they are without truth or decency as spiritual beings.
WHO WAS YOUR SOURCE? NAMES, PLEASE.
BBC-
No, you are not part of a conspiracy. You don't have to be. It seems more like you are a pawn. Unwittingly.
That should make you want to disclose your source. Doesn't it annoy you, at least? To be a pawn?
Who in the world could know a building would collapse, so certainly? and so early? Especially when it's unprecedented...
C'mon, WHO?
The WTC7 demolition looks a lot like those old hotels in Las Vegas collapsing into the sands of time.
This is the type of explanation that arises when there are more fingers to push the "Save" button than there are fingers feverishly trying to employ the "delete" button.
The truth is that without all those save fingers, there would be no explanation at all from the BBC. Just more disappeared video and silence.
Here's how the BBC can make amends. Track down the firefighters who were allegedly warning of the impending collapse of Building 7. Interview them and have them give a detailed explanation of why they would have been specifically concerned about the structural integrity of Building 7, given the fact that fires have never brought down a steel frame building and that we know of no similar warning regarding the other far more seriously damaged buildings of the WTC complex. Were they surprised by the manner in which the building collapsed? If not, why not? What did they see that day and what in their background knowledge of building design would have allowed them to predict such a thing?
Now, my dear Gina. Are you seriously trying to compare the work of BBC journalists to a couple of college kids working without a budget from their computers? That would be shameful if it wasn't so laughable. Particularly since Dylan Avery et. al. have gotten a helluva lot more right about 9/11 than your beloved BBC, whose bum you seem to be curiously attracted to
Come on folks.. the BBC is a well respected media brand across the world. There are more Americans tune into the BBC than actual Brits in the UK and their World Service radio is trusted across much of the developing world. Although publically funded, they generate many millions selling programmes and merchandising. And today they tied up a major deal with Google. They are a corporate player - a brand worth at the last estimate about £5.6 billion. For all their pompous and self-righteous delusion of journalistic integrity and impartiality, they are hugely conservative by nature and their function is to maintain the status quo. We forget that the BBC Iraq reporting was always solidly pro-war. A comprehensive study by Media Tenor, the non-partisan institute, analysed the war coverage of some of the world's leading broadcasters and found that the BBC allowed less dissent than all of them, including the US networks. So Richard Porter's right, there's no story here, there never really has been, move along now, the BBC will warn us if anything bad is going to happen. We can trust them. They are our moral guardians, teaching our young, supporting communities, watching over us. They are consumate professionals, the world's best broadcasting organisation, trusted across the globe. Move on now, this is where it ends, there's no story here.
Like the American media, you continue to shirk your responsibility to the people to inform and enlighten them, rather you prefer to deceive and dupe them. Why? At what point did the integrity of the BBC slip away? When did you change from the seeker of truth to the purveyor of propaganda? And why, now that you are discredited, do you continue to duck and dive and to advance the increasingly obvious BIG LIE? Of course, your complicity has cost the lives of countless innocents and to admit the truth exposes your blood-soaked hands.
I'd like to address the point made by Bryan in comment #15. He says:
---------------------------------------
I find myself in rare agreement with the BBC on this issue. The conspiracy theorists will not square up to a simple fact here: conspirators would not have had anything to gain by informing a news agency in advance that the building was going to collapse. On the contrary, they would then have had the strong likelihood of forewarned journalists snooping around while they were trying to surrepstitiously implode the building. There is no basis in logic here and no basis in fact.
----------------------------------------
But the sources would have had everything to gain in shaping the media's perception of what exactly happened to WTC-7. Keep in mind that not only did the report state that the building had collapsed, in the affirmative and without qualifiers, but also contained information as to WHY it collapsed ("weakened"), the precise number of storeys, that there were no casualties etc. Whoever issued that pre-scripted "breaking news" and dispersed it to the media didn't want reporters and anchors to even begin to speculate.
The cock-up was that this report was released too early, and it's thanks to BBC's innocence and unfamiliarity with the New York skyline that this is now public knowledge. CNN's Aaron Brown, who received the same information but realised it couldn't be right in mid-sentence, managed to somehow wiggle his way through his segment.
The cut of the live feed just about 10 minutes before the actual event is another smoking gun in need of further investigation. Was it a mere coincidence (oh - yet another one!) or is there a remote possibility that someone fiddled with the satellite transmission? If the latter, who had the capability to do so?
Okay, so your excuse is that the BBC News doesn't know how to do it's job because everybody was confused. WOW!!!! So, you guys get your news from other news agencies, if that was the case how come the BBC were the only ones reporting the collapse 20 minutes to it actually happening. You still are avoiding the question, who was the source of your information? I find it extremely hard to believe your excuses since you can clearly see the building in the background, so if it was a mistake as you guys claim that means there should be some reporters being fired here for messing up the most important event of the century so far.
Is this really what passes for journalism at BBC World News?
You report the the WTC-7 had already fallen when it was still clearly standing, and your "explanation" is that other BBC outlets were doing the same?
Where did these erroneous reports originate? So far you have written two articles about this, but have come no closer to answering the fundamental question.
Yes, it might have been local reports. It might have been a wire service. It might even have been some random guy who saw a "bulge." But which was it in actuality? You are supposed to be a news organization, not a PR damage control firm.
Why is my BBC license fee being used to research and respond to these halfwit tin-foil hat buffoons?
Richard if this was the only strange thing that happened on 9/11 most people would dismiss it but it is one of a thousands of weird things and if any one of them had the slightest bit of truth to them then it would instantly mean 9/11 was an inside job.
It's going to be hilarious to watch all this new evidence to be put in with the other evidence and have you try to fob that off...You’re on a sinking ship and not you or your agents are going to keep it afloat.
Who gave you the information that caused you to report this event incorrectly?
Why don't you want to disclose who made your news agency look like the south end of a northbound horse?
Do you realize how foolish and incompetent that live report makes the BBC seem?
Now, I never even thought of accusing BBC of being part of any conspiracy until you brought it up.
Since you keep denying something you were not accused of, I have to wonder
what's up with that?
This reminds me of the time when I stole a piece of grape bubble gum when I was 3 and told my mother, before she even
accused me that I didn't steal the bubble gum.
Is your ad hominem attack from the blog posts you made intended to squelch any and all questions by any and all people who want to know who your source is? Is it to incite those who have disdain for "conspiracy theorists" to come to your aid by focusing on conspiracy as opposed to honest people asking you an honest question?
Being labeled a conspiracy nut has long lost it's punch and I suggest that you grow up and act like the representative of a respected news agency you are supposed to be.
Your boss needs to take a look at the foolishness you have put forth this week and put someone else on this issue since it appears that you are not capable of coherent discourse on the matter. And you lack the will to bring it to a satisfactory close.
Your excuse is basically: Everyone else did it, so we did it, too.
Just because everyone else jumps off a bridge, do you follow?
You are arrogant in your premise that there is no story here.
Even if there wasn't a story before, your posts are creating one. And as others have said, people are not going to shut up about this, even if you choose to ignore the issue, so it is not up to you, sir.
I see self-delusion must be something contagious at the BBC
Compare the number of responses you guys get on this issue than any of the other editorial blogs. Think about it. This topic is what people want to talk about. So I urge you, BBC, to keep on investigating (9/11) and I'm sure you will see your ratings rise...
Thank you for the further explanation Mr. Porter. I for one am nearly satisfied.
However, I'd like to put forth one question: As people apparently knew (or at least strongly believed) that WTC7 was going to collapse, how is
it possible that we still don't know why it collapsed? Let alone why it collapsed nearly in a free fall time?
Today the only published report about WTC7 is the FEMA report from 2002. Quote from that report:
"The specifics of the fires in WTC 7 and how they caused the building to collapse remain unknown at this time. Although the total diesel fuel on the premises contained massive potential energy, the best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence. Further research, investigation, and analyses are needed to resolve this issue."
Even if NIST will one day finish their report and present a possible theory of the reason of the collapse, this will not explain the foreknowledge.
You must understand that the foreknowledge clearly strengthens the controlled demolition theory.
How about some real investigative journalism?
For anyone still wondering about what the BBC's all about check this out
Section 8.3 - BBC Agreement - Department of National Heritage 1995
"If and whenever in the opinion of the Secretary of State an emergency shall have arisen in which it is expedient in the public interest that Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom shall have control over the broadcasting or transmission of any matter whatsoever by means of the stations or any of them, it shall be lawful for the Secretary of State to direct and cause the stations or any of them or any part thereof to be taken possession of in the name and on behalf of Her Majesty and to prevent the Corporation from using them, and also to cause the stations or any of them or any part thereof to be used for Her Majesty's service, or to take such other steps as he may think fit to secure control over the stations or any of them, and in that event any person authorised by the Secretary of State may enter upon the stations or any of them and the offices and works of the Corporation or any of them and take possession thereof and use the same as aforesaid."
On a day to day basis it may manifest itself as a cultural self censorship, but the reality is - the BBC has to keep Her Majesty's Government happy. They can get away with a satirical sketch show or allow the public to let off steam on Question Time but to ask a £5.6 billion branded corporation answerable to the British establishment to ask serious questions about 9/11 - dream on brothers and sisters. If there ever was a grassroots mass poitical movement in the UK that mirrored those in Venezuela or the Ukraine and truly challenged the powers that be - the "progressive, humanist" BBC would be the first weapon weilded by the establishment to undermine dissent. Who knows, in just a few years, people with the views expressed in this comment section could well be described by a presentable and attractive newsreader with a calm, measured voice as "terrorist sympathisers." And because its the trusty old BBC, millions would believe them.
Peter, you say:
"It's in the nature of rolling news that events unfold in front of you and confusion turns to clarity"
The 'collapsed' building was standing there behind Jane Standley!
From confusion to clarity eh?
Answer this question please. Why was there no follow up after WTC7 actually fell? You and other news outlets reported a building collapsing 30 minutes early but none of you so called news outlets even mentioned you made a mistake.
Why was no one after WTC7 really collapsed apologizing to the audience for the mistake? By not saying anything and pretending as if you didn't report it early you have made yourself a target.
Before you answer this question would you please answer who the source was? Thanks.
Thanks to Richard Porter for his two posts on the Building 7 collapse.
I live in New Jersey just across the Hudson River from the Trade Center site. Many of my neighbors work in lower Manhattan, and in the days right after the 9/11 attacks, of course, I spoke to many of them and to many Manhattanites as well -- my brother lives in Tribeca, just north of the financial district where the Trade Center was.
Not a single one of these people believed then, or believes now, that the buildings at Ground Zero were destroyed by a controlled demolition. It seems that the farther away people live from a traumatic event, the easier it is for them to believe fantastic things about it.
It is important to remember that it was known at the time that all the Trade Center site buildings were built over a huge cofferdam - known to engineers who worked on the Trade Center complex or had maintained it by the slang term of "The Bathtub." That "cofferdam" - the term combines the word "coffin" - in the dictionary sense of a box -- and "dam" as in a structure that holds back water - is kind of massive concrete enclosure of a kind usually employed for the underwater footings or foundations of bridges to keep relatively unstable, watery, sandy soil from shifting and damaging foundations. But, as visitors to the cleared Trade Center site can still see, this is a huge cofferdam, which is several blocks in extent north and south, and dozens of feet deep. It was the few of its kind ever used in skyscraper construction and was meant to compensate for the possibility that much of the ground around Manhattan Island's borders was not quite as stable as it should be, because it had originally been underwater and had been reclaimed with landfill down the centuries.
The point is that some of the engineers and experts consulted in real time on 9/11 -- especially after the two towers had collapsed - would naturally have had grave concerns that 7 World Trade Center, the building in question in this discussion, would be in a very unstable condition not only because of the two previous collapses that day, but also because of the unusual nature of the foundations underlying the two large Trade Center buildings, which were no more than a few hundred feet at most south of WTC-7.
Likely, much of that concern was communicated to the many reporters on the ground that horrific day in a confused fashion and that may account for media reports which seem to anticipate the last major building collapse which for some reason is now the main preoccupation of conspiracy theorists.
Richard,
Perhaps it's time for you to you take an 'early retirement' to 'spend more time with your family'. Your response to the many valid and pointed questions is, quite frankly, very sad..
I have posted about 6 comments, none of which you or your 'gatekeepers' have had the decency to publish..
I would make a suggestion...
Make a 'Documentary' (let's call it a 'special 'Conspiracy Files Analysis) about this whole BBC 'Conspiracy' theory.
Would make very interesting viewing and (judging by the number of posts here) would break the all-time record of viewers (being Den telling Angie about a divorce in Eastenders or the Morecambe and Wise Xmas Show from time immemorial..)
How has the BBC descended to this farcical situation? Hang your head in shame Mr Porter..
In 1989, the New York Times reported that Larry Silverstein leased WTC 7, but first had to reinforce the structure in order to house his high tech operation. Quoting from the article:
"We built in enough redundancy to allow entire portions of floors to be removed without affecting the building's structural integrity, on the assumption that someone might need double-height floors,'' said Larry Silverstein, president of the company. "Sure enough, Salomon had that need...
MORE than 375 tons of steel - requiring 12 miles of welding - will be installed to reinforce floors for Salomon's extra equipment."
This is why this building was chosen for New York's emergency operations bunker. Yet WTC buildings closer the the towers (WTC5 and 6) were much more severely damaged, not reinforced, engulfed in flames and had to be professionally demolished several days later.
Someone knew that WTC7 was coming down and offered the official explanation as to why as well. Find out who prematurely put out that press release and you will find out one person who knew of the plan to take it down.
Who was it Richard? I would like to ask Guliani the same question as he is on tape predicting it's future collapse as well.
Thats right folks, nothing to see here, move along. Those of us who follow world events realized a long time ago the msm "news" is simply entertainment for the masses, the main aim being not to inform but to sell soap. How lamentable that there is no such thing as investigative journalism in the western world anymore. How many stories a day do you kill in fear of your advertisers?
Whatever happened to speaking truth to power? I hope they pay you well Mr Porter. "you can fool some of the people all of the time and all the people some of the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time."
time is running out for your lies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
better change the sides now!
you have still time - but not for long!
we won't forget who participated in the cover-up of this crime.
and we will hold you accountable!!!
The symetrical implossion of WTC 7
at near gravity speed could only have been caused by a planned demolition.
Could the BBC please investigate who was responsible?
The official narrative is rediculous.
BBC-
No, you are not part of a conspiracy. You don't have to be. It seems more like you are a pawn. Unwittingly.
That should make you want to disclose your source. Doesn't it annoy you, at least? To be a pawn?
Who in the world could know a building would collapse, so certainly? and so early? Especially when it's unprecedented...
C'mon, WHO?
I MUST point out something that nobody seems to have considered. That the footage is faked. I find it very difficult to believe that only one person on the planet had recorded this..and then waited 5 years to release it. No way. Everybody was recording that day.
The window panes in back of the reporter would make it easier to install earlier footage from the point of her dialogue.
Another thing, she keeps stepping to the left in front of the 7 building to show the smoke, yet she's talking about the 7 building and seemingly pointing toward the smoke of the other collapsed towers or what was emanating from the basement of building 7. That does'nt make sense. Why would she continually step in front of the subject matter ? Unless the background that is there now is not the background that was there when the report was aired.
I admit that in this point in time I think the video was faked. I question who originally posted it and their timing. Why now ?
How to be a 'truther':
Lesson 1
See straw
View straw from one angle
Reach out
Clutch straw
Hold on to straw despite all evidence telling you that straw is just a figment of your imagination
There, you're a 'truther'
Source please
We'll just have to wait for the NIST report 5+ years after the fact. Here are their current collapse theories.
The current NIST working collapse hypothesis for WTC 7 is described in the June 2004 Progress Report on the Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster (Volume 1, page 17, as well as Appendix L), as follows:
An initial local failure occurred at the lower floors (below floor 13) of the building due to fire and/or debris-induced structural damage of a critical column (the initiating event) which supported a large-span floor bay with an area of about 2,000 square feet;
Vertical progression of the initial local failure occurred up to the east penthouse, and as the large floor bays became unable to redistribute the loads, it brought down the interior structure below the east penthouse; and
Triggered by damage due to the vertical failure, horizontal progression of the failure across the lower floors (in the region of floors 5 and 7 that were much thicker and more heavily reinforced than the rest of the floors) resulted in a disproportionate collapse of the entire structure.
This hypothesis may be supported or modified, or new hypotheses may be developed, through the course of the continuing investigation. NIST also is considering whether hypothetical blast events could have played a role in initiating the collapse. While NIST has found no evidence of a blast or controlled demolition event, NIST would like to determine the magnitude of hypothetical blast scenarios that could have led to the structural failure of one or more critical elements.
FBI, Army Intel, FEMA, IRS, SEC etc were all tenets of WTC7. I guess Osama snuck in and planted the explosives? Does he still work for the CIA? The mass media is worthless..period
Richard,
You are not part of the conspiracy because you helped to happen 9/11 or 7/7. You are part of the conspiracy because you failed doing your work: instead of reporting, asking questions, and verifying facts, you (and other mass media outlets) degraded the profession to a propaganda instrument. You only repeat what is given to you by press agencies and governments. Nothing more. No questions asked.
There are thousands of unanswered questions around these catastrophes, but instead of asking the authorities for acceptable answers, the media just wash our brains with propaganda they get from them. This is your failure, this is your crime, this is your part of the conspiracy. And that's true regardless if the crimes were executed by the alleged Arabic terrorist or anyone else. Even if it happened exactly as the authorities claim (what everyone doubts), even then it is all a conspiracy (you take part in), because the attacks was abused for starting illegal wars, power grab, and suppression of civil liberties. And here you failed again to ask questions and haunt the responsible authorities until they resign and quit their jobs.
It is the fault of the media who has the access to the authorities and can ask them question, that the question are still unanswered, 5 year later. It is your fault that conspiracy theories spread more and more. If there were satisfactory answers, there would be no need for conspiracy theories.
I may be naïve, and was misinformed before 9/11 - at the beginning I believed what I heard from the TV. But when the passport of the ringleader terrorist Atta was miraculously found in the rubble, I woke up and realized there must be something very wrong if the media is able to feed us with such evident propaganda. Since then the things got only worse - more and more questions popped up every day. Where were you, Richard? Why did not you ask how is it possible that a paper passport survives such a terrible crash without any damage, while all black boxes evaporate? Why did not you ask how is it possible that the WTC7 collapsed in a perfectly symmetrical implosion, Richard? Why did not you ask why the terrorists took a luggage full of flight manuals and Korans, and conveniently "lost" it during checkout so that it could be found? Well, it has no sense to continue - there are not 20 or 50 of such uncleared questions, there are hundreds and thousands of them. There will be no peace until we know the answers.
So Richard, I am sorry, but you are part of the conspiracy. You are guilty of the misinformation. Honest mistakes or not, you did nothing to bring us the truth. Not that I know what the truth is, but you did absolutely nothing to help us getting it.
there's nothing to see here......move along now sonny.....
As many others have noted, YOU HAVE NOT ANSWERED THE QUESTION RICHARD!
It is a simple question: who was the source?
With all of your 'investigating', I trust the FINE journalists at BBC can SURELY identify a source coming from within, stated with such UNEQUIVOCAL CERTAINTY?
This reflects very poorly, Richard. Give us a name and/or organization, who was the source?
Oh one last thing, I notice a lot of 'cock-ups' regarding posts, please be good enough to allow democratic exchanges- surely you agree with democracy, Richard?
If this was the only inconsistency or coincidence on 9/11 I could possibly buy that it was a misunderstanding. Problem is, there are way too many holes in the official story. It's a real conundrum no matter how you look at it. It's difficult to believe the official conspiracy but it's just as difficult to accept the whole "inside job" scenario.
Dear Richard,
Why it matters:
In a normal catastrophe the authorities refuse to be drawn about what happened in the first few hours or days, they refuse to be drawn. But with 9/11 there was a mad rush to disseminate the ‘official’ story in order to head off scrutiny. A myth was deliberately created. That this is true can be divined from a glance at the TV footage of the first hour. By 9.30 that morning, half an hour after the first tower was struck, and before it had fallen, Jerome Hauer, (a Bush administration insider) is on TV feeding in the myth: Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, the Cave in Afghanistan. It’s all there. Unless he lived above the studio he would have needed to leave home to get there before the first plane struck. All over the world, the myth appeared within hours because it was deliberately fed in by disinformation merchants. No sane person is alleging the BBC was part of the conspiracy, we’re saying they were inadvertently used as part of this myth-making process. Despite the protestations of the BBC, and the scoffing of those who have so studiously not bothered to look at the evidence, this image of the BBC reporter standing in front of the skyline and reporting the collapse of Building 7 half an hour in advance will never go away. It is like turning up footage of the second gunman on the grassy knoll. And then losing it.
You've now stated that the information probably came from "one or more of the news agencies.So if it's not too much trouble,maybe you could try to find out which one and maybe even where they got the information from...you know,ask questions...it's your job.
"....but this is where we have to end the story."
It's bedtime for journalism......
The Conspirators would indeed have been interested in spreading word that Bldg. 7 would come down before the event. Remember, no plane hit it, which begs the question, why the hell would it come down? But they had to bring it down, because it was wired with explosives and it was one of their main objectives to begin with. Surely flight 93 was meant to hit it but failed to do so, which must have led to some confusion and anxiety. When it was decided that they were going to "pull it", they needed to plant some seeds of expectation-make it seem like a logical yet not particularly noteworthy ripple effect of the attack.
So tell us Mr Porter, WHO was the source of this information covered by ALL these newsagencies, WHERE did you get the information from that a steel framed building that prior to 911 had NEVER collapsed was about to for the first time?
by the way phenominal job posting this on a late friday afternoon, that way not as many people will notice. sure thing rich. this is all just going to go away.
Richard
This is turning out to be a very interesting thread I'm certain you'll agree.
My post will be number about #48 in the series. Up to now I have scanned through the previous 47 posts and I must admit I'm completely astounded to find only two/three posts in your favour. And when you read them you have to suspend belief that Matthew (post #5) isn't your best mate/plant. It's embarrassing. Thanks for the debunking links Matthew we'll be sure to look those up!
There's no story here so move along!
Of course there's a story here and its the integrity of the British Broadcasting Corporation!
This whole episode stinks 'it seems' or so it has been reported by someone else that we don't really know but we trust what they are saying! And we have promised not to tell on them!
Jeeez have a word!
ps. does anyone know where you can claim back your TV license fee?
I suppose it's anywhere where you can see the 'PayPoint' sign!
This reminds me that the "Truthers" idea of "evidence" is anything that makes them say "Woo!"
So your organization puts out balanced and fair reporting?
Then, pray tell, why did you put out the propaganda piece in a failed attempt to debunk any effort by honest people to find out what happened on 911?
Thanks for taking the time to give a more comprehensive answer to the questions asked this week.
The conspiracy mob has it's clown-like vocal minority, but many if not most just want rational answers to fairly sensible questions. We live in an age of PR, marketing, legalese, rhetoric and spin. It can be difficult to figure out which institutions are providing honest, informed, reliable info from those focussed on share value, trying to alter perceptions ultimately in self interest.
I've always considered the BBC among the former, with it's public-funded charter giving it a level of journalistic freedom.
September 11th is one of those generation defining events. Everyone remembers where they were when they heard. It's natural that people would take a historical interest in the finer details of the story.
I think the conspiracy theories emerge when people don't feel that the questions they have are being voiced by the media. They find themselves in a story full of locked doors, and start to guess what must lay behind.
I still trust that if the BBC had the keys, you would unlock the doors for us, and that you are seekers of information, not guardians of it.
You do work for us after all ;)
Hmmmmmmmmm (that's a big hmmm).
What doesn't impress me is the fact that there aren't a stream of pro-BBC replies and 'sympathetic to the official story' posts to Mr Porter's blogs.
I would have expected more?
The BEEB must be a very honest organisation indeed.
"There's no story here.".
I believe you. *smirk*
Mr. Porter,
You say it is your policy to keep "roughly one third" of all your output. I'm not entirely clear on this concept, I must admit. When are these decisions made? One third of a week's output? A month's? A year's? Exercising due diligence would suggest whatever made up the one third of output from, say, the month of September 2001, everything from the 11th would be in there. Do you want us to accept the excuse that it is within your policy to have trashed up to two thirds of your 9/11 output? Does it seem remotely competent or responsible to you to have tossed or misplaced any of it?
Another question: Could you have addressed this item without having the original footage in your possession? You had parallel material, so your initial statements insinuating that you would need to see the footage in question in order to "clear up the issue one way or another" must seem like stalling to many people.
Was it to buy time? You return three days later with a very vague timeline about the reporting of other organizations and other BBC broadcasts as if this somehow qualifies as a source, when what you should be doing is assuring us a real investigation is under way, because Mr. Porter, whether you like it or not, this is news now. Everything about that day will be scrutinized, and shrugged shoulders won't make questions disappear. Who made the judgement call that had everyone so convinced this collapse was imminent? This is the report you should have been working on, instead of writing a blog entry to fend off E-mails.
"...the reports from FEMA and NIST both make it clear the building was on fire during the course of the day."
Why do you even mention this? This has no bearing on what was known at the time of your broadcast.
"...for about an hour, it had been reported that the building was on fire and in danger of collapse."
This leads us to believe that you had no knowledge of a fire in Tower 7 until it was "reported" an hour and ten minutes before the collapse. These reports you cite, regarding the "course of the day," appear to be a red herring.
So who first decided collapse was a danger?
"One senior fire officer was quoted in a subsequent interview as saying there was a 'bulge' in the building and he was 'pretty sure it was going to collapse'."
Was this said after the fact? Who said it?
"Gavin Esler says: 'We're now being told that yet another enormous building has collapsed... it is the 47-storey Salomon Brothers building.'"
Who was telling Mr. Esler this? Where did probable collapse turn into "collapsed?" If it was from another news agency, which? Who was their source?
We want you to act like objective journalists and investigate your own reporting. If you don't make up in truth what you tried to explain away with incompetence, a dark and lasting stain will be left on your organization. This is the time to prove yourself responsible, or else suffer a scar inflicted by the growing independent media.
With concern,
Morgan
I am not a "conspiracy theorist". Atleast I never thought I was. I watched the clip in question and I could not find a smoking gun. It was mildly suspiciouse but I could explain most of away. However after reading Mr Porter's explanations, I beginning to think something is going on. The explanations simply do not compute.
So your organization puts out balanced and fair reporting?
Then, pray tell, why did you put out the propaganda piece in a failed attempt to debunk any effort by honest people to find out what happened on 911?
A very good attempt and better than last time but I am still unconvinced, sorry. I am not a conspiracy theorist, (or 'fantasist' as someone called it. By the way,to the man who posted that, look up the meaning of the two words in future before you go splashing them about. The term is 'theorist'. It just makes more grammatical sense.), but I kept help but wonder about all of this. If it is perfectly innocent and it may well be then please someone at the BBC make a public statement on television during the main news. Yes, people may still not believe what is said and are unlikely to but to people like myself who where on the fence before they saw this, keeping it quiet looks very suspicious. Come on BBC your name is being dragged through the mud here.
Mr Porter please quit stonewalling.
Tell us who told BBC that WTC7 was going down. Simple. As simple as the films showing the 757 hit on the Pentagon. Oops sorry.
This is all quite humorous. Remember that the media is just a magicians act creating a story with sleight of hand. Occasionally the trick becomes accidentally exposed as in the case of the premature Bldg 7 announcement. The media does no investigation but only mimicks whatever it is told to say. This story is a perfect example of that fact. BBC and CBS and CNN and FOX have all outlived their usefullness as disinformation vehicles because today people only want to know the truth.
No I don't believe the BBC is part of a conspiracy. I do blame them for providing substandard journalism during the lead up to the Iraq war and allowing the lies of Bush and Blair to go unchallenged but that's another topic.
What's really odd to me is that right up until the collapse of buildings 1 and 2 there was never an event of a steel frame building collapsing. Right up until the tragic event emergency crews and building security personal were trying to get people to stay in place which was the policy for fighting fires in skyscrapers. There was recorded message that played over all the security loud speakers in both of the buildings instructing that persons return to their office or desk. Now my question why was it common knowledge among the press that buildings were in danger of and would eventually collapse when engineers and emergency professionals believed the opposite? Why did the media "expect" the most reinforced building in the complex and one not hit by any airplane to collapse? Something is still amiss.
why bother trying to explain yourself the footage from your channels already gives us a very clear picture of your activities we want to know the sources of the news that wtc 7 had collapsed when no steel structure has ever collapsed from fire ??
why is this major story not being reported on the bbc service or any other uk or american tv or newspaper is it because you have no answer to the questions that people are asking ??
NIST have been working on WTC7 report since the 9/11 commission was released. We're still waiting.
IF THE FOLLOWING IS TRUE....
"04-01 All transmitted/published media content will be kept for at least five years to fulfil legal requirements and to enable re-versioning and re-use"
What do you do with all the old media content? If you just discard it, I would really appreciate if you would forward all coverage of 911 to me. Someone should really keep this material.
A media organization that trusts governments, foreign or domestic, are of little use to the people. Another poster asked this valid question, "Does following this incorrect information trail not stir some interest in anyone in your organization?"
Shouldn't the media be skeptical of all those who have authority over people, money, and weapons? I do not believe the media should just jot notes when government agencies speak. I think they should continuously research the facts and follow leads so they can pursuit essential questions for the people.
If September 11 was just a massive "cock-up" by the government and the media, then why did no one lose their job? In this Orwellian time in which we live, the people who ask relevant questions are the dissidents; they are the ones who incur the wrath of power; they alone are ridiculed for seeking truth.
This is an excellent article becuase it shows just how desperate the BBC have become and just how exposed they now look.
Maybe on a slow news day we may just about believe that you lost the tapes - but one of the most defining global events of this century and you don't even know if they were lost or destroyed? That is a scandal in itself. Who has been disciplined because of this?
And no - this is the first time I have heard of one of the most secure and strongly built and reinforced buildings "bulging". It was so well constructed I would have happily gone on there for a 2 week holiday whilst it burned I am so confident it would not have collapsed. (Although now we have 911 we now know that buildings can defy the laws of physics so that is now not an option!)
We have seen the raging inferno - a small flame coming out of two or three windows. Not the raging inferno you imply.
BBC - shame on you for "losing" the footage and shame on you for these feeble arguments.
You conflate legitimate questions with 'accusations of conspiracy'. I'm not sure anyone is trying to draw the BBC into an illuminati/holographic plane/crop circle/tooth fairy conspiracy. The legitimate questions will continue apace.
Hi Richard,
I am a Yank. I can tell you that in recent polls, 68% of Americans do not believe the official story of that fateful day. 36% of respondents believe the U.S. government to be complicit in the cold-blooded murder of 3000 innocent people.
I ask you, how can you continue to parrot the official "line". How can you live with yourself?
Porter has simply reiterated what we already knew, EVERYONE got a report that the building was going to come down ahead of time. That is not the point. The point is that in a 100 year history of skyscraper construction., no steel-framed building had ever collapsed from fire prior to 9-11. So, WHO was telling the news media that the Saloman Brothers Building, aka WTC-7, was about to collapse when there was zero historical precedent for it?
I don't care what Richard Porter says to get BBC off the hook for this. What Richard Porter needs to tell us all is WHO was planting the story of the impending collapse of WTC-7 with all the media?
"The lords and ladies pass a ruling
That sons and girls go hand in land
From good stock and the best breeding
Paid for by the servile class
Who have been told all lie in state
To bow down forth and face their fate
Its so easy.
So, so easy
All righteousness did build thy arrow
To shoot it straight into their lies
Who would expect the mighty sparrow
Could rid our world of all their kind?
Rising up and taking back
The property of every man
Oh its easy.
So, so easy
Rising up to break this thing
From family trees the dukes do swing
Just one blow to scratch the itch
The laws made for and by the rich
It would be easy.
So, so easy." The Style Council
Ponce? That's Canuckistan for "what are you trying to say" Come on my friend...just come clean and tell us who gave you the feeds to read from, wipe your filthy hands clean of the whole mess, and let the American's sort it out themselves..this looks horrible for the BBC.
What else are you hiding?
Lance Wildwood PDC
Roberts Creek, B.C.,
Canada
i notice how you totally ignore the fact that there is news footage of police and firemen telling people to get away from the building because it is about to blow up (note, they do not say fall down but blow up - big difference)
there was even a 10 second countdown before the building came down ... i suppose that was accidental or a mistake in your eyes also - but i imagine you will ignore this because you are not really interested in investigating what happened but just repeating what you get told (even though you can't remember who that was and nobody tells you what to say anyway).
pathetic
Richard,
what about the synchronized efforts to censor the videos in the first hours/day. It was certainly a bad PR for the just announced YouTube/BBC deal, right?
If I may paraphrase, Larry PullerStein's quote for the PBS documentary about WTC 7:
"We've had such terrible loss of credibility, maybe the smartest thing to do is bury it. And we made that decision to bury and we watched the videos disappear." - The BBC "
You have seen the video on youtube etc, the building was brought down delibrately. The BBC merely jumped the gun in reporting it.
To flippantly say there is no story here at the end of the piece is a sad reflection on how the BBC perceive the people of British as nothing more than children being spoon fed what their view on the world should be.
The orchestrated manipulation of the media by those within the establishment is occasionally revealed and this is just one very obvious example.
Reading the other comments encourages me, it seems decent members of society are starting to question what is going on.
So now we know the difference between a "reporter" and a "journalist". When asked to report to camera that a building behind them has collapsed, a "journalist" will actually turn their head to check it has. CNN made a similar goof and its all merely part of the inept chaos that is live news coverage . Nothing to see here. Move on.
Why then are Google and YouTube still ruthlessly pulling all webpostings of the "lost" BBC World footage? Is this at the BBC's request? Yes or No, Mr Porter?
Why and how was the feed mysteriously lost shortly before WTC7 actually did collapse? Did your "investigations" touch on that Mr Porter? Yes or No?
Quite obviously, the female reporter knew "the secret." Her negative vibes brought down the building, along with the others who reported this event in advance.
I forgive them though because of the total victory they've brought us in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.
I do rather think that this is a side issue and of very little importance. It is obvious that in the heat of reporting many conflicting stories and inaccuracies will arise and that only with time do actual facts become clearer. What I think is of concern is that the whole BBC programme about the 911 Conspiracy Theories, seemed to go out of its way to portray the the theorists as loonies and their theories as far fetched. Certainly, some of the individuals that the BBC managed to track down looked as though they were certifiable. There have been a number of films and programmes that have dealt with 911 issues in detail within an hour and have asked pertinent questions and raised concerns. Unfortunately the BBC programme was dumbed down in that it dealt with issues in a very superficial way and seemed to be keen to accept official explanations without any critical input. A rather disapointing programme and not up to the standard I would have expected.
"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
I Agree with Micheal :
Michael wrote:
Please stop invoking the "BBC is not part of any conspiracy" line in response to reader complaints. Nobody is suggesting for a moment that you are part of some larger conspiracy and to imply such a thing is at best disingenuous and at worst deliberately misleading.
While you seem to have provided sufficient evidence that BBC World's premature report of WTC7's collapse was a simple matter of gross incompetence and nothing more, you have yet to provide answers to some very important questions:
1. Who is responsible for the 'cock-up' which led to the loss of BBC World News' 9/11 footage?
"I don't know whether they were destroyed or mislaid." just doesn't cut it!
2. What are the circumstances surrounding the 'cock-up' which led to the loss of BBC World News' 9/11 footage?
3. Who cut reporter Jane Standley's live feed from NYC at 5:18pm (EST) on 11/09/01?
4. What are the circumstances surrounding the disruption of Jane Standley's live feed from NYC at 5:18pm (EST) on 11/09/01?
and 5: Who and WHY did Google take it of the site??
Sorry, Richard, there IS a story here!
why bother trying to explain yourself the footage from your channels already gives us a very clear picture of your activities we want to know the sources of the news that wtc 7 had collapsed when no steel structure has ever collapsed from fire ??
why is this major story not being reported on the bbc service or any other uk or american tv or newspaper is it because you have no answer to the questions that people are asking ??
"There's no Story here"
Move on people the BBC have spoken...
and as we all now know their word is as good as gold.
as for as I'm concerned This is a massive story...and it's exploding all over the internet...the BBC have lost any credibility they had left and are now running like a frightened rat .
A perfectly fair and rational response IMHO.
Richard actually gives the source to the false story, but nobody seems to have picked it up.
At 4:27pm BBC's Greg Barrow tells 5Live "another building may have caught light and is in danger of collapse .... I'm not sure if it has yet collapsed but the report we have is talking about Building 7."
At 4:53pm Fi Glover says "25 minutes ago we had reports from Greg Barrow that another large building has collapsed just over an hour ago."
No he didn't Fi! You weren't paying attention to what he told you!
The genie of out of the bottle now, somebody on News 24 will have picked this up ("5Live are saying WTC7 has collapsed, they wouldn't have just made that up, quick, run with it"), then BBC World follows ("5Live and News 24 both say WTC7 has gone down"). What was it Mark Twain said about a lie being halfway round the world before the truth has had a chance to get its shoes on (I know this wasn't a malicious lie by Fi Glover, but that's not the point)?
(Going off at a tangent here, but as a listener to 5Live shows like Breakfast and Drive, this doesn't surprise me. How many times do the presenters of these programmes interview a politician or doctor or lawyer, etc., and then with their next sentence the presenter makes it blindingly obvious that they haven't understood, or even properly listened to, what they were just told?)
I can't believe that people are using "Occam's Razor" to try and justify a conspiracy theory that the WTC7 building.
We do not know all the facts, but what is the simplest explanation? Someone made a mistake and misheard someone saying that Building 7 was likely to collapse as Building 7 was collapsing or had collapsed (quite easily considering all that was going on). Or that one of the people involved in a high level wide spread conspiracy was stupid enough not to check that the WTC7 had been brought down before he informed the press?
'No one is suggesting you, nor the BBC are "part of the conspiracy," as your strawman argument suggests. '
That's blatantly untrue: posters on this thread and the previous are claiming that BBC reporters were reading a prepared script and were forwarned of the collapse of WTC-7.
'We'd just like to know what news agencies or wire agencies your reporters/producers got the false information from'
They got them from trying to interpret, as they happened, multiple reports from other reporters, eyewitnesses (who may be panicked), and frantic emergency services' radio communications both between each other and headquarters which may be miles away from the action. Can't imagine how inaccurate reports could possibly be generated by people trying to cope with all that while live on-air. Must have been a secret cabal somewhere coordinating it all. Stands to reason, dunnit?
'Why not spend some time as an actual reporter investigating the questions behind the issue at hand'
Er.. Because this has all been investigated for years in tedious and pointless detail already? Could be!
In response to Post 5 - Mathew who said:
..........."Ultimately the fantasists want to believe so badly that they will continue to misrepresent and twist everything you say on this issue. You are quite correct to ignore them from now on. They'll sit behind their keyboards and grumble and the world will carry one unchanged.........
Well, personally, I don't want to believe anything other than the truth. I find no need to 'twist' anything - the facts just don't add up for me, I have reasonable questions and legitimate doubts based on reading and watching...not assuming.
Also Mathew, surely it would be incorrect to 'ignore' each other unless we are being offensive - simply questioning doesn't warrant ignoring - if it did, it would be a lonely world!!
I will not grumble, just enquire. As to unchanged worlds...the world has never been unchanged by any moment - change happens, it is up to us all to ensure that as it does, we don't 'become' based on inadequate or incorrect information.
Namaste
Tina Louise
WTC 7 was severely damaged on the south side of the building and was on fire for about 7 hours. Firemen knew that WTC 7 was going to collapse and that fact was communicated to others including reporters.
Firehouse: Chief Nigro said they made a collapse zone and wanted everybody away from number 7 - did you have to get all of those people out?
Hayden: Yeah, we had to pull everybody back. It was very difficult. We had to be very forceful in getting the guys out. They didn't want to come out. There were guys going into areas that I wasn't even really comfortable with, because of the possibility of secondary collapses. We didn't know how stable any of this area was. We pulled everybody back probably by 3 or 3:30 in the afternoon. We said, this building is going to come down, get back. It came down about 5 o'clock or so, but we had everybody backed away by then.
Visconti: ... He answered, 7 World Trade Center, imminent collapse, we've got to get those people out of there. I walked out and I got to Vesey and West, where I reported to Frank. He said, we're moving the command post over this way, that building's coming down.
We know that reporters were talking about the imminent collapse. Obviously the BBC got the info that building 7 was going to collapse and simply made an error is reporting that it already had collapsed. How could it possibly make sense for the government to tell reporters to report that the building collapsed when reporters would report it anyway once they saw it had collapsed. You conspiracy guys should make an effort on internal logic. See The World Trade Center's Steel Structure Was Buckling Before the Collapse and see: Firemen knew WTC 7 was going to collapse.
Can you imagin what would have happened if it was an Arab/Muslim who declared that the Building 7 has collapsed, or ever may collapse, half an hour before it did, or in case he/she recieved an SMS warning prior to the tragic events-- as employees of Odigo did?
How very curious. There is no mention of a source, which is elemental to broadcast journalism, particularly live feed. This still doesn't exlain why the BBC 'knew' with journalistic certainty that Building 7 had 'collapsed' some twenty minutes before it had. Why did no one double check this information, the building was just behind the reporter? Are we to accept that the media outlets follow each others lead without checking the source? This doesn't bode well.
Pih. Nobody told us what to say. There's no story here. Or in other words:
"Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th; malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists, themselves, away from the guilty."
Roger, you have got to be joking, that was worse than the first time you tried to defend the undefendable.
OK, this is really simple, just one question is all we are asking, no conspiracy crap, nothing at all, just who told you that WTC7 collapsed, that's all!
How is it so difficult for you to answer this simple sole question?
Wonkette on the cock-up "because the BBC now claims it lost all the 9/11 video. Because who would want to save video of the biggest news event of the last 40 years?"
Gina well reported, that the nist report is focussing on the collapse on WTC 7...what makes me a little suspicious of your intentions is that if your so informed about these things YOU wolud know that nist are having to explore a 'theory' of exlosive collapse to account for the way te building fell - in real terms thius is to imagine the building was rigged and collapsed by detonation
so were you really trying to anyone something new or were you just having a pop at conspiracy theorists? (let's not hide or brush the the movement aside through a meaningless acronym)
This entire discussion is absurd. It simply does not matter what the BBC reported.
New York City is home to almost every major U.S. news organization, magazine and broadcast group in the United States.
If an organization is not headquartered there, they have a mjor bureau.
There are tens of thousand of people on the streets every day with still and video cameras, reflecting the popular tastes as well as NYC being the arts and advertising capital of the U.S.
Plus the events of September 11th took place in one of the most densely occupied places on Earth.
There is no end of documentation, professional, amateur and accidental of the events which took place.
If you are far away, you can make up whatevcer stories you want. Millions of eye witnesses with phtographic proof say otherwise.
You have to be either stupid or daft to believe in these silly conspiracy theories.
If you repeat any of them to the almost a million New Yorkers who were there that day, they would dismiss you as an uniformed idiot.
Come to New York and give it a try. (And bring lots of money with you. The shopping is great!)
Gina well reported, that the nist report is focussing on the collapse on WTC 7...what makes me a little suspicious of your intentions is that if your so informed about these things YOU would know that nist are having to explore a 'theory' of exlosive collapse to account for the way the building fell - in real terms this is to imagine the building was rigged and brought down by detonation
so were you really trying to tell anyone something new or were you just having a pop at conspiracy theorists? (let's not hide or brush the the movement aside through a meaningless acronym)
Though these days I'm confused:
Is there are conspiracy to reveal what Governments are covering up?
Or a conspiracy to cover up what gevernemts don't want to reveal?
Who was the original source Mr. Porter ?
9-11 was obviously carried out by the space-alien lizards who everyone knows masquerade as senior world politicians and the royal family. This makes much more sense than any nonsense about human terrorists - who's ever heard of those?
A well written explanation that is 100% plausible. Any conspiracy theoriest left on this issue - is a waste of time, resources, and space.
Lets get on to real news - and leave this conspiracy stuff with the Apollo moon landing, Holocaust deniers, JFK, and Pearl Harbor
So let me get this straight. You knew for nearly an hour that it "might have" collapsed, but you didn't think to ask any reporters there, any VT screen watchers, wether they had noticed any other buildings falling down. They do make a fair old racket when they go?
And can anyone explain, how a supposed gravity driven collapse, threw steel beams 300ft away from the towers? Gravity pushes down, not across.
Noe tell us why you dubbed a female voice into '9/11 conspiracies' and why this isn't the behaviour of an accessory after the fact?
Quite why the BBC does not just 'fess up and say 'we reported a collapse that had not happened', goodness only knows. Instead we get:
> If we reported the building had
> collapsed before it had done so, it
> would have been an error
> I am inclined to believe that one
> or more of the news agencies was
> reporting this, or at least
> reporting someone saying this.
Poor.
The BBC and CNN report provides powerful circumstantial evidence that, when considered together with the direct visual evidence of WTC7 being demolished, infers that a conspiracy was concocted to destroy building 7 while simultaneously using the media to make it seem as if the building collapsed of its own accord.
The fact that this would occur directly following the demolition of the two towers is further corroborating evidence that 9/11 was an Inside Job.
The story devised to cover the WTC 7 demolition was absurd on its face, thus another conspiracy was concocted after the fact, to bury the live televised news reports because they clearly contradicted not only the visual evidence of WTC 7 being blown up, but the fact that the reports went "live" too soon, also succeeded in completely destroying the time line of events necessary for their story to "hold up" under careful scrutiny.
Of course this careful scrutiny never occurred. The story has since been absolutely censored by the mainstream media and the government at large. So great was the conspiracy to cover-up the demolition of WTC 7, that it was not even mentioned in the official 9/11 Commission Report.
What's so ironic about all of this is, many people point to the Bush Administration's incompetence as "proof" that they were unable to pull off 9/11 as an "Inside Job". It would seem that they were essentially right. Their ineptitude resulted in the smoking gun which is WTC7; thus, they have effectively failed in their attempt to pull this off!
When all the facts are considered together with available direct and circumstantial evidence, it becomes clear that 9/11 was an Inside Job. It can no longer be denied. The only question remaining is, what are we the people going to do about it?
"remember we had started the day with reports that a light aircraft had struck the first tower, and at one stage there was talk of ten hijacked jets in the air."
Yes, but they turned out to be inaccurate. Big difference between making a mistake that is a mistake, and making a mistake that turns out to be true; about something that hadn't happened yet. Doncha think?
Respect for BBC is not enhanced by the defense offered by Mr. Porter, which, while well-meant, is wimpy and disingenuous. Find out how and why and by whom the archive material was destroyed! As that was inside the BBC, it should not be so hard to nail down.
Wake up to the fact that the collapse itself is extraordinary and NOT what would be expected. Then wake up to the fact that a false report of an improbable collapse is itself suspicious. There is a FAR bigger story here than is being looked at!
BBC should launch a new and deeper investigation from these anomalies, rather than to try to close it down and say "no story" here! BBC, REDISCOVER YOUR MISSION!
Are we here searching for facts or trying to find some kind of conspiracy or cover-up. What is the purpose of all this. I don't believe for one second that a government agency or some idiot in the Pentagon or the White House conspired to have some 3000 Americans killed for an ulterior motive to do with foreign policy, or to justify the invasion of Afghanistan and later Iraq or to serve the interest of Israel by tarnishing Arabs and Muslims.
Richard,
You said: "but this is where we have to end the story"
Thank you for following up your last posting.
But I would please urge you not to stop investigating this issue. This story has been buzzing frantically around the Internet.
No-one will benefit from you refusing to look any further into it and, I suspect, it will just make matters more suspicious.
If nothing else, at least try to establish finally who was the source of the original report and then we can all bother them instead of you. :)
Thanks.
No matter what is said and done, millions of people around the world know that the events of September 11, 2001 were an inside job with the aid of several other countries. This was a New World Order black flag operation. If some people are so closed minded that they do not even question the possibility, it is not surprising because the basis of global control starts with the human mind. Mind control is a major goal of those wishing to obtain global dominance. They believe in divide and conquer, constructive chaos, the ends justifies the means, and the propaganda is extensive.
Many experts have spoken out using scientific evidence proving that the official story of September 11 was a lie. There was never a full scaled investigation which in itself leads one to ask questions, a great deal of evidence was quickly shipped out of the country or destroyed and if people ask questions they are threatened or ridiculed.
One question that rings true to me from a history class regarding Hitler. “How were the Nazis able to seize control of the press, the radio, the courts, and the police with so little trouble?” If people do not wake up soon, it will be our end. Just ask the people in Iraq. What did they ever do to us? Now, their country is destroyed. Whose country will be next? And still no one is allowed to questions major events. Do not expect the media to do it. I thank all of the people that have spoken out about the truth concerning September 11, 2001. Someday the truth will be known by all.
Richard your continued protesting that 'BBC is not part of a conspiricy' is neither helpful or relevant. You are making this problem worse by playing the dog in the manger. Now either that means that you have had your hand forced in your response, or you simply do not have the inclination or the guts to properly investigate this and answer the actual questions that people are posing to you. Either way, this reflects very poorly on your institution since you were undoubtedly guilty of a huge, huge error. That I can forgive and understand, but instead of acting like the doe-eyed victim in all this, just tell us where this report came from and we can stop focusing on your organisation and you will come out of this fiasco with your reputation intact and we can address our issues to the relevent party. Until you give us clarification as to your source you will remain solely in the firing line. Do your job and protect your company, you are not responsible for this and frankly it should outrage you that you have been made the scapegoat.
"...this is where we have to end the story"
Oh no Richard, it isn't. Not until you've answered that one simple, rudimentary question: WHO WAS YOUR SOURCE?
Wow, who knew it was SO easy to get a steel-framed skyscraper to fall down in it's own footprint? Set a small fire, let it burn for a few hours and BANG, down it goes. Neat and clean, no damage to VERY expensive surrounding real estate. How convienent, and oh so easy!
Professional demolition specialists are really going to be upset, they're all irrelevant and out of jobs.
Just think of all the money that could've been saved that was wasted in big cities, demolishing old buildings will silly, unnessary things like explosives. No more weeks of examining blueprints and planting charges in *exactly* the right place to achieve controlled demolitions, nope.
Just set a small fire, and you're all set.
Right. No story, indeed.
Dear Mr Porter,
You write 'Phil Hayton on BBC World says "More on the latest building collapse in NY - you might have heard I was talking a few moments ago about the Salomon building collapsing and indeed it has... it seems this wasn't the result of a new attack but because the building had been weakened during this morning's attack."
'Well in one sense that's true - for about an hour, it had been reported that the building was on fire and in danger of collapse. But he did qualify it by saying "it seems" and once again I think there's a danger of reading too much into what I believe was a presenter merely summarising what everyone had been saying during the previous hour.'
With all due respect, sir, on listening to the original report it would seem that you are being at the very least disingenuous.... The correct way to provide a written form of Mr Hayton's words would be with a full stop before the "it seems..." which is quite evidently the start of another sentence. Therefore your constant insistence on the use of qualifiers is not quite as described.
Secondly - will you please stop muddying the waters.... Nobody is accusing you of being part of the "conspiracy". Once again, this is an example of your somewhat disingenous use of language and it ill befits the BBC.
You also suggest, "this is where we have to end the story." I would have thought that a debate between an organisation and its paying customers would be decided by the customers and not the organisation. Please try and remember your role here.... We used to think it was quite important.
Do you really think people will stay around and use the BBC as a credible news source with this smoke and mirrors treatment your giving the puplic.
Sir your arguments do not stick, instead of giving childish blame shifters, give us the source, a logical reason how you were able to say that building was going to collasp or had collasped.
Afterall there are only so many ways you could have known this, isnt it?
The Twin Towers are both hit by planes, and both towers collapse. Maybe because of the planes, maybe because of demolition as part of the conspiracy.
Dramatic images which help propel the US into launching invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
So what I dont understand is....
what did the conspiracy gain by destroying Building 7 ??? WHY blow it up??
Conspiracy theories - for people who dont want to live in the real world.
I don't believe that the bbc are part of a conspiracy or a cover up .
But the bbc should take pride in giving balanced views which by large they do but the conspiracy files failed miserably to give a balanced account and not even try to answer any of the questions being raised by the 9/11 truth movement .
ps how did bbc world report or PREDICT lol that WTC7 had fallen down 23 Min's before it fell ?
AMAZING bit of journalism you really do get all the news first !!!!
Have you employed mystic meg as a new journalist lol
the people at the bbc should hang there heads in shame and take a good hard look at themselves shame on you !
further ps has that same journalist that predicted WTC7 got this weeks lottery numbers :-))
This speech was from 44 years ago by John Kennedy...just before they killed him.
He must have seen the pieces falling into place way back then. Every word of this speech applies to RIGHT now.
Especially about the press. Please take a minute and watch this and hear his words.
http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=LlEqtaWpKEU
Convincing reply Mr Porter - I stand corrected.
It's all still very unfortunate, but this version of events is pretty conclusive as far as I'm concerned.
And yes, this IS my email adress, no offense. ;)
Marco,
Germany
What's the matter? Have you been inundated with people requesting you name your source? Perhaps the BBC is having trouble with the server much like youtube. Hope you can rectify this problem. Thanks for reading....
Some of the comments on here from the so called 'debunkers' are incredibly painful to read.
I especially like the one which states that the BBC is 'anti-Bush' and pro 'fundamentalist Islam'.
These comments and yours bring are the reductio ad absurdum in this issue.
There is no way that any structural engineer/scientist could have predicted the collapse of building 7. NO WAY. It is difficulty to predict the collapse of a badly damaged ordinary house, let alone a 47 storey skyscraper.
Thus, there must have been foreknowledge. Foreknowledge of a collapse that was unpredictable and totally unexpected is highly suspicious.
I refer you to an article published today in the Vermont Guardian in the USA, (http://www.vermontguardian.com/commentary/032007/TwinTowers.shtml) by William Rice, P.E., a registered professional civil engineer who worked on structural steel (and concrete) buildings in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. He was also a professor at Vermont Technical College where he taught engineering materials, structures lab, and other building related courses.
Stop covering up this story and expose the biggest psychological warfare operation carried out since the Greeks left a wooden horse outside the gates of Troy.
PLEASE DO NO CENSOR MY COMMENTS THIS IS THE SECOND POSTING I HAVE MADE!!!
You ask the question, 'Part of the conspiracy?'
Answer.
Yes, but to be fair to you, not by design.
Unfortunately your continued deceptive manner, obstinacy, obfuscation, inveiglement, evasiveness and lack of clarity simply compound matters.
SAD!
Get a grip and give us the real story. If you dare!
OK, Thanks, that clears that up then,no story here, right, i think i'll go off and ignore other world events then.
Not satisfying, AT ALL. The fall back defense is no longer what "some guy on Youtube" said about this. Now the fall back defense is "other media" were saying similar things.
Not satisfying. We need new investigations into that day by independent investigators, or Congress.
SR
The BBC has investigated itself and found no wrong-doing ..... right!
It's very curious all this. I happen to have the recorded bbc1 version of these events, and funnily enough, when WTC2 & WTC1 had both collapsed as shown on ITV, when I was switching the channels [as you do] I was very surprised to see that BBC1 still managed to show WTC1 as still standing!!
I thought this would be the nature of a delay or something as is often seen when confused events are broadcast, and if this had happened for a couple of minutes then I would not have made too much of it, but for 20 minutes?! It was very strange this supposed live feed showing WTC1 tower remaining, when it was being broadcast that it had collapsed elsewhere – maybe Richard could you answer this point about this anomaly in the BBC broadcast?
I wonder if anyone remembers this anomaly, but I assure you that this was & is the case.
It's nice to see Richard has decided it's prudent to actually find out more about a subject before dismissing something out of hand. However, this blog post, while answering some points which no-one asked, does scan as not having been written entirely by the same author!!
Gina - ohhah just a little bit... more disinformation, she gave us a few ill formed facts that should be addressed.
First please let's keep it as real language and not discuss meaningless acronyms like CTists.
The conundrum is wondering if there's a conspiracy to unconver what Governemt agencies are hiding, or a conspiracy by Government agencies to hide what they don't want revealed?
Anyway Gina mentioned the NIST report, if she was so well informed she could also have added that the report has been forced to expolore a hypothesis that the building fell from an explosive colapse, that is it was rigged with charges and brought down by detonation.
This is because no other explanation fits the characteristics of the collapse.
Heyho more worthless argument, the only way of being sure is to do what the American government DON'T want and have an independent enquiry rather than an executive led account with many flaws and unreleased 'evidence'.
Same goes for the British Government and their worthless Hutton enquiry, deflecting the real question, still unresolved...
Why were British soldiers and some of my friends sent out to 'war' on a tissue of lies and paper fabrications?
Next question is who serves time for this crime of politics and power games?
uhuhhh....and 1+1=1019384
BBC invents a time machine and you come here telling that's not news. Right.
There indeed is a conspiracy. 'Conspiracy files' presents 100% clear, proven LIES (such as the ages ago discarded theory on why the towers fell) and shows very obvious bias in journalism about events of 9/11. Now, if you get caught lying about something isn't it safe to assume you are trying to hide something?
I hope that all of this has taught you something about using the word "cock" in public discourse.
I laugh out loud.
Thanks for the best response you could have made. Sadly only those who choose to make mountains out of mole hills will carry on bleating their bizarre theories.
WTC 7 fell because is was massively damaged by the other two towers, compounded by fire, to difficult to fight.
There have been plenty of large buildings collapse after prolonged fire.
Occam's Razor
"All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the best one." In other words, when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest hypothetical entities. It is in this sense that Occam's razor is usually understood.
JFK On Secret Societies and Freedom of the Press please follow the link .
All the bbc and media companys the world over should take heed of JFK's wisdom .
And evryone should listen to it .
ps just listen to his words you dont have to look at the video .
His words are enough.
JFK a role model to us all .
I must declare an interest. I am a former BBC journalist who has worked on rolling news. Nothing -- nothing! -- Richard Porter says will convince the fantasists that there was no conspiracy. Huddled behind their computer screens picking at every little scab of detail years after the event, these fantasists have absolutely no idea what it is like to work in the extraordinarily hectic atmosphere of a newsroom at the time of a major breaking story. To believe that there's some sinister force ordaining the direction of the story borders on the lunatic.
I'm sorry but his new explanation still doesnt cut it for me. What about the feed being cut off? And why the symetrical collapse? And why did Silverstein say "pull it"? Or
should i just accept "there's no story here" like you say? I dont think so. You need to do some more research i think Mr Porter. And why did you only start researching into after loads of complaints? Surely someone from your news room must have noticed this?
Mr. Porter,
Your attempt at damage control is thinly veiled. Your attempt at journalism is abysmal. I continue to submit my comments simply due to the fact that I know the truth will out in the end. I honestly hope you will someday learn true humility and understand how hurtful your propagation of deceit is to those directly affected by the horrid events of 11 September 2001. By the way, we are all directly affected by said events...or soon will be.
Chris P.
I see someone forgot to medicate the water supply again. Conspiracy nuts are so amusing.
If there are two explanations, one of which is a conspiracy or malicious behavior and the other is carelessness or incompetence, I'll bet on carelessness and incompetence any day.
Credibility no longer exists in the major news networks.
The bottom line is not about truth and what is right but protecting wealth of the elite and job security for those who bow to them.
Teri
Half truth is still a lie.
Given that the collapse of this building has attracted so much attention already, precisely because it looks EXACTLY like controlled demolition, to discover that news of the collapse was released BEFORE the event, and that you are still saying "no story here"; I think it rather reasonable to assume you are under some pressure to keep to this line. Of course there'd be story, if you had the courage to pursue it. If you had any PRACTICAL intellegence (like that possessed by builders) you would not have a choice. We are creatures of consensus, if you are surrounded by people taking the same line, you may have convinced yourself. From where I stand I believe your responses are shockingly inadequate, and that we are living in times of great deception.
Hi,
you see your hard work did not convince anyone here who believe in the 9/11 conspiracy, instead provoked even more disbelief and hostility to the points you make.
People don't seem to understand that accuracy is not the strength of the mass media on a good day, so how much more things can go wrong on a day like 9/11? There is no point reading anything significant into it, and for me to do so I'd have to regard journalists as infallible adults who always do perfect reporting and are unaffected by what they report and by time and information pressures. And then I'd have to think that mistakes are not really mistakes but the result of the intervention of some dark forces who want to cheat us and hurt us.
Funny how conspiracists here think the worst of journalists (extreme thought 1) while having this ideal about how output must be perfect at all times whatever the circumstances (extreme thought 2).
Sir,
Once more... I hereby challenge the British Broadcasting Corporation to prove that the collapse of WTC7 does not defy the known physical laws of our universe.
G.
so, you say "we have kept all the tapes from BBC News 24 and Radio Five Live, as well as all the BBC One bulletins", but you wouldnt care to keep the tapes from BBC world, when such a huge event just happened?? you cant trick the world with this one...
Seems it's nearly time to don my "V" mask!
Mr Porter, your reporting on the "HAD" collapsed beforehand scenario is pathetic,untruthful,flimsy,wishy washy and you know it.
Please show some courage and common sense for a change.
Has any media bothered to ask Cheney what were the orders issued on 9/11 as testified at the 9/11 commission by Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta.
Mr. Porter,
Firstly, no one is accusing the BBC of being part of any conspiracy, that argument is just a very facile and transparent attempt on your part to side-step the relevant questions being asked here. Which are:
1) Who is the ORIGINAL source of the information that WTC7 had collapsed? Not other TV channels, or newsfeeds, but the ORIGINAL source.
2) Why were your tapes lost/deleted/binned (the story keeps changing on this one) when the Broadcasting Act requires a minimum of 5 years of all published material be kept at two separate and secure locations?
So Mr. Porter, please start thinking clearly on this issue, and keep away from Orwellian douplespeak/doublethink here. And finally, sorry to break it to you, but it is not up to you to decide what is or isn't a story, or when it is finished. You (and the BBC) are our servants, do some real investigation and report back to us.
Cheers,
J
The BBC's source please,
When will the BBC admit that all its employees are reptilian aliens from the planet Zogarth? and are brainwashing us with yor fascinating blogs!
This is getting embarrassing now....
Where did the claim of collapse come from?
PS: This isn't the 90's anymore fella; nowadays people see through your use of loaded words and dismissive tactics!
Two buildings blow up one building falls down .
WTC 1 and 2 blown apart practically atomized .Tiny particles of human remains still being found on surrounding rooftops , no furniture or computers recovered everything destroyed . You seriously believe jet fuel could do that ?
WTC7 did have damage to one side why then didn't it topple over instead of straight down ?
On the site what really happened theres a clip of wtc7 side by side with a controlled demolition ,I challenge anyone to spot a difference .
First, to Gina(46), the real issue here is related to the many significant questions that went unanswered in the 911 Commision report. The fact of ommision in regard to WTC7 was reprehensible (see DR Griffin 2005) BUT it is now, at last, being addressed by NIST as you indicate. However, what about Saeed Sheikh wiring $100k to Mohammed Atta at the behest of Pakistan's ISI chief? No investigation I can see ..oh, I forgot,conveniently Mr Sheikh is on 'death row' for the murder of Daniel Pearl! Where is the evidence from Ali mohammed? A triple agent with Al-qaeda, FBI and CIA connections who was integral to WTC1993, African Embassy bombings, the Blind Sheikh network,the San Diego hijackers, Ramsi Yousef and KSM - this guy is on the witness protection programme in the US! It is about time some serious research and investigative journalism was done on this topic as the more I find out the more uncomfortable the feeling! One thing is for sure there was a 'conspiracy' on 911 and it was nothing like the 'official' version! Go figure please.
"debunkers" say there would be no purpose in leaking the news of tower seven falling to the bbc. wrong. this would have served, as in the case of the other two towers, to give them the advantage of the first word as to WHY the tower fell, that is due to fire, etc., just as they were exceedingly quick to put out interviews with "experts" on the news telling you who why and how the first two towers fell before they could have possibly known any of that information. this is the reason why it would be useful to put out this information in advance to the bbc.
ockham's razor, the simplest theory is very likely the one which is true. did three anomalies occur that day, that is, did three modern towers fall as a result of fire, when no modern towers have falled due to fire before, because, the rivets faile, because the steel wasn't put together right, because because because all these things came together perfectly to cause not one but three anomalies to occur all on one day? a simpler explanation, all three towers fell because all three towers were intended to fall, someone made them fall and made it to look like it was the result of some grand terrorist act. bbc involved? no, more likely, used, and as shown to be now, complacent to authority.
I used to look up to the bbc and now i have found out that you report things that haven't even happened yet regarding wtc7, you expect us to believe you maybe now you can predict the report due about wtc7, seeing as you can look in to the future
Well i always knew we could rely on the BBC to blow the lid on the 911 inside job - one way or another!
This is way to specific to be a random mistake.
Dear Mr. Porter,
In your first blog on 27 Feb 07 you wrote "I've spoken to her today and unsurprisingly, she doesn't remember minute-by-minute what she said or did". REALLY? I mean, REALLY, REALLY?
She REMEMBERS. Five and a half years later she must still be haunted by the images of what happened a few minutes after her live feed from NY had been cut. The 47-storey steel-frame skyscraper dominating the NY skyline behind her free-fell in 6.5 seconds in perfectly symmetrical fashion with explosions being heard and recorded across the Hudson river in New Jersey. Also, you keep repeating "Building 7 was on fire." Untrue, sir. Building 7 was NOT on fire. And Jane Standley's live report minutes before the fall only confirms this fact. The Windsor skyscraper in Madrid on the other hand WAS on fire (check this out http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4262509.stm) and never collapsed. Because steel-frame buildings do not totally collapse due to fire. NEVER. Not even on 9/11.
This raises the question. Have you ever seen videos of the fall of Building 7? If not, please do so NOW. If only out of journalistic curiosity. Google WTC7. Make sure you see the CNN, CBS footage of the event. Vast majority of the people I talked to do not even know that there was the third NY skyscraper that collapsed later that day. No surprise. There is no mention of this building in the Commission report. Like it never happened.
The fact that the live feed from NY was cut proves that BBC people seeing the live shot eventually realized that Building 7 was still standing behind the reporter and pulled the plug on the telecast. BBC was in the know all these years and kept mum. Do you realize what all these amounts to? To suppressing the evidence from the official investigation. And this is of course a criminal act. BBC knowingly withheld this vital info and footage from 911 Commission. Why?
"There's no story here"? Mon cher ami, the STORY has just begun. Brace yourself for a hell of a ride.
And please change the title of your next blog (and trust me there will be one) from "Part of the conspiracy?" to "Part of the cover-up".
I, for one, do not believe, nor have I ever believed that the BBC is part of a "conspiracy". It's a shame that you keep throwing that out there, which effectively clouds the issue. I would like to know where/how you received your information nearly half an hour early. Your claim of losing the tapes just doesn't sit well with me... or the public. You are simply not answering the public's questions.
I remember a BBC "documentory"in 2000 or early 2001 which concerned itself with the newest weaponry. It closed with the comment "This is how wars will be fought in the coming century."
I remember the program was presented by a woman and now wonder if this was Ms. Standley?
War is not inevitible, unless you believe it to be.
I will never believe anything BBC, FOX & CNN say again, we all know mainstream media is bought & paid for by the global elite.
George Orwells 1984 is rapidly approaching!
Dear Mr. Porter
If some people say the BBC is 'in on it', this does warrant and ignoral of the subsequent questions from others who may not think the BBC 'was in on it'. The fact of the matter is that the original sources of WTC7 details in the context of a collapse must be found. This means BBC reporters like Greg Barrow, Gavin Esler, Philip Hayton, Jane Standley, local media monitors etc, must say where these sources come from.
It seems unreasonable that stories of WTC7 being on fire, bulging and going to collapse evolved into the pre 5:20pm 'did collapse' story and even if this did occur, it is very bad mark for the journalistic standards of the BBC who just make things up, especially on serious events like 9-11.
Also, The talk of multiple aircraft in the air that day is a non issue as I believe, even before 12:00 noon, US airspace had already been secured and the hours that followed would have seen any confusion level settle down, particularly by lat 4:00pm
So please state report the chain of sources accordingly.
Thank you.
Reading Richard's post, it's fairly obvious to me what happened:
- Five Live interviewed someone who said that the collapse of WTC7 was predicted.
- Inadvertently, this was referred to later as an announcement that it actually had fallen down.
- Within the BBC, if one outlet has announced it then all the others can assume that all the checks have been done and it can be treated as fact. So once 5 Live had said WTC7 had fallen down, the rest of the BBC was safe to report it.
So the answer to the question "Who told the newsdesk that WTC7 had collapsed?", asked above, is "Someone who believed what someone else said, because that's what they'd been trained to do". In other words, a slip of the tongue by one presenter gets turned into a conspiracy theory. On the day I'm sure Fi, like everyone else involved, had a myriad of contradicting reports being fed to her and was being forced to summarise these as she went. Not an easy job.
No doubt this will generate a load of complaints along the lines of "why didn't News 24/World/everyone else check?" Well, they wouldn't simply because 99.999% of the time the BBC does get it right and there's no need to double check.
It's obvious from reading many of the posts above that those writing them have absolutely no idea how live TV and radio works. 2-ways fail all the time for all sorts of technical reasons, for example, so the "circumstances surrounding the disruption of Jane Standley's live feed from NYC at 5:18pm (EST) on 11/09/01?" were probably barely remembered at the end of the day by anyone involved, let alone recorded for the benefits of posterity.
Such is life in the modern world of broadcasting. Yesterdays newspapers at least became fish wrappers. Yesterday's TV is just a few electrons that were repurposed for a while.
"Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetance"
No... Wrong... How many other multi-storey buildings had ever collapsed from fire before WTC7? The answer, Richard, is two... WTC1 and WTC2, and at least they were hit by aeroplanes. So that makes WTC7 the first ever EVER EVER multi-storey building to totally collapse purely due to fire. So how could anyone have predicted that?
I know if I were a serious news reporter I might want to investigate it. I would also find it interesting that molten stell was found at the base of the twin towers, and the fact that there are eye-witness accounts of multiple explosions. The fact that people smelled cordite at the Pentagon crash scene, the fact that there were no wing marks in the Pentagon walls. All these would be clues telling me to investigate further. The fact that BP Texas City was far more thoroughly investigated than 9/11 would also make me think cover-up. But hey, I'm not head of news at the BBC am I?
The biggest hint of anything untoward happening on 9/11 is not the shambolic fifth rate reporting by the BBC (which we have come to expect these last few years).. but the real cover up - as seen by Google, Digg, You Tube etc. all trying to supress the story/subject. That's the smoking gun right there. The truth will out. Expect a floodgate to open anytime soon.
You spent most of the week investigating this? Surely you had something better to do with your time. What's on your agenda for this week, whether the moon landings were faked? What's at area 51?
As with all conspiracy theories there is no way to disprove it so don't waste your time.
Don't worry Richard, you know you can't win here. It's in the nature of conspiracy theories that there's always something else people will want answers to and always someone who can explain any apparent anomaly.
We've already seen one completely new angle here that I've never come across before. You've asked what anyone would gain from releasing the news of the collapse early, and we're now being told it's because flight 93 was due to hit that building (so, erm, why was flight 93 therefore apparently shot down, according to some other strand of the conspiracy?)
We've seen people criticising you for not keeping the footage, based on a BBC policy not even produced until 2004. If you could track down who your source was for the WTC7 story, there'd be some other unanswered question. You can't win, basically.
If you believe the bloggers, the BBC is, at one and the same time, a biased left-wing organisation, in the pockets of the Blair government, and also an integral part of a massive right-wing conspiracy to murder thousands of innocent people. Just keep doing what you're doing - your excellent, challenging, vital reporting. Some of us appreciate it.
Another brick is removed from the conspiracy towers building and those who are still living in the building tut tut and say "falling around our ears - our building? No Way!"
A whole industry has built up around these conspiracy theories. People have invested hours of (wasted) intellectual energy in looking for some global conspiracy. (For it must be that if even the BBC are alleged to be distorting the news purposely to aid some cover up).
The conspiracy theories blow away with the dust. How depressing for those who have built online businesses around this nonsense. How embarassing for those who have left on online record of their feeble thought processes.
Do you want to know where the conspiracy lies? It's the conspiracy community that is engaged in a conspiracy. A conspiracy to replace rational analytical thought with mumbo jumbo (and turn a buck in the process).
I was going to say quit while you’re ahead but u never were.
It has become clear this one has come back to bite u in the ass, it is clear at least for the moment that the demolition of building 7 was preplanned and this info was told to the networks but you guys jumped the gun, because u didn't realize which building behind the live reporter had collapsed, ( building 7, or the Solomon building) So the truth came out and the cover-up became exposed by the light of free thinking people who just want and can handle the truth, unlike the sheeple you and rest of the media report to.
Any way that said you can go back to your sheeple and leave us who want the truth to our own investigation.
I have a suspicion that a lot of the information and misinformation on the day came from the BBC people watching the other news outlets and trying to add any new bits of information to their own (as, no doubt, the other news outlets were also doing). Add to that the desire to be the first to report something new, and you get reporters jumping the gun.
In other words, "It's all very confused at the moment but CNN reported X, Fox reported something similar, we know a few things about it, let's cobble it all together into a report with a bit of guesswork added and attribute it to an unspecified 'source'" In broadcast news you can get it first or you can get it right, but rarely both at once.
Ok, so it was a mistake/errror whatever.
So, WHERE DID THE INFORMATION COME FROM in the first place ?
Someone put the info on an auto cue, someone told them to put it there, someone told that person to get it put on auto cue.
Eventually it will lead back to the person that the information came from.
Now, who is that ?
I don't know enough about 9/11 to make any specific comment, but will make two observations:
(1) You only had one copy of the tape and you don't know what happened to it? There's no way to make that look good.
(2) On two other matters I am seriously interested in, the BBC has been effectively deceiving viewers for years, even though I've brought your attention to it. Please tell me why, given that you are utterly untrustworthy on matters which I *do* know about, why I should trust you on matters which I don't.
"Once more... I hereby challenge the British Broadcasting Corporation to prove that the collapse of WTC7 does not defy the known physical laws of our universe."
Ok, here goes. The WTC7 building collapsed in New York City. The "physical laws of our universe" apply in New York City.
Therefore it can be logically concluded that the collapse of WTC7 did not defy the physical laws of our universe.
They might have defied the "known" physical laws but a physical law does not have to be known for it to apply.
Even if it could be proved that the collapse DID defy the known physical laws of the universe then all that tells us is that we do not know everything about the universe - which any serious scientist would have told you anyway.
Richard,
You are quite right to stop with this topic, the conspiracy bloggers will not accept anything apart from their own bizzare views on the 9/11 TERRORIST atrocities.
Whats the big deal?
1. Some guy on the ground decided the building looked like it was going to collapse, and said so.
2. That got picked up and twisted around so that people thought it had already collapsed.
3. It then collapsed, he was right.
The end.
"There's no story here."
"These are not the droids you're looking for... Move along."
Did you really think that by evoking the old 'Jedi mind trick' defense, you could make the whole sordid affair just disappear?
This is just the beginning, my friend! You and your pathetic excuse for a public broadcaster have re-ignited the Truth Movement and this time the Genie's not going back into the bottle!
Conspiracies? For Mr Porter: 'Eight or nine neocons have somehow grabbed the government. Just why and how they did it so efficiently will have to wait for much later historians and better documentation than we have now, but they managed to overcome the bureaucracy and the Congress, and the press, with the greatest of ease.' - Seymour Hersch, award-winning journalist.
For truth-seekers: 'Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.' - Margaret Mead, anthropologist.
Richard, please stop saying that we're implying the BBC is part of a conspiracy. We're not saying that, no-one has said that, and the only reason you're saying it now is because it helpfully paints us all as the kind of nuts the shamefully biased Conspiracy Files hit-piece tried to suggest we were so that you can dismiss our more than valid questions. Stop it, you're supposed to be objective.
Second, you cannot simply write this incident off as a case of chinese whispers. The BBC is supposed to be one of the most respected broadcasters in the world, and there is a fundamental difference between "collapsing" and "collapsed". Upon receiving this information, you would have verified it before going to air. If you didn't, that's deliberate negligence of duty in ensuring that your facts are accurate. If you did, then your source was at fault. Either way, the question is still valid; WHO WAS THE ORIGINAL SOURCE OF YOUR CLAIM THAT WTC7 HAD COLLAPSED?
You seem to be consciously avoiding answering this question, and it does you no favours. As licence payers we have a right to an answer, and I know that we simply won't be satisified with the lame excuses you have given so far. A senior firefighter? WHO? A "source"? WHO?! "Experts" are saying? WHO!? WHO!? WHO!?
For those who question why "conspirators" would release advance info of the building's collapse, consider the possibility that the shadowy "they" prepared the press release detailing the collapse, but accidentally released it early. Far more plausible than "chinese whispers", "cock-ups" and "lost tapes".
I find it disgraceful that this level of SPIN is employed by yourself Mr Porter. Utterly disgraceful.
Please stop trying to deflect the issue by bringing up the whole "they think the BBC was involved in the conspiracy". We don't. Because, if you had been, then you would not have been as incompetent as you have been with these news reports.
And you expect us to believe that, whether you have a "90 Day Policy" or not, that you didn't keep ALL the footage from arguably the most important day in modern history?
Please.
What annoys me the most is that OUR money funds this. Its shambolic, its pathetic and its utterly disgraceful.
Tell the Truth My Porter.
Well, Richard, once again you find yourself besieged by conspiracy loons.
However, I think the BBC deserves this. Not for the building 7 error, which, in the circumstances, was an excusable error, but for the ridiculous "Hijackers may still alive" story. It was that story that bought the loons to your door and it was that story which should have been verified before it was ever aired. A fairly perfunctory investigation would have found the story to be false.
I
You can't just dismiss the hoards of people asking questions about 911 now just because you can lable them conspiricy theorists. Everyone is a conspiricy theorist, even Bush and the BBC.
911 was a conspiricy, either way, whether bin laden conspired or whether bush's puppet masters conspired.
911 = conspiricy which ever way you look at it.
Thank you BBC ;)
Dear Mr. Porter, you are digging yourself a nice little hole there...
Every news outlet that reported the collapse too soon needs to give a collective explanation as to how that report ended up on TV. The source of this might end up just being a lucky guess from a fireman, but I doubt that was the case since a NY fireman should know better than any other that steel buildings don't collapse from fire. Blaming another news station on the report isnt good enough, and nor is dismissing the whole event with such comments as "There's no story here". I'm sure you can see how that coming from the Head Of News of BBC World is troubling. There will be a story as long as the BBC try to dismiss it, or google try to censor it. It wont go away until theres a plausable explanation into the prior knowledge of the extraordinarily unpredictable incident of WTC7 collapsing. You could actually speed this process along by telling us your source.
No story here? Prove it.
More pathetic damage control. Fails to answer the original questions, and attempts to pass the buck onto CNN...nice try, not going to work.
Nice to see the comments section more half and half this time, with the "debunkers" called in to ridicule and slander the opposition..
As ALWAYS, you take the strategy of humiliating your opponent rather than actually proving him wrong. Not difficult to see really.
The truth is coming out. Don't expect people to like the BBC after this is done.
Dear BBC viewers,
My name is Osama Bin Laden and I am responsible for informing newsdesk about the upcoming events that day. I dont know why Mr. Porter doesn't reveal that here, but I guess he is just careful and wish to protect his sources. Journalistic code of ethics, you know. But hey, there is no conspiracy here.
I am also responsible for misplacing those tapes at BBC archives. As you know, I am kinda sloppy at times. Once, I even misplaced that tape where I was planning the whole 9-11 operation with my cave buddies. Somehow CIA found it in my 34th wife's bottom drawer. Ma look, no conspiracy here, no conspiracy there.
I am quite surprised that the 911 commission report missed to report why I chose to use commercial airlines when I could just pack a few Cessna aircrafts with nukes or TNT that day and fly them into the buildings. It would be so much easier and cost effective. And since I already knew that the US Airforce was having a drill that day, I could have done it easily with no interception from those annoying F-18s. Nope, no conspiracy here Lucy.
Actually, these media guys have done a wonderful job for me. Nobody suspect me anymore, not even Mr. Bush. He already said he is not really looking for me anymore. Great gosh what a relief. Now everybody is pointing fingers at some international bankers or a hidden faction of the US government, I am basically a free man. Thank you Mr. Porter, buy you a beer later.
Many of you probably wonder what my intentions with 9-11 really was? Well, its all in the pressreleases I sent to newsdesk that morning claiming responsibility. But I do understand that BBC wish to protect their integrity and not publish that in respect to the public. After all, they report and you decide. God forbid if you decided what they report. That would be real democracy and you know how much I hate that.
Bless you all,
OBL
Mr porter. First of all i don't think for a minute that the bbc are involved in a conspiracy contributing directly to the events of 9/11. Nor do i believe the bbc are as incompetent as they would like to have us believe they were on their reporting of 9/11. I do however believe the bbc are no longer a credible news organisation based on a few things that have come to light over the last week or so and including for me, the death of invesitgative journalism at the bbc displayed during the bbc2 conpiracy files series.The story will never go away until you answer the following question.
Who was the One senior fire officer was quoted in a subsequent interview as saying there was a "bulge" in the building and he was "pretty sure it was going to collapse". Who was that,do you have a name to back that statement up. There's video of a firefighter who say's "move away they're gonna bring it down. could it be him?" Due to the fact that "no steel framed building has ever collapsed due to fire alone, in the history of the world up until the day of september 11th 2001" The senior firefighter will have been aware of that fact. I think it's a pertinent question to ask. And one you should know or attempt to find out the answer to.Maybe Guy Smith
the producer/director of the 9/11 episode of the conspiracy files series will be able to answer that question for us? since he claims that he investigated every
"conspiracy theory" relating to 9/11. He'd have to know right?
BBC is guilty of shoddy journalism when its editors conflate discussion of state malfeasance with 'nutty conspiracies'. In the BBC's eyes, it would seem, there is only one 911 orthodoxy and that is 'The Official Mo Atta & the Flying Cessna Circus Narrative'. I suspect the BBC will end up with egg all over its collective face before long, even as it continues deriding rational people posing reasonable questions.
Very good follow up. Its very difficult to prove something in the negative when the underlying support information is old. I think a more interesting question is how many conspiracy theorists in the Muslim world deny that Bin Laden was responsible for 9/11, yet praise him for his successful terror operation against America.
The BBC lies to the world on a daily basis. Are people actually trying to deny that?
Whats wrong with saying the BBC are part of a conspiracy? All mass media is, tyrants since the dawn of time have sought to control ideas, its no different today.
Are people really so naive as to think we have an unbiased fair media in the UK?! Its no wonder this country is going to the dogs...thanks to our precious media more people know about britney spears new haircut than know their own rights...or lack of.
Dismiss the cynics. No new world order.
So basically the BBC is either incompetant and unable to find three hard copies of the same video stored seperately, or this is just more good old fashioned smoke and mirrors. To hide what exactly?
Clearly the BBC had no involvement with the disaster, and there are very few who would suggest this is the case, certainly none that i can see here. However why are you (the BBC) not being open with all the facts? double talk and ambiguity, as with most other reports surrounding this incident.
"In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost"
Alfred Whitney Griswold "The New York Times" 1959
In your first editorial you said:
"We do have the tapes for our sister channel News 24, but they don't help clear up the issue one way or another."
In this one, you say:
"At 4.54pm, the BBC's domestic television news channel, BBC News 24, reports the same thing." - same thing = "another large building has collapsed just over an hour ago."
How come you said that in the first one? It totally clears it up: you broadcast that the building fell over when it hadn't.
What it doesn't clear up is: who told you it fell over? This is what we're asking.
Sorry, when I wrote Simon (74) it should have been Simon (146).
Relatively few people would choose to beleive their government are responsible for someinthg like 9/11, but when news organisations like the BBC show such utter incompetance in reporting it, and so many important questions are left unanswered, people will seek out their own answers, correct or not. The ultimate responsibility for these "theories" falls squarely on the shoulders of organistaions such as the BBC due to their LACK of journalism.
VLAD (comment 99) perhaps you should look into what was inside the building and the insurance covering it.
Again, who told the BBC that 7 WTC had collapsed? Why can't this simple question be answered? If it was CNN, then who at CNN (or if it was any other news organization/government official)? Why did the BBC not disclose to its viewers that the first report on 7 WTC was incorrect, especiaslly after 7 WTC had actually collapsed at 5:20 EDT?
Blimey, the conspiracy theorists don't give up, do they?
Memo to anyone thinking of arguing against them (you too, Richard): don't.
It's like wrestling a jelly. They can't even present a coherent theory about what might have happened, just shout an ever-changing series of questions along the lines of: 'Ah, but what about.....' Fact are countered with half-baked theories, reason with teenage rhetoric.
Face it, CTers -- your ideas are simply a refuge for the feeble minded. As 9/11 amply illustrates, such events are confusing and sometimes seemingly random. Not every fact will ever be known, nor every question answered.
But life is like that. This doesn't mean there's some over-arching conspiracy (taking in thousands of as yet mysteriously silent people) at the heart.
BBC, you don't have to justify yourself to the avowedly irrational. It's a waste of time.
9/11 CTers repeatedly yell that the momentum is with them, that history will prove them wrong?
Oh really? I'll bet any sum of money, at odds of 1-100 against me, that in 20 years time not a shred of real evidence will have emerged that this was a conspiracy.
Any takers?
You're covering-up the crime of the century. That makes you criminals too.
no one said you were part of the conspiracy. we asked for your source
to those who say why would conspirators annonce to news agencys about the collapse prior to it happening?
well the simple answer is cock up, it was a hectic day and a press released must have slipped out early
bbc the propaganda masters are loosing there edge,
alt-media 4tw
Dear Mr. Porter
Can I ask you of one favor? Please look inside yourselves and find out what will be the right thing to do next. Only the truth can set you free, do not be afraid. You will have massive support, believe me!
Peace.
Stian.
I think that is a pretty reasonable explenation. I don't see the argument of the BBC could have had inside information of a conspiracy as having a very solid foundation.
That said, the fact that the BBC knew that WTC7 was on fire for some time before announcing its collapse, and clearly didn't know which building WTC7 was when it was standing right behind the reporter is a bit incompetent.
It is understandable that there was a lot of confusion that day but relying on other channels when the evidence of their reports being erroneous clearly in view of the reporte and the news anchor (probably more people not on air as well) shows that perhaps the BBC does at times (in this case a very important time) fail to do some crucial research to give its viewers reliable information.
Though there are questions to be asked about the events of 9/11 and the degree of involvement of the US government, claiming that th BBC was somehow part of the conspiracy is rather ridiculous.
Quite a colossal cockup but not much else.
I still ask, the reporter could not turn around and look out the window to verify the collapse BEFORE reporting it?
What the BBC has done here is blurted out something they should not have. They reported the building collapse before it had happened. I can easily see how this mistake could have been made. Several clips of news footage (available on the web) clearly show firemen and police officers warning onlookers to clear out of the way as the building is going to explode. Yes explode is the word used, not collapse. These rescue workers have quite obviously been well informed as they are adressing people in a calm and orderly fashion. So shooting the gun a little bit in this situation is understandable. Clumsy, but understandable.
Most people don't recall that controlled demolition WAS the official story for WTC-7 to begin with (hence Larry Silverstein's "pull it" remark). Right up until someone asked how long it would take to rig such a demolition...
The BBC is insulting your intelligence, everyone. Personally I don't take too kindly to that.
Do you think people are that stupid??? we are demanding you reveal the source of the information you reported as fact. "...Salomon building has collapsed, and indeed it has." is not a disclaimer statement such as "there are reports" or "people are now saying" We are not accusing you of being terrorists but demanding something we have every right to demand of you. We will not let this go, and your attempted ignorant brushoffs are degrading your integrity by the hour.
The reason your earlier posting "attracted a lot of interest" is because it was absurd. This isn't any better. You are merely attempting to obfuscate the issue without revealing your source for the collapse of WTC 7. You feel it necessary to say that there's no conspiracy on BBC's part. Fine. Then reveal your REAL source or sources for the WTC 7 information. Find your "lost" tapes. Then maybe we won't think the BBC is a propaganda arm of the British government.
You see the real issue is this. When evidence comes out that is as damning as this, it starts to become more of an issue with the police and the authorities (including in the United States) rather than you trying to persuade the general public(who obviously don't believe a word of it) that it was a simple mistake.
This isn't a mistake, or confused journalism, this is TELLING THE FUTURE. Unless I have missed something nobody can tell the future.
Name your source sir, what was on the screen when the anchor was "breaking the news" that building 7 had collapsed. Maybe the police haven't got involved yet because nobody has made a complaint to them.
This issue makes Dr Kelly and the 45 minute dossier look like the most trivial thing imaginable.
Here is uninterrupted broadcast coverage from BBC world from 4:54pm NY time and 5:36pm Tuesday September 11the 2001
http://www.archive.org/details/bbc200109111654-1736
Did the story come through ENPS? Can you reveal the source. Most of your stories come through ENPS and I think the public should know this.
On your original statement you contradict yourself. In paragraph one you say you didn't get the story from anyone else, and in paragraph 3 you say that her collegues were monitoring feeds and telling her information.
Please post this as my others have been censored.
BBC continues to substitute prickish indignation and smug superiority for an honest appraisal or investigation of the merits of 911 skeptics' arguments.
Is it any wonder you've lost the trust of your viewing public?
And please continue to cry "conspiracy"- I know it's the last defense mechanism of a cornered press.
Can you also answer why William Rodreguez was asked if there was anything the BBC could do you change his mind when talking about the detonations in the world trade centre north tower (BBC Look North about a week ago). Why would the BBC want to change his mind? He was there and you weren't.
Pathetic political spin to claim that we accuse the BBC as part of a conspiracy. Whose the paranoid ones now then! You somehow assume we accuse you of that. I think you should learn a valuable lesson, when you make a grave mistake in life you deserve to pay for that mistake and this response from the BBC is again a poor attempt at answering key questions that still remain.
Richard you are making up your own theory, funny if I were in your position and with your political and philosophical ignorance then I would be calling you a conspiracy theorist. The fact is, I don't care for pathetic theories with no substance, I am only interested in truth, evidence and logic and Im afraid your argument stands up to none of these.
It seems every man and his dog knew that WTC7 was going to collapse before it did: to the extent that the collapse was announced on your news bulletin.
Yet, with the considerable benefit of hindsight, no official person seems to have a clue how or why it came down!
Does this not strike you as somewhat odd Mr. Porter?
Who was your source for the prophetic report?
This is the question, the only question you really must answer, and the one you keep dodging.
"This just in: We have received reports that the beloved president of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was just shot dead in broad daylight. We'll now join our correspondent at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Claire Voyant, live. Claire, what can you tell us?"
"It's unbelievable - the people that have gathered here along the path of Kennedy's motorcade to see the president and became witnesses to his horrible, untimely death are completely stunned. There is an eerie silence - likely a collective shock - engulfing the area. It's terrifying."
"Do you have any details about the perpetrators, yet?"
"Well, apparently the Secret Service has already subdued the culprit - too late, unfortunately. He reportedly is a lunatic driven by a spiteful communist agenda, a lone gunman. Well, he certainly must be a lunatic - if I were to shoot with that musket he brought, I couldn't even hit a sleeping elephant..."
[At this point, Kennedy's limo makes an entry behind unsuspecting Claire, in it the yet alive President. The crowd starts cheering - then all of a sudden, the connection gets terminated]
No story here folks, move along!
Your explan//ation doesn't add up! Do you really think we're all this dumb? Come on, it's obvious you had foreknowledge, there's was no reason to believe the building was going to collapse half an hour before it did. It was controlled demolition, come on, watch the video's, you're reporters right? Than you should do some real research and don't just do what your bosses tell you to do ...
Everyone with a sane mind who investated 9/11 totally knows it was an inside job! We're not wacko's! We're not so-called "conspiracy-theorists", we're people with a conscience and a healthy mind!
I'll reiterate the point made many times now.
The BBC is not doing its job. It is a sham media organisation.
It passes information from the government to the public.
There is no journalism involved.
I'd suggested you re-state the organisations purpose to clear this up.
Then we won't turn to it for information we'll never find, and consider other more honest, ethical, and balanced sources.
I studied Media and Communications for three years at London University. I'm glad to see every thing that I learned there finally coming to light.
It has been a dark decade while I've had this knowledge of the media and how it works, and continuing to live among people who believe it is offering them unbiased, journalistic integrity.
Good riddance.
Good bye to the old demons; time to welcome in the new.
C
They came first for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came fore the Jews,
and I didn‘t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
Rev. Martin Niemöller
To me it seems that BBC, although not a part of the "original" conspiracy, sure are trying to become a part of it. Loosing the tapes and so on. Perhaps there are some perks to be had for the ones on the inside, what do I know. Their motivation for resisting the clarification of this matter is beyond me.
On a different note, could this premature "wire" telling of the collapse of WTC 7 be somebody crying foul to the world?
Dear Mr Porter.
Tens of thousands of people are waking up to the fact that the BBC is a pure propaganda machine for the New World Order.
We know that you have covered up the real story on 911 and 7/7 and replaced it with a pack of lies.
We know that you will use more propaganda in the future to bring in the Police State and the microchipping of the population.
We know that you are covering up the fact that a prevention and a cure for cancer has been available for 50 years and we know you are covering up the scandal of industrial effluent being added to the water supply under the pretence of protecting childrens teeth.
We know that Bird Flu is a scam and we know that vaccinations only do us harm.
We know that you lie to us on a daily basis.
The game is up Mr Porter.
James wrote: "Wow, who knew it was SO easy to get a steel-framed skyscraper to fall down in it's own footprint? Set a small fire, let it burn for a few hours and BANG, down it goes. Neat and clean, no damage to VERY expensive surrounding real estate. How convienent, and oh so easy!"
James, just watch 'Why the Towers Fell' and it will answer all your questions. I'm sure the engineers and architects who appeared in the documentary might now a *tiny bit* more about the structural realities of the Twin Towers than you do...unless they're all in on the Big Conspiracy...which many of you don't seem to realize is totally asinine.
All your reporter would have had to do, to verify the validity of the information she was reporting, was to turn around!! She would have seen that the building was in fact still standing!! And if she did in fact report that she was not sure if it had collapsed or was in the process of collapsing, she should definitely have turned around and looked. I think someone knew that it was coming down, so there was no reason to verify the information. It had already been decided that Building 7 would be collapsing and that's what you reported. And for that, the BBC should be held accountable. Conspiracy to commit murder should do nicely.
I wish to add my questioning voice to the list of dissatisfied people here.
As someone who has been writing to the BBC about 9/11 Truth issues for over 2 years and documented the pompous and dismissive brush offs, I would like to ask the question:
Who told the BBC WTC 7 had collapsed?
How does the BBC think it collapsed when it was burning less and received less impact damage than WTC 6?
When will a special news report appear on Newsnight to answer these questions? (again, we have offered to debate the issue as knowledgable campaigners, but - no, "there is nothing to debate" say Messrs Paxman, Esler and Dimbleby. How sad is that?
Well? Or are we not entitled to these answers, as licence payers?
Just as a footnote, isn't it ironic that George Orwell's real name was Eric Blair...
I always trusted the BBC to be the voice of integrity in world news. This incident is troubling. Moreso, your inadequate, condescending explantion of a most serious issue troubles me more.
Your willingness to pass this off as an unfounded conspiracy theory without factual foundation is mind-numbing. Where is BBC's journalistic ethics?
Why have you not done an in-depth, unbiased assessment of all the facts? One can only guess why not. And many are guessing you have something to hide. Now I am wondering.
Will the real BBC stand up? Stand up for truth? I would be shocked if it didn't appear so sadly and cynically true that the BBC has sold its soul - for what?
Have you no sense of decency? Stand up and be journalists and investigate this impartially!
And now back to Richard Porter reporting live from the bottom of the
hole he's been digging.........
Who told your BBC reporters the building was to collapse? Stick to the point, we know your not part of the conspiracy....erm....never mind just watch the film "1984" or wake up.
o yes while your at it explain why on that other report one of your monkey see, monkey do's explains that the towers are constructed with the steel on the outside of the building and goes on to say that why the building fell....... because the planes weakened them?
o yes and while your at it......never mind there are hundreds of unusual events that I know you havnt looked at
Richard - Just answer the question
What was the source of the original report ?
Others - As for a bulge in WTC 7... don’t remember reading about any bulge in the 9-11 commission report.. or anywhere else for that matter...is there a source .. some photos... a video maybe.... a tape of emergency services warning about it?
What do you think we are Richard? Stupid? That response was more pathetic than the first one. We wanted to know where you got your information from. And your saying it was misunderstood from a guy on the radio... heres your quotes...
"I'm not sure if it has yet collapsed but the report we have is talking about Building 7."
AND THEN!!
"25 minutes ago we had reports from Greg Barrow that another large building has collapsed just over an hour ago."
My God people wake up and smell the coffee! Use your common sence, this is ridiculous.
And you still cant find those tapes Richard? Well i guess it worked out great for everyone then...
You expect us to swallow this tripe? My advice would be to make another response Richard, you know what they say... 3rd times a charm...
Not everyone that disagrees with you is a conspiracy theorist, we're just people that want an intelligent answer. So put down your crayon and try again!
"Theres no story here" Oh but there is, its called,"AM I BOTHERED?"
Dear Richard,
Why do you continue to insult the intelligence of your readers by once again invoking the "BBC is not part of any conspiracy" line in response to reader complaints. Nobody is suggesting for a moment that you are part of some larger conspiracy and to imply such a thing is at best disingenuous and at worst deliberately misleading.
While you have provided a rivetting moment by moment account of the passing of information through the media pipeline, you have deliberately avoided addressing the key question that remains on everyone's mind:
Who was the source for BBC World's report on the collapse of WTC7 on 11/09/01?
If, as you say, this premature report was based on "reports from local media", then it is clear that the BBC failed to independently verify the information and did not "(do) what we always did - sourced our reports".
While this type of incompetence can be forgiven under the circumstances, you must concede that this insatiable need for "breaking news" left you wide open to possible sources of disinformation amidst the chaos of the day.
Wise up, mate! Stop sheilding yourself from criticsim and begin looking for answers to the following questons:
1. Who was the official source for BBC World's report on the collapse of WTC7 on 11/09/01?
2. What are the circumstances surrounding the 'cock-up' which led to the loss of BBC World News' original 9/11 footage?
C'mon Richard, you're a journalist! "I don't know whether they were destroyed or mislaid" just doesn't cut it...
3. Who cut reporter Jane Standley's live feed from NYC at 5:18pm (EST) on 11/09/01 and why?
I believe 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' said it best:
"Answer me these questions three... ere the other side yee see!"
Trust me, Richard, there IS a story here!
Sincerely,
Michael (The Friendly Canuck)
Journalism as a paid profession is dead.
We must look to our fellow citizens to investigate for us.
So the BBC admit they just recycle 'news' off the wires from other agencies, and can not even tell you where they plagiarise what from on their bulletins and live updates. In this case, why do we bother paying a license fee, exactly? Because BBC news seem to have admitted they don’t actually do any real reporting / analysis, as such, any longer.
You know, I can’t even be bothered to debunk this nonsense in anything other than an outline form. Building 7 was one of the strongest office buildings on the face of the planet. The structure had redundancy built in i.e. no single floor collapse could bring it down. That was the DESIGN SPEC! It came down at the freefall rate of gravity, blast points out the side, a ‘crimp’ in the middle, neatly into its own footprint. Plus, the owner of the building says he ordered it demolished, and numerous eyewitness reports confirm a countdown was issued. What plane of reality does the BBC news room exist in?
It surely isnt too much to ask that given wtc 7 was built to have portions of its structure removed as reported by the ny times and was damaged far less than other buildings that totally failed to collapse at free fall that day why it collapsed. It should also be discussed why if it was so obvious the building was about to collapse was a member of the secret service was killed in it.
It seems strange does it not that the only steel framed buildings ever to collapse totally due to fire collapsed on the same day.
Of course after your weak 9/11 documentary I would expect no less. Silly some of us still believe in physics and gravity and can grasp that the official conspiracy theory of 9/11 is impossible
Why was there no correction issued by the BCC that day, or any of the 2000 days since? Surely Jane Standley must have been surprised by the tower collapsing behind her 5 minutes after losing what appeared to be a crystal clear connection to London. Why hasn’t she come out with any statement? Why was there no effort to clarify matters for the record? Isn’t that what you guys are supposed to do? Where is the integrity?
And no, the story doesn’t end here, and no, you don’t have the power to decide that. Track down your source and their source. Follow up on who knew what when and how they knew it. Investigate – remember that concept from journalism school? These matters are potentially very serious, at least as serious as anything else your organization is reporting on. I suggest the BBC dedicate its resources accordingly. Your reputation is very much at stake. You cannot brush us aside, our numbers are too great now.
To Richard Porter and colleagues,
Take a look at the documentary 'Oil, Smoke and Mirrors'. It's time to look at the bigger picture and when you do, the events of September 11th should become crystal clear. (But I've a suspicion the Corporation probably already knows this).
Well if the state of the republic is measured by it's media, then this is not looking very well is it ?
Is it 2007 or is it 1939 ?
If you are righteous Mr. Porter then it's not too late to make a difference, do you realize what you are part of, or who you are protecting ? Ah who am i kidding, you have no real power ofcourse, you are sustaining yourselve by going along .... quit then and make a statement !
Dear Sirs,
I just have one question regarding a matter you did not address.
Generally, news organizations, whether in print or press, publish an errata when a reported news story's facts are shown to be incorrect.
That there was confusion at BBC at that day is reasonable.
But when your correspondent finally did see a building collapse, didn't they realize "oops"?
Why didn't BBC correct the mistake on the later programs?
Given the gravity of all that has happened since, and is based on, 9/11, don't you, as members of Human family, feel just a bit uneasy about how both your organization and every other responsible institution, seems to be insensitive to the requirements for even Higher Standards for reporting of the matters that transpired on 9/11?
Dear BBC,
I am so disappointed and angry with you.
Your standard of lying is getting even worse than your low standard of reporting.
Clearly WT7 was stood in the background for 20 or so minutes whilst your reporter stated that it had in fact already collapsed.
This is but only part of your criminal record.
The other week you did a so called Conspiracy documentary about the 911 mass murder and not once did you mention the hard fact, many, indeed over 20 high witnesses informed that bomb after bomb went off in the twin towers prior to collapse, yet you decided to discredit those who state this FACT and labelled such patriots as Conspiracy nuts with some sort of personality problem. The seismic data does not lie, and it shows the witnesses are correct.
Again on Saturday evening you did a cover of the Oklahoma bombing and again you failed to mention even once the umpteen credible high witness reports from service personnel who stated there were at least two separate explosions and that two additional UXP bombs had been removed from the Oklahoma building by bomb disposal. Also you failed to mention that top explosives experts categorically stated the building was blasted outwards, and that the small fertiliser bomb in the Rider Truck was not sufficient to cause the damage to the columns. Indeed, one senior military expert stated each column had its own bomb, yet you did not even mention this expert had forwarded this forensic reconstruction of blast events.
I put it to you that you are totally corrupt BBC, you are a deceiver, a journalistic criminal and a bare faced yellow journalist if ever there was one.
And you can quote me on that.
Mr J A Blacker MSc IMI (Physical Systems) (Lancaster England)
Why do people believe things that aren't true? Mass delusions remind
us of something counterintuitive: Bad information survives by
building constituencies. You'd think that a crazy idea would have a
tough time persuading lots of people that it's true, but crazy ideas
find safety in numbers. It's hard for one person to believe something
nutty, but easy for 20 people...
Joel Achenbach
We don't accuse the BBC of being part of the conspiracy.
We are just asking the BBC for an answer about announcing the collapse of Building 7 before it actually collapsed.
And saying that you lost 3 tapes because of cock-up is not an answer.
Those tapes are kept in 3 different places according to the BBC's archive code.
3 cock-ups for the exact same tape is a bit weird don't you think?
Could you investigate and tell us in which exact circumstances were those tapes damaged?
As a British citizen, I want to know where my money goes, that's it.
Thank you for doing your journalist job, some would have stopped answering so far.
The people in the 911 truth movement are not saying that the BBC is part of "the conspiracy" (as you like to say) we are saying that the anomalies run concurrent with what has been already widely known. The 911 comission report said that the building fell unexpectedly, and now we see that to be false.
All we want is your source for the information.
Another reason why mainstream media is dying, TRUST.....
We want to know WHO told cnn etc... the building was going to come down?
Which "expert" predicted that this building that was not hit by a plane was in danger of imminent collapse? when no steel building in history has ever collapsed from fire.
Also I hear that a guy was killed In wtc7, Why was he not informed Itwas about to collapse?
Im sorry Mr Porter but there IS a story here!
Luke at #72:
"And when you read them you have to suspend belief that Matthew (post #5) isn't your best mate/plant. It's embarrassing. Thanks for the debunking links Matthew we'll be sure to look those up!"
Typical paranoid conspiracy thinking: if somebody is articulate on the subject they must be a plant... (often the word is shill or agent). I'm a real person. You can find my posts on the James Randi Education Foundation Forum under the username "maccy", here:
http://forums.randi.org/forumdisplay.php?f=64
If you haven't read the links I've provided then you are arguing from a position of ignorance. Most Conspiracy Theory arguments seem to do this.
As for why more people aren't defending the BBC, I suspect they don't care about this at all. The self-styled "truth" movement is pretty insignificant and has had very little impact on the world over the last five years. Over the next I expect it to dwindle to virtually nothing. I'm only bothering to post rebuttals because the conspiracy idiots are so annoying, not because I believe they'll ever achieve anything. Hopefully, my replies are heartening for the BBC employees who had to put up with all this over-excited guff.
Can you spell G-A-R-B-A-G-E?
BBC=GARBAGE!!!
The World can no longer Trust the BBC liars and dis-info agents.
"... there is no story here..."
?!!
WTC7, 9/11 is the story of the -millennium-. Incredible that the BBC isn't reporting about this story every day. Dozens of investigative journalists should be assigned to this 'no-story'. Because the people want it. You cover football, don't you?
Another story is that if the BBC doesn't bring the news the people are going to get it themselves. Alex Jones has now more credibility than the BBC. Imagine how much has been lost. It's beyond repair.
The BBC is funded by the people, it is their duty to protect our democracy rather than undermine it. Greg Dyke should get his job back, after all has he not been vindicated. Why should we believe what we're told about Iran and other vital issues!!!!!!!!!!!
Mr. Porter, it has been three days since your Part 2 comments.
I'm sure that, by now, you know who the source was for the story that WTC7 HAD ALREADY FALLEN.
At the risk of gross understatement, we'd like to know, too.
And please don't tell us that you did know once, but wrote the name on two pieces of paper which you then lost due to a cock-up.
Do you have a reference for this Fireman saying there was a "bulge"?
"move along nothing to see here"
It's interesting how your first response was just an off the cuff not thought out response to our questions. Now we get the propper response you should have done in the first place.
This just reinforces that you are, as David Icke says, "REPEATERS" without thought.
" WTC 7 HAS COLLAPSED!!! "
This type of thing really can make one question one's own sanity! I now sort of want the conspiracy to be true, in a partisan way. That means I will be selective in my editing of information and more likely to twist it to my ends. So - deep intake of breath - let's be objective again. The BBC reported the collapse of a 47 storey building before this event took place. The collapse of said building is one of the oddest events in the history of civil engineering. No, I am not going mad, this is a huge story and we need to find the source as a matter of urgency.
So there were lots of rumours and stories flying around that day. Yet the only one you decided to run with was the one that was incorrect for 20 minutes then miraculously became correct! Given that there were other more badly damaged buildings that day that didn't collapse it's amazing that you only reported on the one which evetually did! If you were, as you say, picking stories at random the chances against that must huge. What an AMAZING coincidence!
The arrogance of Porter and the BBC in general, in still refusing to even admit that they made an error in reporting the collapse of a building before it fell, clearly illustrates the pomposity of these individuals in thinking themselves somehow above the scrutiny of the very people who fund their existence.
At Mark E (Comment 152) ...
Thank you for the great laugh! Of all the debunking responses yours, sir, takes the cake.
Let me see if I have it right. Since the official story is true (WTC7 collapsed basically from fire), while at the same time defies the "physical laws of the universe," the logical reconciliation is plain: there must be other physical laws of the universe we don't know about and they were in play in New York City on 9-11-2001.
Well, at least yours is a creative debunk. Most of the others are either:
I'll look forward to their explanations for the hundreds of unexplained anomalies when they've run out of patronizing and insulting the rest of us.
I'll leave it to Mr. Porter to explain how his newsdesk staff got the information they so presciently announced. Or, I'd accept another blog saying, "Seriously, I can't tell you that. It's classified, you know?"
From Canada, I have been a frequent listener to BBC World on the internet, believing that the British broadcaster represented the finest reportage that the world has to offer. I no longer have that confidence, and sadly realize that the tentacles of media control are completely pervasive and the benefits of collusion with foreign interests are irresistible. We must now live in a climate in which truth can not prevail. And from a nation that gave us Magna Carta, Parliament and many of the noble values that are at the very heart of Western Civilzation..... As Blair is to Bush, BBC is to CNN.... simply minions. How tragic.
And again, the BBC proves it is US?Israels man as more news breaks and where is it on the news page...?
Iran has halted enrichment temporarily states the IAEA BUT that won't go with the Blair/Bush regimes, its all in black and white but here we see the BBC manipulating the news because it is under Blairs direct control.
I had a lot of respect once for the BBC and now it just whores itself out to those that are war criminals and interested in pursuit of genocide in Palestine and Lebanon.
Mr. Porter,
Why respond at all if you're gonna just going to feed people more lies.
Also, don't think that your absurd use of the 'jedi mind trick defense' wasn't noticed.
I expect we'll be hearing from you again on the matter very soon.
Nice spin. It doesn't explain the fact that your reporters were looking directly at the WTC7 building and were still telling us that it had collapsed, and why it had collapsed. Do they even know what they were looking at? There is a story here, at the very least a very poor piece of journalism that leads us to question the future validity of BBC reports, but everyone knows the real story of scripted insider information, it seems someone in the US released the press report to soon...
There's no story here. Hold on a minute. A 47 storey building collapses at freefall speed, without being hit by a plane, exactly in the manner of a controlled demolition. The BBC reports, and continued to report, that the building had collapsed 20 minutes before it actually happened. As a direct result of what happened on this day illegal wars were unleashed and hundreds of thousands of people have been killed to date. And a top BBC news editor states categorically that there's no story here. I smell one of the biggest news stories of the century is coming up.
Okay BBC,that is fair enough!!!
I also know CNN had also reported WTC 7 fell even before you nmentioned it, thus sending the news to some AP wire, and WALLAH!!!
So will you be doing some REal JOURNALISM AND REPRESENT THE PEOPLE THAT WANT ANSWERS INTO THE QUESTION OF PRIOR KNOWLEDGE?
This is your chance, proove to the people and clear your name in the court of popular opinion, please do the right thing.
Thanks!!!
Oh my god, what has happened to the BBC? You're just a soft version of Fox news. SHAME ON YOU! The glory days of public broadcasting is gone. Welcome corruption, superficiality and propaganda.
Do yourself a favour: INVESTIGATE! Journalism is about finding facts AND uncovering the large picture. Not stigmatize those who actually do.
People, The Internet contains a lot of serious, honest & in depth "alternative press" - BCC is just not it. Instead, they've become part of those worthy of investigative journalisms critical searchlight.
http://edition.cnn.com/US/9906/07/terrorism.response/
WOULD you post this one PLEASE. For the change.
excerpt: CNN June 7 1999.
On Monday, New York opened a $13 million Emergency Operations Center. The 50,000-square-foot facility is in lower Manhattan, in a building right across the street from the World Trade Center, which Islamic militants bombed in February 1993.
The center, which will be staffed round-the-clock, will be where city leaders meet if there's ever another man-made act of terror. It will be used for natural disasters such as hurricanes, floods, heat waves and blackouts as well.
"The city is better prepared than it ever has been in its history," said Jerry Hauer, director of the center.
Why is this called "part of the conspiracy?" Did someone accuse you of that? or was it just a slip of the tongue? You consider it a conspiracy then?
Hey Richard,
Most of the media played a vital role in misleading the mass by deliberately incorrect reporting and misinformation. BBC was not any different. Although its a pity that media pillars like BBC and CNN too fall into the traps of so called "Conspiracy" but then this is a Conspiracy of monumental scale.
You know, we use the word "Conspiracy" as an Evil word however, the biggest conspiracies are executed by the Elites at the helm of Political powers. There are scores of people who see how investigation committees are put to work with premeditated findings already in their hands OR How lots of important questions are left unanswered on the pretext of "Classified" information or "National Security" issues.
Unfortunately, its media whose genuine role should be to seek the truth, whether conspiracy or no conspiracy, indulges itself in an eye-washing campaign which drives the opinion of unsuspecting masses. Time and again we are forced to the painful realization of the facts that on the one hand media is the sole authority to make changes in the world and on the other hand its media which is quickly forgetting its obligations towards the society by misusing true journalistic opportunities into horrendous tools of propaganda and misinformation.
Media, like any other institution is made up of people, people like you, and if those involved would realize their responsibilities and put forward a strong feet denying to contribute to the malicious intentions of the cartel and do their job as true journalists, I am sure the world would be a different place. The chronic issues like those in Middle East and Africa would have been sorted out decades ago and the likes of Bush & Co would not have any chance to even put a finger on the White House.
The fact of the matter is media is an institution which, by definition, has to work with out shackles - do this and you will see the world change in front of your eyes - in our life times.
Kris,
let me see if I understand you right.
This shadowy "they" were clever enough to make it look as though two planes were flowmnn into the towers. They were clever enough to "disappear" all the passengers on the plane. They were clever enough to hide all traces of explosives and detonators used to collapse buildings. They were clever enough to ensure that a group of fundamentalist terrorists were in just the right place at the right time to provide cover. Yet somehow they were not clever enough to ensure that they didnt release a press release too early???? Hmmmmm.
Something sounds a bit illogical here and to me it is your conspirac theories that dont hold water.
Some of the posts here are extremely amusing. "the conspiracy bloggers will not accept anything but their own bizaar views" Yet the same can be said of those who buy the official story. No matter which you believe, every side has errors. The scary part is that the results of 9/11 have ended in some very serious wars. The results of the conspiracy theories have ended in some very serious questions. When did we end up in a world where questions are more dangerous than wars?
BBC has been caught with their pants down. Even if it's an accident that shows that they don't even take 5mins to verify the stuff they put on air. People say, "you don't understand the chaos of a newsroom" that is a cop out. If something like 9/11 is happening I expect them to be extra careful they are providing accurate reports. Making a mistake when talking about a local car crash and making a mistake about the most important event in 60 years are far different, stop with the excuses already. The apologists are far outnumbered, glad to see I'm not the only one fed up with the massive string of "coincidences" that surround that horrible day.
COUGH UP THE SOURCE!
I wonder who told the newsdesk that WTC7 had collapsed? Anyway I does not matter. Everyone knows that Bin Laden was behind the attacks! Get a life folks!
Hi,
* Thomas wrote:
There is no point in trying to engage irrational people in rational debate. These conspiracy nuts are not interested in facts, only their own feeble imaginations and the possibility of being lifted out of well-deserved obscurity by being controversial for a while.
Stop wasting time and money addressing a tiny number of your web viewers that insist on claiming that the sky is pink with red dots.
First of all You are the 'NUT', how can you believe a building can collapse straight down in 7 seconds without the use of explosives?
Your knowledge of science is so bad, I think only you could believe the sky is green if BBC told you so (By the way have you witness a sunset? colours like pink and red are far from unlikely...)
Check this picture of a building in Madrid who burned for hours and yet did not collapse on itself:
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/analysis/compare/windsor.html
Furthermore building 7, otherwise known as the Salomon Brothers building, was intentionally designed to allow large portions of floors to be permanently removed without weakening the structural integrity of the building.
In 1989 the New York Times reported on this fact in a story covering the Salomon leasing of the building which had been completed just two years earlier.
Salomon had wanted to build a new structure in order to house its high-technology operations, but due to stock market crash in 1987 it was unable to. The company searched for an existing building that they could use and found one in Larry Silverstein's WTC 7.
The Times reported:
BEFORE it moves into a new office tower in downtown Manhattan, Salomon Brothers, the brokerage firm, intends to spend nearly two years and more than $200 million cutting out floors, adding elevators, reinforcing steel girders, upgrading power supplies and making other improvements in its million square feet of space...
In some office buildings, that alteration would be impossible, but Silverstein Properties tried to second-guess the needs of potential tenants when it designed Seven World Trade Center as a speculative project.
''We built in enough redundancy to allow entire portions of floors to be removed without affecting the building's structural integrity, on the assumption that someone might need double-height floors,'' said Larry Silverstein, president of the company. ''Sure enough, Salomon had that need...
MORE than 375 tons of steel - requiring 12 miles of welding - will be installed to reinforce floors for Salomon's extra equipment. Sections of the existing stone facade and steel bracing will be temporarily removed so that workers using a roof crane can hoist nine diesel generators onto the tower's fifth floor, where they will become the core of a back-up power station.
Is there more to say?
Who is irrational now?
Dear Mr Porter,
I don't like conspiracy theories. I like facts. Here are some:
The BBC news anchor said: "I was talking a few moments ago about the Salomon building collapsing and indeed it has". This is a statement of fact, not hearsay, and in spite of the building still standing. Incidentally, CNN reported exactly the same, at the same time, using similar wording - 20 minutes too early.
Then, 20 minutes later, the building in question collapses at free-fall speed, in the way buildings fall during controlled demolition.
Don't insult our intelligence. BBC and CNN were reading from the same script that day. Who wrote that script?
Nice try indeed, but i recognise a setup when i see one.
this video was intentionaly leaked by the BBC itself for the sole purpose of having something to make fun of.
i suppose next your going to 'announce' it is a fake to make everone who has some '?'s' look insane?
funny how the only things labeled truth had all been previously provided with a pricetag, whereas all things labled as 'truth' seem to be untaxable.
tell me something boys, just how exactly am i supposed to believe a single word out of any of you when information has become a comodity?
don't you think that when BBC gets overtaken by the grapevine that it is time for a serious reevaluation of morals and dogma?
Chez moi on dit: "éteignez la télé": switch your TV off. Because
(Panem et circenses) our television only provides the games. Is that what you're aiming at, instead of honest (if not accurate) information ?
Wow, you can tell we are getting mad as a public RIGHT!?
Stop covering up the truth. 9/11 was an inside job. FACT!
The firefighters who claimed that WTC7 was gonna come down just reported what they had been told by an anonym source in the OEM- like right before the collapse of the South Tower. See Cooperativeresearch.org
Giuliani knew it, too.
2 bizarre coincidences? Why does the source remain anonym? He(or whatever) is a hero!
Dear Richard,
Your explanations are not good enough and the story is not over. As I license fee payer I expect the BBC to deliver quality programming and news reporting. What is odd about this explanation that the BBC had foreknowledge (up to an hour?) of WT7's collapse is that so few others did. Where was your nearest reporter to the scene? It so happens that my brother (who lives in Manhatten) went downtown on his pushbike that afternoon, and without trying too hard got through the cordon. He was about a block away from WTC7 when he heard a very big rumble. He thought it was the subway. But as soon as he realised the subways were shut down, a group of firemen came running towards him shouting at him to turn and run. I find it very odd that the BBC 3500 miles away knew the building was about to collapse long before these firemen. As I said in the post I sent yesterday (which I do not see above) there are far too many unanswered questions about the events of that day. And it is time that the BBC and other mainstream media started to ask them, rather than blindly accept the explanations they have been spoon-fed by the authorities. I should also like to say that it find the many of the comments from debunkers insulting and offensive. I am not crazy, nuts, or a fantacist, or a loon. As I mentioned in the post I submitted yesterday, I have a first class degree in Science, and have more faith in the laws of physics than governments and politicians. The Laws of Physics dictate that WTC1, WTC2, and WTC7 could not have fallen so fast without the use of explosive cutter charges being detonated at basement levels. It is up to the people who believe the official explanation to explain how fire could atomise the twin towers and also cause collapse of all three towers at free-fall speed. If you are all so convinced of the official explanation please ask any physics professor to explain how the towers could have fallen so fast, without the fundamental laws of physics (i.e. the conservation of momentum) being broken. It is impossible to do so, therefore the towers did not fall from fire alone. Hence journalists should start to do their jobs. (Late is better than never). The evidence for the use of explosives is there; traces of sulphur have been found on steel beams, there is siesmic data, and many video and eyewitness reports which corroborate the use of explosives. If you don't start to ask questions the BBC will look very silly when the truth does come out (and 911 was such a big operation it is only a matter of time).
PLEASE DO NOT CENSOR THIS POST, and please post the one I submitted yesterday. Yours in Hope, Andrew.
Is your source NYC Mayor Rudi Guillani ?
He seems to have known about the collapse of WTC7 at least from 11:30 .
"By 11:30 a.m., the fire commander in charge of that area, Assistant Chief Frank Fellini, ordered firefighters away from [WTC 7] for safety reasons."
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/29/nyregion/29TOWE.html?ex=1115092800&en=389855dfb7f35e3e&ei=5070&oref=login
You will need an account to see the original story, I'm certain the BBC has one .
Sir,
It is clear you are just waiting for us all to go away.
We won't.
We want the source.
Please don't miss this opportunity to do the right thing.
The term 'Conspiracy theorist' really does a disservice to the word 'theory'. 'Conspiracy fantasist' would be nearer the mark. I am dismayed at how many people commenting on this blog appear to be using it as a means to play out their fantasy of appearing in The X-Files.
This is a BBC blog, people, not a Congressional hearing. Richard Porter is a BBC producer, not the Smoking Man. Go back to gazing at that poster of Dana Scully on your bedroom wall. There really is no story here.
dave said -
How to be a 'truther':
Lesson 1
See straw
View straw from one angle
Reach out
Clutch straw
Hold on to straw despite all evidence telling you that straw is just a figment of your imagination
There, you're a 'truther'
No dave - A "truther" Is someone wants to know the damn truth!
BBC is the perfect example of controlled media. I can't believe you Brits let them extort money from you, to pay for the government propaganda. This should discredit the 9/11 "hit-piece" that recently aired. Consider the source. Bring back balanced journalism.
So BBC reported scuttle butt in the heat of the moment.
It would seem that you are far better at reporting scuttle butt than technological and scientific inquiry when it comes to Building 7.
If it looks like a duck, smells like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck it must be a black and white Holstein cow.
That seems to be the medias answer yet if you take the question to a demolition expert or qualified independent architectural engineer they continue to indicate that what we have here may very well indeed be a duck and it’s BBC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX and their ilk that are doing the ducking.
Quote
"The scary part is that the results of 9/11 have ended in some very serious wars. The results of the conspiracy theories have ended in some very serious questions. When did we end up in a world where questions are more dangerous than wars?"
Wow, a very serious point!
Hi, I watched a video from 911 of a NYPD officer telling firefighters to get away from building 7 because it was going to get "blown up" in a few minutes. The building didn't have fires raging throughout, it had several small fires. Why didn't it tip over? Firefighters and EMT workers have actually admitted in interviews that there actually a 20 second countdown over wtc7's loudspeakers before the building collapsed. In the videos you can see the firefighters responding to the sharp loud explosions coming from WTC7 before the building collapses. They are standing at a payphone calling people with WTC7 a hundred yards away in the background. There are actually eyewitness' claiming that people knew it would be demolished.
This whole argument is such a joke at this point. Even the EMT people were told they were bringing the building down. There's video evidence of this. Alex Jones has been doing a great job accumulating these video's.
Oh yeah, what's up with the Black boxes found by Nick DeMassi at WTC complex? FBI picked them up but denies it, Nick Demassi and his partner admit he and others were told by the FBI to shut up about it. NTSB spokesmen later admitted they had them but had no knowledge of what was found on them.
Why no reporting on this story?
To verify this story, all Jane had to do was to look over her shoulder but NO she continued to read the pre scripted stroy...
Who told her that it was down?
Who told the BBC it was down ?
Are you to scared to realease the truth?
Can we be told where was Jane Standley was on that day between 13:26 and 14:08 and in the later, more controversial shot around 17:00?
Here is a link to her earlier in the day:
http://www.archive.org/movies/thumbnails.php?identifier=bbc200109111326-1408
She also appeared briefly in the next BBC World sequence (where she was lost due to communication problems). She appears to be standing in front of some windows, but in this footage (only available as thumbnails alas, and audio) the NY skyline does not look quite right, as the buildings don't appear aligned between the middle "pane" and that to at the left of the screen.
The smoke is moving to the left in the middle frame, but it does not appear in the next pane. This may of course just be a limitation of the thimbnails and will be resolved if and when the movie clip appears, but the same odd discrepancy was there in the post 17:00 footage, except there, the cameraman or studio zoomed to hide what looked like a shiny, foggy reflection in a metal vertical frame to the rear left of Jane where the smoke was definitely moving to the right! The earlier footage window frame also has a handle, but the later shot did not. Did she move? Is it green screen image, or is there some other explanation?
The People demand answers, Mr. Porter. I am not of the camp that suggests that the BBC knowing and intentionally set out to distort the truth of the incident; however, your constant dissembling is cause for suspicion. As I have posted elsewhere, the solution is simple: a realistic investigation into the source of the report of building 7's collapse. Until the BBC performs its duty as a public service first, and as a pruveyor of reliable information, a showdow will be forever cast over your credibility. The People Demand Answers, Mr. Porter! Surrender to the will of The People! Publish the source of the report, make the neccessary appologies and make known the suspicious circumstances and feeble explanations regarding the collapse of the building. Have you ever seen footage of Building 7's collapse? Stop hiding from what you know to be the case and come clean. In doing so you will protect not only your own journalistic integrity, but that of your entire organization.
Once again. Source please......
The truth will prevail
The opposite to a conspiracy (cover up) theory is a coincidence theory. Simple maths should give you probabilities with that one.
Once primary and physical evidence has been displayed then an unbeliever must be an anti-conspiracy nut. There are hundreds perhaps thousands of documented anomalies with the 'offical' 911 version. To the trolls - have a think. ciao.
For Goodness sake, The man from the BBC is telling the truth, unlike many of the posters on here, look in the mirror people!!!
Still here, Richard.
SOURCE PLEASE!
Just tell us WHO THE SOURCE WAS!
And please, stop saying there's 'no story here', as license fee payers, we pay your salaries, so please don't talk down to us!
And it's taken a 'week' to come up with this explanation?
Come on!
Source Please!
I'd love to see the BBC do a proper debunking of all the 9/11 conspiracies. It would be very reassuring. This wasn't it though. None of the serious issues were dealt with; most weren't even raised. In the interests of balanced programming the BBC should now air the much more rigorous "Press For Truth".
Saw this advert recently.....
Tbe BBC needs investigative journalists and news reporters to seek out what is really happening in the world...
No..only kidding!
So the BBC is happy to report things and whether or not they turn out to be true, will not correct their mistake. How can we be satisfied that we are gaining knowledge from the mainstream media if this is all we are to expect?
If there is no story here then why are you afraid of this tape spreading? Who persuaded google video to wipe it and why won't youtube put it in it's most viewed? Clearly you must realise, as we do, the internet's power in allowing people to find things out for themselves.
im not a conspiracy nut, but i will say this:
the bbc "conspiracy files" programme on 9/11 was embarrissingly flawed.
eg.
1. the programme says that 9/11 conspiracy theories offend and hurt families of the victims and survivors. this is just not true. just do a little research.
2. on the programme some kid with a laptop outside says that "if you look at all the evidence, the idea that wtc 7 was brought down by controlled demolition holds no water". yet bbc could not even tells us who this person was, or show any of this evidince.
the bbc could not even come close to answering many of the questions surrounding that day. they just focused on explaining a few unimportant coincidences.
i was a big fan of the bbc but this programme alone has lost them a lot of credibility.
finally, i haven't heard anyone mention the fact that when wtc 7 collapsed you can see the top floors fall in as the whole building is collapsing. how can you explain this if it collapsed due to fire which was towards the bottom of the building?
I too would like you to investigate the source that gave this information to the media. There clearly are a lot of unexplained issues to do with 9/11, and since then, and the 'dodgy' intelligence that was used to launch the Iraq war it is clear that a large amount of people in this country who no longer trust our government to tell us the truth. I am one of those. I hear the same sort of rhetoric and double speak being spoken about Iran, and we need to know that there is a trusted source out there, so that we can trust the BBC as the war mongers build up to another catastrophic invasion or bombing campaign...and i dont think a lot of people are prepared to take trust on face value anymore, it needs to be earnt - from the BBC, from Government, from intellignece services. So, please, can you find out what the source of this story was. As an addendum, it is intersting that the assasination of JFK was reported in New Zealand media also before it could have been - if one was planning a conspiracy, on such large scales, of course one would have the media sound bites already prepared, you would have a need to set the news agenda from the get-go. this is not to suggest that the BBC is part of a conspiracy, but if there was one, it is probable that you would be used as an unsuspecting mouth peice of a conspiracy.
I commend the BBC for performing well at an event unprecedented in human history.
Unfortunately, part of the survival instincts of our species is the ability to detect patterns even where there are none. We see images of animals in the stars, we see current events through the lens of ancient religious writings and we have a powerful impulse to find meaning in horrific acts of random violence.
The idea that a "conspiracy" could exist involving thousands of co-conspirators who had nothing to gain by it is a ridiculous concept, but that will not deter some people from needing to believe that it exists.
It is both a compliment and a curse that you are seen as a source of truth in this often insane world, and I don't envy your burden.
Richard... still awaiting the source. Comon now you didnt think we were just going to forget about this did you?
It's interesting that American news organizations don't investigate British government conspiracies when the terrorist attack happens to our friends in Europe. As an American I can tell you exactly what I was doing, what I was wearing, and what the weather was like when the WTC was attacked. Do you know what the first thing I said was? "I hope the US doesn't try to go it alone. We should wait on UN resolution." I regret those words now. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.
Please be good enough to print this message, unlike the two previous ones from myself which you have ignored.
Mr. Porter,
1) NAME THE SOURCE.
2) EXPLAIN EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR TAPES FROM THAT TRANSMISSION.
I simply ask you to answer the questions above.
Thank you.
I made a formal complaint to the BBC about their intelligence-insulting attempts, in this blog, to cover up and obfuscate the truth about the 9/11, WTC7 related live BBC footage, thankfully now freely available all over the web.
The BBC's response? A mass-produced email which links me to this site. The same site I complained about!
Shameful - and painfully transparent - attempt to stonewall, deny, spin, FUD and lie. BBC, you are caught with your subsidised pants down again.
What was the BBC's source for the collapse of a building which was still standing behind your reporter when she reported it, live on air?
Can't answer? Won't answer? Daren't answer? Just who is the BBC ultimately accountable to? Do the BBC really believe these questions will go away just because the BBC refuses to answer them?
Seems to me a lot of people here believe the biggest conspiracy of them all - the official story. Anyway we pay the license fee, please state the source of your information.
sorry, but I'm still not convinced, and i doubt any clear-thinking individual will be. what's all this waffle for ? is it so difficult to track back where you got the information from in the first place ,or why it was so definite and precise,or why the sudden interruption of the live feed when the tower actually collapsed ?
Do you usually report on speculations ?
as someone just put before, either way you've discredited yourself completely and this entry is even more pathetic than the first . cant believe it took you a week investigation to come to this.
Let's get this straight: the report aired at 21:54 (9:54pm) Greenwich time, per the time-stamped clip that has circulated, right? The building fell at 5:20 New York time? And for half a month now, hundreds or thousands of people have been arguing about why the report preceded the collapse?
If the above is correct, then everybody is an idiot: the BBC, Alex Jones, and everybody who has posted to this thread so far! The report came after the building fell, just as one would expect. 21:54 Greenwich time is 5:54pm in New York in September, not 4:54.
Unless FEMA's time for the collapse is EST, not EDT, which would be unusual for September, the only story here is that hundreds of people have overlooked the obvious. The only lesson is that we need to do a much better job of educating people in science, math, and basic reasoning.
For the record, I think 9/11 was an inside job, and the collapse of all three buildings does look to me like controlled demolition. But unless I've missed something, the BBC's story did not precede the collapse of WTC7.
To John.
Don't dismiss the entire 9/11 truth movement just because it carries the unfortunate label "conspiracy theory".
After years and years of churning over the evidence, its common that the only response to "conspiracists" is to accuse them of being irrational or fanatical rather than actually talking facts with them.
If you want to attempt to dismiss the entire 9/11 truth movement you'd have to give a decent explanation to how WTC7 collapsed symettrically and at freefall speed with only cosmetic damage, and BBC would have to proove that their premature report on WTC7 was just a fluke by stating their source.
Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?....
My lying eyes are showing me some things that need real investigation, not some pap response of a holier than thou attitude.
It's the way that mainstream media is looking to be a puppet of the real conspirators (in my opinion probably military) without even trying to do it's supposed job of investigative journalism that is so disappointing.
I don't care who did it or why... it's done, and I am certain that I will never be near the truth becoming apparent to me, or any of you who read this.
But the poor old beeb has dropped down to the waste of time pile for me.
And to those who think that saying the martians are behind it is a clever way of putting down people with true concerns, they might as well go back to being force fed television news for their version of sanitised truth.
Come on mister editor, please try to put up a more coherent and believable response, we are all adults.
You did miss something. It was 4.54. Watch the clip. Even if anyone is brave enough to claim that the timestamps are false, WTC7 is standing tall in the live shot.
I bet this post won't be put up though. This is my fifth comment that won't be posted, and yet someone with their facts wrong gets posted. nice.
Cough up the source BBC! Those on the side of the official story and those against it should be equally determined to find out the BBC's source for that report.
To BillDunc
You say it's unfounded to assume that within the vast 9/11 conspiracy there were a few errors of execution on the day? So you would dismiss that whole theory and choose to believe that
1.the collapse of WTC7 was reported preemtively by pure fluke
2. that WTC7 (and the towers) displayed all the key signs of a demolition by chance
3.that it fell symettrically dispite asymettrical damage by chance, and
4. this building was one of the three steel frame buildings in history to collapse from fire,and all on the same day, by chance.
Is it really so irrational to search for and believe in a more realistic explanation of these events, even if it does offend our comfort zones?
Which part of that is illogical?
Hey, Mark Ortiz (#329)! Forget about the time zones. You can actually SEE the building while the muppet reporter tells us that the building's gone... So, even if the report was sent hours later, "the song remains the same". Sorry, nice try!
A little investigative journalism please... You can ignore us all you want, but this story is NOT going away, Richard!
1. Who was the official source for BBC World's report on the collapse of WTC7 on 11/09/01?
2. What are the circumstances surrounding the 'cock-up' which led to the loss of BBC World News' original 9/11 footage?
C'mon Richard, you're a journalist! "I don't know whether they were destroyed or mislaid" just doesn't cut it...
3. Who cut reporter Jane Standley's live feed from NYC at 5:18pm (EST) on 11/09/01 and why?
Still waiting...
BBC have really shot themselves in the foot with the whole 9/11 issue. They could still remedy the whole situation without too much effort.
1. State the source for the Standley report.
2. Admit that their documentary on 9/11 was biased and tacky, and make a new one that doesn't have any blatent misdirection.
3. Post this message.
'Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is being attacked, and every man will be glad of these conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.' - Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger (1916).
To Mark Ortiz (332):
"Let's get this straight: the report aired at 21:54 (9:54pm) Greenwich time, per the time-stamped clip that has circulated, right?"
W-R-O-N-G. The report aired at 21:54 (9:54pm) British Summer Time (BST). British Summer Time in London is one hour ahead of Greenwith time and five hours ahead of Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) in New York. Make your own time conversions here http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html
Please do a better research before calling everyone an idiot. :)
"The only lesson is that we need to do a much better job of educating people in science, math, and basic reasoning." I cannot agree more with you on this one.
To head of news at BBC World:
Dear Mr. Head of News,
Please disclose the source and make it first-page news at BBC as soon as possible.
This is vital in order to prevent a war in Iran and a nuclear disaster that will bring the end to the world.
Yes, it is that serious.
Thank you.
I still trust you and have no doubts that you will post my comment.
This is to address Mark Ortiz:
Your independent thinking is appreciated, and your calculation is correct, but the premise is not. You heard that "the report aired at 21:54 (9:54pm) Greenwich time, per the time-stamped clip that has circulated". I don't know where you have this information from but it's not what the Director of Collections at the Internet Archive - who did the original encoding from broadcast to internet-viewable format - stated:
Date: 2001-09-11 20:54:47 UTC
Air Time: 2001-09-11 16:54:47 EDT
Length: 0:41:41
More details here:
http://www.archive.org/details/bbc200109111654-1736
You can even decipher from the URL that the video covers the time between 16:54 and 17:36.
Besides, another clip from BBC 24 (not BBC World) also reports the collapse prematurely. This one does have an on-screen time stamp.
(Funny then that Richard Porter said in his first blog entry that the BBC 24 tapes "don't help clear up the issue one way or another.")
All this aside, the visual evidence is undisputable: WTC-7 is visible in the background as correspondent Jane Standley talks about its collapse in past tense. This renders the whole timezone debate irrelevant.
The only argument that could then still be made is that the scene was green-screened. However, in the context of preceding and subsequent segments, one can safely conclude that - to put it cautiously - the probability of this is approaching zero.
Sorry Mark... have you seen the film?
I don't know where you learnt to count but...
It was around 2pm here when the first plane hit, which was around 9am in New York, now to me that's a 5 hour difference, not 4.
So 5 pm New York is still 10 pm here.
You are also neglecting one large fact. The one about the building still standing behind the Reporter?
Sorry if you feel a bit of an idiot.
Mark (332) - your time calculations must be wrong - how else could the WTC7 building still be standing behind Jane when she is discussing how it has just collapsed with the anchor back in London? (look at the BBC World feed if you don't believe me). However I agree with you about the need to do a much better job educating people in science and maths. If more people (especially journalists) had a basic understanding of Newton's Laws and the Conservation of Momentum they would question how both WTC1 and WTC2 could have fallen in only 10 seconds, without the use of explosives to cut the support columns at ground level. Richard - please tell us the source, and don't censor this post, as my previous two have been.
Bring back Greg Dyke.
I expect this comment to be deleted. But I shall add my tuppence worth.
The BBC is not accused of being the conspiracy. Ad nauseam. It does however strike me as odd that this story appears to have been quashed be the rest of the media. Not one mention, even on the blogs of newspapers. Google and Youtube 'pulling' or sitting on the video and preventing it's appearance on the frontpage or most popular lists. Very Strange.
I would love to think that Aunty and her employees would work to find whatever the truth is rather than evade the question WHO/WHAT IS THE SOURCE?
HOWEVER - we all know what happened with Andrew Gillingham when he blew the whistle. And the resulting mess with Dr David Kelly. - and Dr Kellys death was the subject of another 'conspiracy' busting programme by the BBC.
The UK government removed the BBC's management after the above scandal re Kelly/WMD's in Iraq - and installed their own people. Who now can believe a word from the BBC? Who employs this editor?
It is a tragic shame.
Bring back Greg Dyke, please.
I think the BBC and the media could do a lot to diffuse some of the anger about 9-11 by simply admitting there are some very reasonable and serious objections to the official story. The media doesn't even have to agree with the alternatives to the "official conspiracy theory". All the media has to do is take a neutral position and cover both sides of the event. However, when the media begins to try and "sell" one side versus the other, the media has gone beyond reporting. Instead, the media has become a biased advocate. This makes the media look like they are involved in a conspiracy--and they are. The media is deadly silent about legitimate concerns. They should notice this "deadly silence" is deadly for them. From what I have seen, the media is doing a very poor job "selling" the official conspiracy theory. Therefore, why doesn't the media try and get back to reporting the news instead of making the news. In the United States, the news has become very, very trivial. What used to be considered tabloid news has become the mainstream news. It is a sad day when people have to get an "alternative view" from the internet instead of the media. The media is quickly killing off their audience, their reputation and their once neutral and unbiased image. The media is also suffering from their 9/11. This is very sad. It is making many of us feel alienated and isolated from an obviously "filtered" form of reporting. I once turned to the media for information. I know better now. I think I was naive to consider the media a good source of information. I actually get more news from ordinary people, such as bloggers, who inadvertently mix truth and falsehood. At least it is their truthful and candid opinion. At least I don't have to worry that something is being exchanged behind the scenes for the truth. Wake up! Without truth, and unbiased reporting the media is dead. If you decide to abandon the truth, you have a very short term job indeed. (Incidentally 21:54 minus a five hour differential is 16:54 or 4:54 pm. The World Trade Center 7 came down at 5:20 pm. This is after 4:54 pm.)
Number #332
Yes, my friend, you did miss something. Something small - the fact that the building is still standing right behind the reporter as we are being told that it has collapsed.
Richard, are you just ignoring this now in the hope that it will go away? This story has only just begun! Please provide the source.
Number 332 is missing the point here. The time code is irrelevant as the collapse of WTC7 was reported while the building was clearly still standing in the background of the live news feed.
If you make an error in reporting an event then shouldn't you admit to that right away ? It's my understanding that the live feed was broken 5 minutes prior to the actual collapse of WTC7 - Safe to say that Jane Standley, members of her support crew, or other BBC staff would have been aware of the actual collapse perhaps ? If so, why wasn't this "error" reported immediately ?
Or did they think it was yet another building collapsing - If that was the case they probably should have reported it shouldn't they ? (You could have called it WTC8 or just made up some arbitrary number perhaps)
Or perhaps no-one noticed the massive building falling - I guess that's it...
I find it hard to believe that nobody at the BBC was aware of this mistake until now. Conspiracy on a higher level ? Perhaps, but definitely a little window into the dodgy workings of a supposedly impeccable news source.
Conspiracy or not, you very much deserve every bit of attention you're now getting for your handling of this story - Both then and very much now.
To clarify for everyone - BBC News 24 was using British Summer Time on 9/11 and New York was using Eastern Daylight Time. There is a five hour difference between the two.
This is for Mark.
I apologise for that previous post, reading it again, just now, i realise it is a lot harsher than i meant it to be.
If you make an error in reporting an event then shouldn't you admit to that right away ? It's my understanding that the live feed was broken 5 minutes prior to the actual collapse of WTC7 - Safe to say that Jane Standley, members of her support crew, or other BBC staff would have been aware of the actual collapse perhaps ? If so, why wasn't this "error" reported immediately ?
Or did they think it was yet another building collapsing - If that was the case they probably should have reported it shouldn't they ? (You could have called it WTC8 or just made up some arbitrary number perhaps)
Or perhaps no-one noticed the massive building falling - I guess that's it...
I find it hard to believe that nobody at the BBC was aware of this mistake until now. Conspiracy on a higher level ? Perhaps, but definitely a little window into the dodgy workings of a supposedly impeccable news source.
Conspiracy or not, you very much deserve every bit of attention you're now getting for your handling of this story - Both then and very much now.
"Theres no story here"
Nice! This should end up the 564th comment on bbc.co.uk about this issue. That one sentence from you sums up the authoritarian and blatantly biased and misleading approach the BBC has toward its audience about 9/11. How stupid do you think we are?
All were asking is that you state your source, and maybe just maybe somewhere deep down we would like to think that we could turn to the BBC to bridge the gap between what the internet can tell us about 9/11 and what the media has been telling us all this time. Maybe BBC havent woken up to the fact the media is losing power and the propaganda we are fed stands out clearly against the primary sources and facts that are only available to those who search online for it. Luckily there were "conspiracist nutjobs" paranoid enough to store the BBC's WTC7 report to their hard drives as soon as it came out, otherwise the attempts at censorship of this clip on the internet might have actually worked and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Please post this one I'm actually defending the BBC here, something quite rare on this forum!
I honestly don't think the BBC aren't the enemy here. They didn't read the script because they wanted to, but because they HAD to. The demand for the BBC to state their source already implies that the source was some news feed. If Paulo on comment 93 ( a coincidence) is telling the truth, we should be asking whether or not our government was the source, or should I say script writer.
I have three questions now.
1. Did the BBC submit control over its transmissions to the government on 9/11/01 under Section 8.3 - BBC Agreement - Department of National Heritage 1995
2.Is the BBC allowed or willing to give an honest answer to that?
3. Am I ( and thats a capital I) allowed to ask that question to the BBC?
If I'm not allowed to ask, then this post probably won't be submitted, in which case my first two questions remain.
"Sorry if you feel a bit of an idiot."
Hold on there Tinraven @335, no need to resort to name calling.
Sorry if you feel more intellegent than eveybody and have to call people idiots on teh internets to reinforce this delusion.
Ok Mark Ortiz, here is where you went wrong.
You are confused on timezones and daylight savings time.
The building fell at 17:20 EDT (5:20). EDT is Eastern Daylight Time which is -5 UTC/GMT which means the UK was at 21:20 UTC when it fell.
The UK and New york were in daylight savings time on 9/11.
This means that the building fell at 18:20 EST (eastern summer time) / 22:20 BST (british summer time).
The time stamp you used (21:54) is in BST. Which is 20:54 UTC.
Greenwich time is UTC!
This means that the 21:54 timestamp on the ticker is 20:54 UTC = 16:54 EDT = before 17:20 EDT which is when the building fell!
I don't find it hard to believe that the report of WTC7 collapsing before it did was just the result of Chinese Whispers.
As another person has said above, the fact that WTC7 was in the background of the report makes the mix-up sound slightly unlikely. But you have to remember that at that time nobody really had a clue which building was WTC7. If I was doing that report and somebody saif in my ear that "...We're hearing that WTC20 has just collapsed...", it would make no difference at all that there may be no such building, I don't know that. I'm just going to do my job and report what I'm hearing.
Why is it so hard for some people to accept that a news report might just have been wrong? The newsroom atmosphere is not going to get much more frantic than 24 hour rolling news coverage of 911. Which wire the erroneous report originates from doesn't actually make much difference. It's still totally plausible that the mistake could have happened there for the same reasons.
The idea that the event was scripted is laughable. Frankly, anyone who thinks that the destruction of WTC7 and coverage of the event by several massive news organisations being scripted is more plausible than a news report just being wrong in the heat of the moment, is possibly too deluded to bother arguing with.
I have sympathy with Richard Porter. If he doesn't follow-up, his silence will be taken as evidence of a conspiracy. If he tries to reply he has no chance of debunking all the accusations here becuase there are so many of them and it will invite another load of spam. I can understand that he wants to get on with editing BBC World, rather than debunking conspiracies.
328 Charity Gard (12th) I beg you to take the blinkers off---for the sake of your country's future. You make it sound like it was something to be proud of that no reporting was made of European 'Attacks'in the US press, how kind of them. The fact is that---NO true reporting was done by the US media of any distinction--on 9/11 either. Yes, lets pretend that the 'Official' report is flawless, and forget about everything--eh?
Dear Richard,
You can continue to ignore us, Richard, but we're not going away...
In the name of journalistic integrity, would you please provide answers to the follwing questions:
1. What are the circumstances surrounding the 'cock-up' which led to the disappearance of BBC World's 9/11 footage? As you said in your own words: "I don't know whether they were destroyed or mislaid". Dear God, Richard, you're a journalist... FIND OUT WHETHER THEY WERE DESTROYED OR MISLAID!
2. As you said in your own words in reference to the report on WTC 7 collapse: "We did what we always did - sourced all our reports". Would you be kind enough to share with us the identity of your PRIMARY source for your premature report on the collapse of WTC 7?
3. Who/what cut Jane Standley's live feed from NYC at 5:18pm EST on 9/11/01 mere minutes before the real-time collapse of WTC7?
Many thanks for your continued attention to this matter!
Ok heres another one of the much loved "outrageous conspiracy theories", with absolutely no evidence to go on. But the question as the end is a fair one. Hope you like it!
The "source" of this obviously scripted report was the British Government, and they siezed control over the BBC on 9/11. (read comment 93).
It is not outrageous to assume that if the US government was involved, then the British governement would be with them. We ended up being fed myths about WMD's and we ended up by America's side in Iraq, so it's not insane to ask whether our own government was somehow involved in 9/11 as well.
The insentive for taking over the BBC would be to ensure that the official story was fed to the public from the moment the events occured, and I'd even go so far as to say that since so many news stations reported it too soon, the demolision itself was delayed but everyone wasn't informed.
It explains why the BBC could report the collapse without clarifying it, (evidentally none of them even knew which building they were talking about), and it explains why they were so shameless in reporting how and why the building collapsed, given that normally all possibilities are left open until an investigation draws conclusions. It also explains why the BBC is so dismissive of the issue-it's their duty to whitewash the whole thing as part of the coverup.
My simple question is, Are we PERMITTED to know if the government siezed control of the BBC on 9/11? If we are permitted to know that, then it might be worth finding out if that's true. That would explain why we're not getting the journalistic "source".
Once again, state the source BBC and I'll stop thinking these terrible things!
Richard
As you well know, the complete lack of independent reporting in broadcast media news delivery in the UK/US stems from completely closed-door editorial decision-making. No public exposure/record of this process, which is ironical from the "publically funded" BBC will allow such government manipulation of the masses as we see in this biggest hoax of the modern era.
Please post this, as my previous 3 submissions have been deleted.
A proper review of 911 is desparately needed to restore the BBC's credibility which is now zero.
Thank you Mr Porter, we can understand that the BBC simply 'overheard' rumours that WTC7 was about to fall. But our problem is with the source, and why they decided to release this rumour.
Isn't it suspicious that a 47 storey building collapsed at free fall speed in perfect symmetry even though it wasn't hit by a plane, while structures much closer to the twin towers like WTC6 and WTC5 suffered greater damage and fire but didn't collapse? Isn't it even more suspicious that someone predicted this would happen 1 hour earlier despite the fact that FIRE ALONE had never before (or after) lead to the destruction of a steel frame building prior to WTC7? So why for example didn't you hear reports saying WTC3,4,5 or 6 was about to collapse? Why WTC7??
Your comment 'there is no story here' is far from true. The story is very fishy indeed!
The point is that the piece *could* have been spliced by someone with malicious intentions given the alleged "hit piece" a week or so earlier by the BBC on 18th February. There is no point referring to what folk at the Internet Archive say, or to auxiliary files associated with the source file in dispute, for what should be obvious reasons (look into the nature of the Wayback Machine at www.archive.org).
Or, the footage broadcast that day could have been questions put by the anchor to a non-live Jane Standley who was recorded earlier and just played on the monitor to questions raised by the anchor (Jane featured on the phone shortly after 9am that day and was allegedly on corner of 6th Avenue and Grand for most of the day, having featured on BBC World at around 14:00 as well, so there would have been lots of footage surely?).
All sorts of things are technically possible other than the BBC's complicity in some dark conspiracy.
I've raised a number of counterfactuals/hypotheticals along such lines over the past couple of weeks (some of which have not made it onto this blog for reasons best known to the editor), and I did so really just to show the neglect of alternatives in preference for the more outlandish, less likely, conspiracy theories.
The one mentioned above would have made the BBC look a little naughty, but, I'm sure such things are done by some broadcasters (probably without newsdesk or interviewees knowledge), and is just put down to editorial licence). After all, if Blue Peter can do it, why not BBC World!
Your words Richard:
"Obviously I wish we'd kept hold of the World tapes alongside all the others, but we didn't... and I don't know whether they were destroyed or mislaid." - Richard Porter, Head of News for BBC World
You're a journalist, right?! Here's an idea... FIND OUT WHETHER THEY WERE DESTROYED OR MISLAID!
Mr Porter,
You have ignored our questions concerning the source of the news that WTC 7 had collapsed before it had done so and who is resposible for gross misconduct inside your publicly owned company concerning the loss of the 9/11 footage from BBC World.
We pay the license fee and your salary.
You work for us. So please do your job properly.
You have shown much bias towards what we were told had happened, this makes you appear to be a poor journalist.
You have twisted the issue to confuse the general public by claiming that the BBC is being identified as part of a 'conspiracy'. I won't tell you to read the dictionary to learn the definition of the word (you don't show you know it), but I will tell you that this kind of 'spin' is usually used in the playground to displace blame.
I may be wrong. Your current silence on this issue may indicate you are hard at work, getting detailed explanations to answer all points raised so far.
I also have not seen this subject reported on BBC world. Does this mean that these issues and associated evidence, are only worthy of inclusion in the next biased 'hit piece' using dated, rejected evidence?
Then again, my eyes are not glued to the TV. Did I miss any such reports?
Whatever the case may be, I am giving you until 10/04/2007 (DD/MM/YYYY) to report on anything, before I use the BBC formal complaints procedure.
Hi Richard, it's nearly a month now, and I as a license fee payer am still waiting for you to explain who or what the source was for the BBC stating that WTC7 had collapsed, 23 minutes before it did. As I said in one of my previous posts (I have lost count now and they have all been ignored or censored), there is too much evidence suggesting the use of explosives in the collapse of WTC7 and the twin towers for the truth not to come out sooner or later. The BBC could do wonders for its global credibility if it began to investigate just some of the anomolies in the official 911 story. Sure, there are some very difficult questions to be asked, but isn't that what professional journalists are supposed to do? Or is the BBC just going to wait 17 years like it did before it started to investigate the story of BA149? Please tell us the source, and then start to ask just how those towers could have fallen so quickly and been turned to dust without the use of explosives. Mysterious power-downs and workmen on the empty floors the weeks before, camera tripods shaking and siesmic data suggesting violent tremors occurring seconds before the towers actually started to collapse, many convincing eyewitness reports of explosions on upper and at sub-basement levels, and pools of molten metal found in the rubble many weeks afterwards which could not have been heated by any kerosene fire. How can you say there is no story when there are so many unanswered questions?
"If the above is correct, then everybody is an idiot: the BBC, Alex Jones, and everybody who has posted to this thread so far! The report came after the building fell, just as one would expect. 21:54 Greenwich time is 5:54pm in New York in September, not 4:54.
Unless FEMA's time for the collapse is EST, not EDT, which would be unusual for September, the only story here is that hundreds of people have overlooked the obvious. The only lesson is that we need to do a much better job of educating people in science, math, and basic reasoning."
21:54pm BST is 16:54 EST in this timezone. We don't go to EST until October. Please don't argue timezones with a canadian, we invented it. No matter.
The fact of the matter is that the press release went out at least an hour before the actual event. The fact that the BBC failed to get it confirmed shows how unprofessional they are as a news provider. Regardless of the events happening.
At least have the courtesy of sending a reporter who actually knows the place that they are reporting from. I felt bad for Jane as the anchor at BBC pestered her for information. So much so, that she was left to make things up in order to save her job.
I feel bad for all those who were fed the "official story" without the benefit of context or evidence to actually prove that what was being said actually happened.
If I were in charge of the BBC, I'd fire the whole management for being incompetent boobs and then I would resign my post in protest of what is without a doubt the government's acquiesce to falsifying news and lying to the public in order to get ratings.
I thought there was only one place that happened and that place is the USA. So much for integrity in journalism. I'm going to get my stories from CBC and Al Jazeera from now on. At least they give you the facts. No more, no less.
Selective journalism in the age of information wreaks of corruption. Is the ghost of Hearst in our midst?
Sir,
We're still here and still wish to know the source.
where are you Richard ?
you have gone silent ??
why no response to the public we pay your wages ???
can u answer our questions or not ????
1. Who was the source who told your station that the Salomon Building had collapsed?
2. Who from the BBC ordered YouTube and GoogleVideo to immediately start pulling the videos from their sites the day this story broke?
3. Who from the BBC ordered Archive.Org to block and then remove their copies of the footage which (until this story broke) were freely available online?
4. Who is responsible for and what were the circumstances surrounding the 'cock-up' which led to the loss of BBC World News' 9/11 footage?
5. Who cut reporter Jane Standley's live feed from NYC at 5:18pm (EST) on 11/09/01?
I think Richard is being ridiculed unnecessarily, too much emotion in the responses.
The reporter states that its details are very very sketchy. This is live TV and a syndication communication failure, nothing more than that.
CNN reported that it MAY COLLAPSE, this can be easily misinterpreted due to the speed of the news that day and the CNN timings and BBC timings are pretty close.
NO STORY.
On archives, if anyone has worked at the BBC more than this tape has gone missing from other stories, its a vast catalogue and is managed manually.
I think Richard has done his best to be upfront and try to explain it, for that he should be congratulated in this day and age, as for pulling Google etc its embarrassing nothing more.
No agency is 100% perfect and I have a number of videos showing gaffs from the BEEB.
Move on to the real evidence, I think this is lame.
Wait a moment. What's the matter???
I once read that bad news travell faster than light, if this is the case, regarding to physical laws they move back in time and appear before an event has taken place. So everything is fine, no need to worry.
One question BBC: When will you report about the upcoming Bush reelection...
Mr. Porter,
The information you present here in this post is a good start. Assuming you made a good faith effort to figure out this confusing mess, your efforts are much appreciated. But your story IS incomplete. Several key issues are left unanswered. Most importantly, what was the source of that report? Saying it was too long ago in the past shouldn't cut it on this issue and if that's the answer you were given then you shouldn't have accepted it. Everyone who doesn't work for the BBC remembers everything they did that day, so why should we accept anything less from you?
Second is the question of Jane Standley? Not only have you avoided discussing the bizarre disruption of the live feed at the worst possible time; but when the building finally did collapse, was Ms. Standley or anyone else still in position to watch it? This is important because the BBC never bothered to issue a story correction which could have cleared the matter up immediately.
I'm sure that most people here don't think that the BBC knowingly accepted "news" that hadn't happened yet. But, the lack of transparency your outfit showed that day and now had lead to this continuing situation . Therefore, we implore you to continue researching the events of that day.
(PS- I encourage you to respond personally at the email address I provided)
Please name the SOURCE Mr. Porter.
And tell us what happened to the original tapes, the BBC is OBLIGED to keep several copies for years under law.
And I know this will fall on deaf ears, but please do some INVESTIGATION.
Regards,
B
The B.B.C. like most media companies these days seem to be reporting some of the news on maybes and not facts. This should stop, or i can see you getting into a lot of bother. Report the news please, don't stir it.
Please stop censoring comments.
Reveal the source please.
Investigate where the missing 9/11 footage is please.
That is your job. Do it please.
Cheers,
B
We are still here Richard....waiting?
Hi,
Again, although you haven't published my previous post, i will say again:
the fact that no steel framed building before or after wtc7 fell due to fire alone (without airplanes) made it highly improbable that the information you received about wtc7 was a simple rumour. Secondly, wtc3,4,5 and 6 sustained a much greater battering from the falling twin towers yet they didn't fall. THERE IS DEFINITELY A STORY HERE. We are still waiting for your answers Mr Porter.
The strategy of the 9/11 coverup is not so much about evidence anymore, it's about making conspiracy theorists sound irrational and looney, even if they only want to talk facts. The BBC has an image to uphold, that is, our image as nutjobs.
The premuture report of the collapse is just one of many pointers to controlled demolition, but taken out of context it would seem crazy to use it as a basis of conspiracy theory. It appears that this report is doing more harm to the 9/11 truth movement than good.
Where did you get the information that WTC7 was about to collapse?
It is a simple question that should have a simple answer.
You know the truth Richard!!!
Why your silence, do you have no conscience? It is now a month since this story broke and you still have not answered the question...
"Who was your source for the press release?"
WHO... Mr Porter?
"You know the truth Richard!!!
Why your silence, do you have no conscience? It is now a month since this story broke and you still have not answered the question...
"Who was your source for the press release?"
WHO... Mr Porter?"
I would take this opportunity to suggest you scroll to the top of the page where Mr Porter has answered this question (around a month ago now). The answer is never simple in a newsroom trying to get all the latest news in a situation like this.
There is no conspiracy. Get over it.
Why do you censor posts?
WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF?
Why when i posted perfectly valid questions do YOU choose to ignore them and refuse to post them?</