Controversy and conspiracies III
After the huge response to Richard Porter's blogs last year about 9/11 Part of the conspiracy? I was very keen to get to the bottom of what exactly happened.
For the latest Conspiracy Files programme, on 9/11 - The Third Tower (Sunday 6 July at 2100 BST on BBC Two), I've been looking in detail at allegations that there was a conspiracy to deliberately demolish a third tower at the World Trade Center.
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This third skyscraper was never hit by an aeroplane. There is little photographic evidence of extensive damage. Yet seven hours after the Twin Towers collapsed, this 47-storey building collapsed in a few seconds.
Afterwards the thousands of tonnes of steel from the building were taken away to be melted down in the Far East. The official explanation is that this third huge tower at the World Trade Center collapsed because of ordinary fires - but that makes this the first and only skyscraper in the world to have collapsed because of fire. Nearly seven years on the final official report on the building has still not been published. The report is now promised this month.
World Trade Center Building 7 has become the subject of heated speculation and a host of conspiracy theories suggesting it was brought down by a controlled demolition. And some people suggest it was not just the government and foreign intelligence, but the police, the fire service, first responders and even the media that were involved.
It is certainly true that on 9/11 the BBC broadcast that WTC7 had collapsed when it was still standing. Then the satellite transmission seemed to cut out mysteriously when the correspondent was still talking. Then Richard Porter admitted in his blog last year that the BBC had lost those key tapes of BBC World News output from the day.
So is that proof that we at the BBC are part of a huge sinister conspiracy or is there a simpler explanation?
The mystery of the missing tapes didn't last that long. One very experienced film librarian kindly agreed to have another look for us one night. There are more than a quarter of a million tapes just in the Fast Store basement at Television Centre. The next morning I got a call to say the tapes had been found. They'd just been put back on the wrong shelf - 2002 rather than 2001. Not so sinister after all.
What about the incorrect reporting of the collapse of Tower 7? Having talked to key eyewitnesses who were actually at Ground Zero that day it is clear that, as early as midday, the fire service feared that Tower 7 might collapse. This information then reached reporters on the scene and was eventually picked up by the international media.
The internet movie Loose Change has been viewed by more than 100 million people according to its makers and it asks this question in the latest film release: "Where did CNN and the BBC get their information especially considering the building was still standing directly behind their reporters?"
It turns out that the respected news agency Reuters picked up an incorrect report and passed it on. They have issued this statement:
"On 11 September 2001 Reuters incorrectly reported that one of the buildings at the New York World Trade Center, 7WTC, had collapsed before it actually did. The report was picked up from a local news story and was withdrawn as soon as it emerged that the building had not fallen."
I put this to the writer and director of Loose Change, Dylan Avery. I asked whether he believed the BBC was part of the conspiracy. Given the question his film had posed about the BBC I was surprised by Dylan's response: "Of course not, that's ludicrous. Why would the BBC be part of it?"
He added candidly: "I didn't really want to put that line in the movie."
And the reason the interview with the BBC correspondent, Jane Standley, ended so abruptly? The satellite feed had an electronic timer, which cut out at 1715 exactly.
We've done our best to tackle many of the other questions raised about Tower 7. I interviewed the lead official investigators, scientists and eyewitnesses who support the official explanation; but also architects, engineers and others who now question that account.
The final report on 9/11 should be with us soon. The official investigators are confident they will be able to solve the final mystery of 9/11. But I doubt they will ever convince their harshest critics, who believe there was a home-grown conspiracy at work that day.
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Mr. Rudin,
Last night's program (9/11: Conspiracy Files) states as fact that WTC7 was engulfed in "raging flames" for "several hours" which then facilitated its collapse - THIS IS FACTUALLY UNTRUE.
There were several small fires visible through the unbroken windows of the structurally undamaged building. For this program to say otherwise is to be clearly complicit in misrepresenting the TRUTH.
I can't wait to see how next weeks' program continues to expand this falsehood - i know one thing for sure, it will not include any footage of "raging fires" that "burned for several hours" nor will it show any actual damage to WTC7 that would account for its collapse.
According to the show's online intro, "The Conspiracy Files travels across the United States to investigate, speaking to eye witnesses and tries to separate fact from fiction."
The show's attempt to separate FACT from FICTION is, thus far, a dismal and inexplicable failure.
If the upcoming show concerning WTC7 is to have ANY credibility, it had better feature the infamous admission by Larry Silverstein that the building was "PULLED."
See it for yourself if you haven't already:
"Mr. Pull-It" Larry Silverstein and WTC 7
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZRnyAIMFWo
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"They'd just been put back on the wrong shelf - 2002 rather than 2001. Not so sinister after all."
Oh come on. For ordinary tapes this might be understandable, but film of the worst atrocity of the 20th century, which led directly to the Afghan War . . . .
. . . I'm not a conspiracy theorist about 9/11, but I do know of another topic I have an interest in where BBC staff routinely suppress the truth . . .
. . . you can see why people people wonder, can't you.
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"I was very keen to get to the bottom of what exactly happened."
Well done, you feel a slight pang of curiosity 7 years after the wool was pulled over your eyes.
What happened on 9/11 is extremely clear for all to see, but it will never be said out loud for anyone to hear, obviously. People are less likely to trust you if they find out you have been using their fear as a political tool.
"who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present, controls the past"
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Dear Mr Rudin .
You say.
The official explanation is that this third huge tower at the World Trade Center collapsed because of ordinary fires -
Can you please supply the source of this "official" explanation. I have looked extensively in the 9/11 Commission report, and no explanation to the collapse of WTC 7 is offered.
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#3 I meant worst terrorist atrocity, obviously. Sorry about that.
Mind you since I'm posting again anyway, can I extend the "you can see why people wonder" comment to the satellite feed cutting off? How often does that happen to the BBC? But it happened this time? The same obscure event that you mislaid the tapes for? The same event that you had a misreporting problem with?
You really did have a bad day, didn't you.
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The two most basic commonsense question that the conspiracy theorists have never provided an answer to are:
1) If this really was a government plot, then why has NOBODY involved (of which there would be hundreds) come forward and said anything? And how on earth would all these people have been persuaded to be part of mass slaughter of their own people in the first place?
2) If, as people claim, the whole point was to justify Bush's desire for war, then why not just knock ONE tower down? It would've had the same effect on public opinion
It really frustrates me that my fellow man could be so incredibly blinkered in their desire to believe in something.
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Oh for heaven's sake. I lived 6 blocks from the WTC and first of all, building 7 was a 47 story building, less than half the height of the towers. Second, it's face had been heavily damaged up to the 18th floor by falling debris from the towers; fires had started all over the lower floors, but there was no water pressure, and the firefighters couldn't control the fire, as they could not control the enormous amount of fires burning all over the remains of the WTC complex. Creaking had been heard coming from the building and it came down around 5:20 P.M. or so, meaning the fires had been burning all day. There's no mystery here.
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@alexwanson
"You really did have a bad day, didn't you."
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. [ref]
To be honest I would expect 9/11 to be the day most likely to cut corners, loose tapes or forget details on satellite feeds. I suspect most of the news room had been running around for the majority of the day in controlled panic to report on the biggest event of the year. Tired and overworked people make mistakes, it's only human.
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Well Mr Rudin, I, for one, am certainly looking forward to your new ?Conspiracy Files? regarding WTC7. I hope it is far more searching, questioning and balanced than last year?s ridiculous ?look? at the many questions which are being asked by millions of ordinary people around the world. As the BBC lost all credibility for reporting impartially after the whitewash of the Hutton enquiry though, I?m not holding my breath.
I hope that you mention the findings of Professor Jones of particles of un-ignited thermate (as used by the military to cut steel) found in the debris from the three WTC buildings, including WTC7. I also hope you mention the microscopic iron spheres also found in the debris and the significance of that. Furthermore I hope you mention the molten metal which existed under the wreckage for weeks after the collapse. I hope that you can explain these oddities, and also just how the building collapsed at freefall speeds (note the word freefall here, this is significant when one takes into account the physics, which I hope you have done).
I hope that you include the testimony of many firefighters who heard a countdown seconds before the building collapsed, and also the testimony of the explosions heard in the building and reports of the dead bodies which lay in WTC7.
I have no answers to these questions, I have no ?conspiracy theory?, but I do have many questions. Perhaps your programme will be brave enough to answer them, but I rather think it won?t.
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The trouble with conspiracy theorists is they'll never be satisfied by any explanation unless it confirms their conspiracy theory. Even then, if the official explanation supported the conspiracy theory, the theorists would be convinced a worse conspiricy is being covered up.
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There was a lot of confusion that day. Of the top of my head I can remember reports of car bombs in Washington DC and 4 other missing planes. When people are scared like speculation become rife, even normally reliable news sources are not immune.
To the conspiracy theorists, think of any interaction that you have with the government (any goverment). They simply aren?t smart or organised enough to pull off something that complicated.
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"..7WTC, had collapsed before it actually did."
Still doesn't shed any more light. If Reuters "picked up from a local news story" that, then why not explain which local news story was referenced and how that got from "the fire service feared that Tower 7 might collapse."?
Why did the story go out without confirmation?
In any case the key point is as you so eloquently put it, how did it come to be the first and only skyscraper in the world to have collapsed because of fire.
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"You really did have a bad day, didn't you."
If there was to be any day where several things go wrong at once, then that would be the day. The single biggest live news story ever, contimuous TV coverage for 3-4 days, every film crew and reporter you have deployed on the ground providing coverage and filing stories, producers madly scrambling around the newsroom trying to make sense of it all and pull all the threads together, all the while everyone trying to take in the emotional impact of it all? No, I wouldn't expect there to be a few snafus on such a day...
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This WTC7 "conspiracy" is pretty weak by "conspiracy" standards. There's nothing at stake here. Even if something was proved, so what? Let's assume the building was "pulled" (controlled demolition) as the owner Larry Silverstein put it in an interview. Probably the most "sinister" reason for this was to recoup insurance money on an otherwise damaged building, and to not need to pay for all the additional costs of securing the building, repairing it, or having to manually demolish it. Wow, what an evil plot to subvert the American public.
This is probably the most mundane footnote to the 9/11 attacks there is. Can you imagine there being a press conference and they admitted to demolishing WTC7? Some teary-eyed Silverstein "coming clean"? Don't expect that to make headlines.
I find it amazing how much time people invest (waste?) into conspiracies--not even good conspiracies--such like these. If people spent even half that effort in more tangible issues we might actually see some useful social change.
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"If this really was a government plot, then why has NOBODY involved (of which there would be hundreds) come forward and said anything?"
Code-breaking at Bletchley Park during World War Two involved thousands of people, all of whom kept totally silent until the work was officially revealed during the 1970's.
"If, as people claim, the whole point was to justify Bush's desire for war, then why not just knock ONE tower down? "
If I were to invade Russia I wouldn't do it in June, but Operation Barbarossa was.
"And how on earth would all these people have been persuaded to be part of mass slaughter of their own people in the first place?"
I don't understand why anyone watches soccer matches, but millions do. There really is no accounting for how some people think.
"I suspect most of the news room had been running around for the majority of the day in controlled panic"
But the BBC is supposed to be the world's premier news organisation, more than capable of handling something like this, which after after all happened in accessible areas in the most favourable country possible apart from the UK itself.
I don't actually subscribe to the conspiracy theory myself, but let's face it, if feeble arguments like this are all that's offered against it I can see why people do.
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I've just had a thought - there wouldn't have been anything on the 2002 shelf in 2001, if indeed, a 2002 shelf even existed.
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Here are the facts about WTC7
1. It was hit by falling debris and burning material.
2. It was heavily damaged down one site with a huge gouge carving for some 20 floors on one side.
3. It house an electrical substation and a number of generators.
4. Fires started on multiple floors, probably because fuel lines to the generators ruptured. Smoke was pouring out of one side all day.
5. It burnt out of control all day. Firefighters didn't even bother trying to contain the fire, concluding the building was a write off and there was no one inside to even rescue.
6. Weakened by fire and structural damage, the building finally collapsed. Collapse appears to have started internally because the penthouse fell in considerably before the outside fell, suggesting the inner collapse took out the remaining supports and cause the outer shell to fall.
7. Numerous firefighters are on record saying they knew it was going to collapse. There is even tape footage of firefighters saying it before collapse stating.
There is no mystery to why it fell down. People have managed to construct an entire conspiracy out of nothing.
As for the "missing tape" and why a reporter might report the building collapsed before it had... Does anyone seriously think a BBC reporter has a clue what the non-descript WTC7 building looked like. I doubt many people who worked or lived a few blocks away even knew what it looked like.
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Thanks for having a closer look at the collapse of building 7.
It's good to note the change of tone from the last time BBC aired a programme about 9-11, with pretty condescending web links about conspiracy theorists, like this one...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6368341.stm
Agreed, there are a lot of tunnel visioned nuts, who only believe information that supports their views (within the media, and the public, on both sides), but there are also a lot of rational, logical thinking people who want answers to the serious unanswered questions surrounding 9-11.
As someone who works in the metal/mining industry, the traces of molybdenum at the World Trade Centre site is something I would like an explanation for. The molten metal at ground zero is another. And the disappearance of the Twin Towers 47 massive central column supports is another mystery that has not been explained to me.
It's a shame it's take nearly 7 years for journalists to start investigating an event with such world altering repercussions, but hopefully the BBC will do a better job now than it did last time.
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These conspiracy theories are ridiculous and simply a credit to the wild imagination of mankind. Hundreds of horrified motorists on the adjoining freeway watched the airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, yet some folks who were never there claim that a missle hit the building as part of a Bush administration conspiracy. Tens of thousands of people personally witnessed two airplanes full of jet fuel slam into the Twin Towers, yet there are some claim that these people are deluded or lying.
A controlled demolition of the Towers would require the complacency of hundreds, if not thousands, of people in a monstrous crime. Security guards, maintence crews, janitors, and building engineers would all have to unite to turn a blind eye to the precision placement of explosives. I live in a 500 unit apartment building that has four full-time building engineers and two security guards. You can imagine how many support personnel worked round the clock to sustain two 110 story towers. In a city as diverse and assertive as NYC, you would be hard pressed to find even a dozen people who could agree on a common lunch entree, let alone mass murder.
The Bush administration did not need to engage in domestic mass slaughter and imperil the economy in order to build the case against Iraq for war. The 9/11 conspiracy theory is an insult to the victims of the tragedy.
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alexswanson,
The codebreakers at Bletchley Park were part of a concerted national effort to overcome a common enemy. They were a lot more motivated to keep silent than fireman and police officers would be if they were forced to slaughter thousands of their fellow citizens in peacetime for the political convenience of an unpopular president. As for comparing a passion for football with a willingness to commit mass murder, well I'm no football fan either but pheeuww!
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Mike
In haste.
I do not wish to be unkind, but reading your contribution at the start of this blog, I was left with the impression that you were more concerned about dismissing the possibility that the BBC was part of a conspiracy to bring down WTC 7 than you were about whether there WAS a conspiracy to bring down that building. There is a suggestion of "he who doth protest too loudly", is there not? But, I for one do not believe that the BBC was part of the conspiracy, if conspiracy there was.
More seriously, you write that Reuters wrongly reported a "local news story" and withdrew the report as soon as it became clear that the WTC 7 had not collapsed. Now, this piece of information surely leads to more questions than it answers?
1) At precisely what time did Reuters pick up that story?
2) What was the original source of the "local news story", and at what time precisely did that local news outlet become aware of the report of the collapse?
3) At precisely what time did the BBC pick up the Reuters story?
4) At precisely what time did Reuters withdraw the story?
5) At precisely what time did the BBC become aware that the Reuters story was false (though of course it turned out to be true!)?
6) At precisely what time did the BBC inform its listeners/viewers that the televised report of WTC 7's collapse (before it had collapsed, with the building still standing and clearly visible in the background) was wrong?
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Is there no process in law to bring to account those deluded obsessives who insist on peddling their bizarre 911 fantasies? They are profoundly disrespectful to the bodies and authorities who toiled to deal with the aftermath, and to the countless individuals touched by the tragedy. Libel laws are frequently wielded to redress far lesser insults. Why not here?
That this tiresome claptrap be so rampant in the US is perhaps no big surprise given the propensity of Americans to believe in fairy-tales (Roswell aliens, Kennedy plots, faked moon landings, God....). But where are the famous litigation lawyers? Let them step forward to protect the reputations of those who deserve it, for a change.
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but that makes this the first and only skyscraper in the world to have collapsed because of fire
well third actually as the official report and independent studies have verified that the twin towers were brought down by the steel eventually yielding due to heat.
on the finding of molybdenum well no great mystery there check the International Molybdenum Association web site it is a coating for architectural stainless steel, which was the principal cladding material of the two towers (also used on canary wharf One Canada square building) so it would be expected that some molten metal would have remained.
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Read Tim Weiner's book The History of the CIA - Legacy of Ashes and you will appreciate that however abhorrent it may be to even contemplate such a conspiracy it is certainly not beyond the realms of possibility given the extremes that the CIA have gone to in the last 60 years with the knowledge of the President in may cases.
Also consider the size of the "hole' in the Pentagon building caused by the 3rd aircraft. Objective scientific opinion from individuals far more qualified than us indicates that if a plane really did crash into the building , the hole should have been exponentially larger than it was.
I was in the old Bankers Trust / Deutsche Bank building across the street on 9/11. I dont want to believe it but my human intstinct is that something, and I don't know what it is, is not quite right . Maybe we will never know but constructive debate should take place.
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First of all, everybody should understand that the official explanation for 9/11 is itself a conspiracy theory - 19 middle eastern men conspired to fly planes into the twin towers, Pentagon etc. The question is whether the official version of the conspiracy theory is correct. I have my doubts - there are too many open questions. I suggest that all interested parties read David Ray Griffin's book "The New Pearl Harbor" for background. If you're interest is piqued you could then review Popular Mechanics "Debunking 9/11 " and then could review David Ray Grifffin's response "Debunking 9/11 Debunking" to see the folly in the Popular Mechanics book.
Likely we will never know what happened on 9/11 and who was responsible. Personally at the least I believe this corrupt Bush administration knew of the attacks and let them happen and I think there is a good chance they were more involved. People say they are too incompetent to carry out the attacks - and its true they are incompetent - but perhaps their incompetence is shown in the myriad of smoking guns they left in their wake.
The comment by 1.24pm is the type of unquestionning complaceny that the Bush administration relies on. You say lets assume that the building was pulled as Larry Silverstein said and that it was for the insurance money. Sure - he collected big on insurance - which incidentally he had just taken out for terrorist attacks before 9/11 - what great timing. But how long do you think it takes to wire a building on fire with explosives to pull it? A lot longer than the couple of hours that they had and yet it collapsed almost perfectly, at free fall speeds, into its footprint - like a controlled explosion. It leads to the question of how come this building seemed pre-wired for a controlled explosion. Then there's the thermate at the scene which someone else referenced. Lots of questions, people, lots of questions. The more digging you do, the more uncomfortable the truth becomes and the greater the need for a full independent investigation of the 9/11 attacks.
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So a journalist with the BBC, writes about a BBC TV programme which examines a conspiracy in which the BBC was implicated, and we're supposed to believe you! Yeah right!
So you're saying it's all down to misintepreted statements cause by chinese whispers and a misfiled tape! After seven years is the best excuse you could come up with?
And comments are moderated too! I bet those who know the real truth will have their posts purged and find themselves visited by mysterious men in the early hours.
(only joking)
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There is only one problem with dividing the world into conspiracy theorists and non-conspiracy theorists. It has never helped anyone, anywhere, get closer to the truth of any complex, real-world situation. That is its only weakness.
Let me call that tendency - the dividing of people, and their detailed theories about the real world, into two groups - conspiratology.
Conspiratology, like scientology, has its pretensions to advanced thinking. But it is not. It is easy to show that in the group labeled conspiracy theorists there are some nutters. Therefore, conspiratology claims, nobody it puts in the CT category is to be taken seriously.
This is not advanced thinking. It is the absence of critical thinking.
Some women are nutters. Margaret Thatcher is a woman. Mother Teresa was a woman. Which proves what? Some black people are nutters. Robert Mugabe is a murderous thug. Does that make Sir Trevor McDonald either? Such argument from insult is the absence of critical thinking
In #20 don't try to label frasay but admit he speaks better sense than those on either 'side' thus far. He doesn't get sidetracked by BBC tapes but points to some of the genuine and disturbing mysteries of what happened on 9-11. He also praises the BBC for not ducking some of the real issues this time, which seems deserved, given that you've interviewed Steven Jones and Richard Gage. Mind you, why you bother with anyone from Loose Change is beyond me. That's still a big negative against your programme, for me.
We'll have to see if you've done justice to the much more qualified views of Jones and Gage when we view the end result.
But labeling either of them conspiracy theorists and thinking that ends everything of importance in the argument is convenient, lazy and wrong.
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Most adults literally live with a goldfish bowl over their heads, which prevents the vast majority from seeing the world with a clarity of vision. However, the goldfish bowls give the majority of adults a warm, fuzzy feeling of security inside, nominally called their comfort zones, and many are happy with this state of mind.
The way the majority of these adults perceive and evaluate data is regulated by the general consensus and customs of the societies they live in. Therefore, their frame of reference tends to be limited in scope, in order to keep that society running, and that society running them.
Until the goldfish bowls are removed from millions of heads, then no truths will be learned. 9/11 and Building 7 will go the way of the JFK assassination, mired in Majestic truths, whispered hearsay and conspiracy balderdash.
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I was just outside New York in Tarrytown on 9/11. Panic and confusion was total all around the metropolitan area. We were evacuated from our offices and were told there were more planes heading for New York. The panic and confusion downtown can totally explain all of the events around the news coverage. I despise the neo-con project and much of the USA's foreign policies over the last 50 years, but to suggest that the US government sponsored or carried out these attacks is simply beyond credibility. All real conspiracies (and they are usually much smaller scale) get found out pretty quickly. If 9/11 was an inside job, just think how many people would have had to be involved. Do the conspiracy theorists not think that at least one of those Americans might just have baulked at the thought of murdering many of their own compatriots?
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senojnerrad:
I don't think anybody is suggesting that policemen and firefighters were part of the conspiracy. I personally don't see that they would need to be, if they genuinely believed that the plane crashes caused the towers to collapse. you might claim that they were experts; I humbly suggest that very few people are experts in what happens if an airliner hits a skyscraper.
All I'm doing is pointing out that the anti-conspiracy arguments are often feeble as well.
I chose the soccer comparison as a neutral one, but I could just as well point out that socialism has killed millions of people over the last century or so, and yet some people are still proud to claim allegiance to that doctrine. For some people, the right ideology will justify anything. I'm not saying it happened: all I'm saying is that it is naive to suggest that it physically couldn't.
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I guess it's better late than never to finally hear the truth of the "mysterious BBC psychic ability"!
Seriously though, conspiracy theorists (or truthers as they like to call themselves) are many different people from different walks of life and I think it's wrong to be stereotypical of them. Some lost loved ones in the attacks, some are there to make $$ and some are just verging on paranoia.
The hardcore "truthers" seem to be in denial about certain facts, which makes it impossible to change their views scientifically. I think the muddied landscape of the Bush Administration has encouraged these ideas to flourish. With time most of the conspiracy questions have been answered, which shows the power of reason.
Perhaps the only thing left to learn is how to construct buildings that can withstand a similar scenario. The direct cause appears to be fire, although the role of the damage from the plane impact/tower collapses have not been fully quantified relatively to the damage from the fires. For example, if there were widespread fires, but no impact, would WTC1 or 2 collapse? The same question for WTC2, but without the damage from falling debris. I don't think the NIST report really answers this properly.
The design of the twin towers was obviously different from most other skyscrapers in that the strength was mostly in the outer walls of the structure. That design could be significantly weaker than traditional skyscraper designs, which would mean that collapse in other large buildings would be less likely.
In any case, conspiracy theorists are good for our society as long as they are peaceful. Some of the greatest physicists and mathematicians that are responsible for our technological development would almost certainly fall into a paranoid personality type that would see patterns and connections when there are none. They are also a signal of the triumph of freedom that we have.
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The skill of organising so many hijackings is not with the Arab people. It is certainly a joint CIA-Mossad operation. Once agents are involved, there is no leak.
How did OBL manage to bring down the building 7 ?
How did OBL manage to neutralise the entire war machinery of USA for almost 100 minutes when the aircrafts were criss-crossing the US airspace ?
How did OBL manage the 'put options' on AA and UA ?
When you take the surmise that it was a joint CIA-Mossad operation, things fit very well. No other explanation appears credible.
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I'm pleased that Auntie has finally got to grips with this question, because it certainly is the most well supported "conspiracy theory" about 9/11.
Every time I hear the words "twin towers", I just think "there was three of them".
I shall be viewing the programme with interest.
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Mike!you tell me one person who has ever said the BBC was part of a conspiracy?yes thats right nobody has suggested that but it is kind of unusual to predict in advance an event that has never happened ever before don,t you think.Remember that Guilliani is on tape saying he knew the WTC would collapse before they actually did.It is virtually impossible to preempt steel framed building collapses when only three buildings in history have ever done that.I watched the first couple of minutes of the last conspiracy files.My God how i laughed.You started with an Air Traffic Controller saying a plane had been hijacked and was heading for New York.Then you said the interceptor jets did not know where to go and went the wrong way.Am i supposed to believe that nobody,even though it had already been established the hijacked plane was heading for New York,thought oh hang on i think i should head for New York.Utter garbage is my verdict on that tripe!.
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Wow this blog post really brought out the official story theorists. I would like to state again that anybody who uses the word conspiracy theory as a derogatory term really needs to get their head checked. Dissent is the greatest form of patriotism.
it is very possible that wt7 may have eventually collapsed from fire, i don't think any alternative theorists dispute this. But it would have collapsed in an asymmetrical way and probably only partially (these are basic laws of physics, which for some reason don't apply to official theorists)
People have to realise that the official theory is just that A THEORY. No scientific facts have yet to surface in anyway from the official theorists, yet countless journals from scientists and engineers showing science in action are flooding the alternative theorists. This is why we, the critical thinkers are asking questions rather than towing the offical line.
Its even got to a laughable position where the alternative theory's are being debunked by blatantly propaganda sites. Do you really want to believe a website like JOD9/11 that has an advisory board with a man called "shagster" on it? then go straight ahead.
The upcoming WT7 report has a segment that states that just before collapse a fireball shot out of all the windows. Apparently according to nist there is no logical reason for this. well i have one crazy theory for you, but i don't think you want to hear it.
also anyone who thinks a conspiracy of this magnitude takes anymore that 10 people is living in an alternative reality. Have none of you heard of a thing called a "lie" its what people use to manipulate subordinates.
I really cant see the use of arguing with defenders of the official theory anymore. they are faceless entities who for all we know could be the same sweaty geek typing under different names. Instead of defending their official facts (of which there are none) they attack the theory of others. which is exactly what a conspiracy theorist does.
But hey, peak oil just hit and before long they will be living in run down city's fighting over copper wiring with the rest of us wondering what happened. we shall smile and pat them on the head and tell them about the history they hid from themselves for so long, invite them back to our sustainable communitys and all be friends again.
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"They'd just been put back on the wrong shelf - 2002 rather than 2001. Not so sinister after all."
Oh come on. For ordinary tapes this might be understandable, but film of the worst atrocity of the 20th century, which led directly to the Afghan War . . . .
. . . I'm not a conspiracy theorist about 9/11, but I do know of another topic I have an interest in where BBC staff routinely suppress the truth . . .
. . . you can see why people people wonder, can't you.
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Actually the noteriety of the film in question would lead toa much higher liklyhood of misfiling. ordinary tapes get put in place once and very rarely moved, this tape was likely removed and replaced numerous times over the following years, at any time any junior reporter, production worker or librarian could have gotten careless
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I humbly suggest that very few people are experts in what happens if an airliner hits a skyscraper
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They wouldn't need to be. All the necessary can be simulated extremely accurately via computer model, you would need only be an expert in architecture and material science.
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Dear Mike,
Once again you needlessly veer towards the extreme opinions voiced by some who doubt the 9/11 official theory.
You say: ?Some people suggest? the police, the fire service, first responders and even the media? were involved. In 4 years of following this story I would say that this is a very marginal aspect to the 9/11 truth movement. Nearly all ?Truthers? are sympathetic to these groups and there are many Police/Fire/First Responders/victims associations that are calling for a reinvestigation. You may as well investigate the UFO/Satanic/religious 9/11 Truth fringe while you?re at it.
The BBC misreporting (or pre-reporting the collapse of WTC7) is also regarded as a marginal issue. What is key to investigators is where or from whom this announcement originated. So why your surprise at Dylan Avery?s comment? The obvious defence of protecting sources will no doubt be used if Reuters is probed further.
As for the ?2002 shelf? instead of the ?2001 shelf? and the ?17.15 satellite timer?? while plausible explainations they are also, conveniently, totally indisputable.
The evidence for the WTC7 ?controversy? pointing to internal conspiracy in the 9/11 event is quite simply the 3 simultaneous shots of the building collapsing. They show:
1. Foreknowledge of the event (the cameras were setup and pointing directly at WTC7).
2. Identifiable puffs of smoke (demolition ?squibs?) along the front upper right of the building.
3. Uniform collapse at freefall or gravitational speed (approx. 6 to 7 seconds) indicating a simultaneous failure of the structure, which must be considered an impossible outcome of small and unevenly distributed fires.
I look forward to Sunday?s programme.
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Please anyone who thinks it is to fantastic to be for 9/11 to be 'an inside job' or who say too many people would be involved please remember the Iran-Contra affair.
A massive conspiracy involving the US govt. Drug dealing, terrorists, hostages, gun-running, and lots of money, It ran for years, involved thousands and was real. It happened.
There is precedent for these things happening on a similar scale, with a similar collection of govt, military and foreign actors.
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Are you sure this is the final question on 9/11? I remember some letters containing anthrax spores delivered to several US government departments. And also a plane being 'evaporated' after crashing into the Pentagon?
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As someone else has pointed out, you contradict yourself, Mike, when you say the official explanation for WTC7's collapse was fire, and then state that the official NIST inquiry has yet to report. The substantial problem is that you cannot wire a building for demolition in so short a time - it had to have been done before. To those who say it collapsed due to fire and damage, it was a good 400 yards or more from WTC 1 and 2, and WTC 5 and 6, which were much nearer and much more severely damaged, did not collapse in the same way. Watch the video -how can it have been possible for it to collapse straight down when the damage was only to one side? This is a crazy suggestion - it's basic physics, it would have fallen asymmetrically and much more slowly.
I submit that nobody who has seriously studied this building can argue any case other than controlled demolition. That includes studying the similarity with other CDs as well as all the related facts - ie the offices contained in WTC7, the Silverstein statement, the video of the demolition countdown, the issue of the report of the collapse being too early. Don't come on this blog without having looked at it properly and condemn "conspiracy theorists" as wackos, you are not thinking clearly about the implications of this.
I am not stupid, I am well educated and a perfectly ordinary person, not given to any form of exaggeration or weird beliefs, just concerned about the fact that the US and Britain has launched a "global war on terror" and the removal of habeas corpus, among other things, on the back of all this. Oh and the families of many the victims are calling for a proper explanation, and indeed were instrumental in forcing a reluctant Bush to set up the 9/11 commission in the first place, an inquiry which even its chairman admits was deeply flawed. Go back to the source material and put up some serious arguments if you can. I suggest there arent any.
Mike, you'd better deliver something a bit more robust than the clips I've seen so far, or you're in for more of this!!
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16. Bionic-Badger :
'Even if something was proved, so what? Let's assume the building was "pulled" (controlled demolition) as the owner Larry Silverstein put it in an interview.'
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It takes several weeks to prepare a building for a controlled demolition - the skill and planning required to correctly pack a structure with explosives, so that it falls into its' own footprint, is a highly specialized and exact science.
The "so what?" is that pulling any building requires weeks of advanced planning and preparation - you don't just "decide" to pull a building and Larry Silverstein did not just "decide" on September 11 to demolish WTC7 - it HAD to have been planned weeks in advance.
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Amending my comment #20, I should have said the molybdenum "spherules" found in the trade centre dust samples are the mystery, because moly has an exceptionally high melting point (2623 celsius).
One more point worth making...
All these people saying 100's or 1000's of people would have to be involved in a coverup, are the same people who believe only 19 people carried out the terrorist operation successfully. Hmmm. How many people are necessary for an operation of this magnitude? Is it 19, or 1000's?
How many people does it take to wire a building? 1 or 2 dozen, or a hundred? I would have thought about 20 men, given the time and access, could do the job.
Were people in the US administration involved, or were they blackmailed/threatened into covering up the event? There are hundreds of possible scenarios, but really, this analysis should probably come after we first understand how the buildings came down.
Why haven't people come forward? Actually they have. Hundreds of pilots, architects, military personal and academics have come forward questioning the official story. Search the web for patriots questioning 9-11.
It is not disrepectful to ask questions and search for the truth. I think it's racist not to ask these questions, and make sure we're at war with the right enemy.
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I have to laugh at remarks such as those made by 'Magic-Moose' ('Here are the facts about WTC-7') . . etc
Why do you think that NIST have taken 7 years to attempt to investigate this ? Because buildings of that size do not, and never have done prior or since, spontaneously collapse through their own sub-structure due to fires, falling debris, presence of electrical substation or any other of the items listed on Magic-Moose's so called fact list.
They do, on the other hand, collapse in exactly this manner if carefully placed explosives are used to remove the substructure in a planned demolition, so it seems reasonable to speculate that that was the cause in this case.
Magic-Moose sez... 'People have managed to construct an entire conspiracy out of nothing'
My goodness. If only this were true. Such a bald and utterly un-informed statement could only ever be made by someone who has absolutely no interest in pursuing true accountability these horrendous events.
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I myself don't believe everything claimed by the "conspiracy theorists" but I have seen Loose Change and a few similar videos, and while they may be making some wild accusations they are also undeniably raising some very important questions that the Bush Administration has neglected to answer. Why was this the first time fire has been able to melt reinforced and fire-proofed steel supports? Why are there no scraps bigger than a car door of the plane that hit the Pentagon and why is the hole less than half the size of a 767? Why is it that in the video footage of 9/11 can you see small explosions at the base of the one of the Twin Towers just a few second before it imploded on itself much like other buildings implode when purposefully demolished? Who knows. And those are only a few of the many questions I, and many other people blindly labeled "conspiracy theorists" have.
Perhaps there are perfectly logically explanations that I do not understand given that I am not a physicist, but maybe not. It is certainly not impossible or unlikely for the US Government to plan and execute this event and to coerce, bribe, threaten or persuade 1000s of people to follow along with it. To wave away all questions like those presented in Loose Change is ignorance, I have never believed in blindly accepting what you've been told without questioning it, and when it comes to 9/11 we should all be questioning it.
It may turn out that all the conspiracy theories are wrong but don't be naive enough to think they could never be right either. You'd be surprised what the US Government has covered up over the years, this would only be the tip of the iceberg.
> And also, holding to conspiracy theories absolutely does not insult the thousands of people who were killed that day, there is no denying that they died unfair and horribly unjust deaths, the question is merely who was truly responsible for the cause of those deaths. Whoever was responsible deserves a very special place in hell for what they have done.
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"2) What was the original source of the "local news story", and at what time precisely did that local news outlet become aware of the report of the collapse?"
As explained in the original article, the source was many firemen saying they expected the building to collapse. With apologies for my ignorance, I fail to see
a. The relevance of the rest of your other questions.
b. How the answers to them would point to conspiracy and
c. How you could reasonably expect those sort of detailed records to be kept by journalists reporting on the most horrific event most of them ever have or will see.
I'm afraid the evidence for conspiracy in the collapse of WTC7 eludes me.
There was confusion in media reports? Well duh. Understandable in the circumstances. Journalists are human beings for cripes sakes. I think we can cut them some slack on that one.
They reported something had happened that hadn't happened YET? Uh, yeah, the closest thing to experts on the scene (the firemen) said they expected it to happen. In the confusion this got picked up and some people wrongly ran with it as having happened. I expect interest rates to go up later in the year. If I instead say now that the Bank of England HAS put up interest rates already, does that mean I'm part of a conspiracy? Cool.
I can *just about* get my head round conspiracy theories for the twin towers, but at the end of the day you have to remember the people being asked to research this offically are dealing with what effectively is the worlds largest crime scene, and a swathe of evidence that is compacted, burned, melted and deformed. They probably won't have answers to every minute detail people can pick out on video footage today, but that doesn't mean they never will, or that there was a conspiracy. There is no way they could know, for example, the complete contents of both towers on 9/11. Therefore how could you possibly expect them to account for the colour of every minute flame that eminated from the building?
I understand *wanting* to believe there is more to it - that so many couldn't have died as a result of the actions of so few, that it shouldn't be that easy to commit such carnage. It's almost 'safer' to believe that our Governments were complicit in these attacks than they were powerless to stop them.
Wanting to believe it doesn't make it true though. The simple fact is that on September 11 2001, terrorists hijacked planes with the intention of taking as many lives as possible, and tragically they were successful in that goal.
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See what Governments consider in order to justify attacks on other sovereign nations.
Google Northwoods Document. Now an unclassified top secret US Military document in the 60s illustrating several, "false flag ops" including shooting down a plane full of American sports student and blaming it on the Cubans. The same document refers to other options "real or simulated"
The Neocon Document just pre 911 stated it would need another "Pearl Harbour Event" in order to get public backing for a huge military build up.
Whod have thought Hitler and cohorts would murder so many innocents. Its been done before. Oh but of course we are a much more civilized nation now (US and UK) we wouldnt do such a thing would we!!.
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Further to my questions raised at #10 above, I have two more.
If Osama Bin Laden actually carried out this attack, why does it not mention this as one of his crimes he is wanted for on his page on the FBI website? Don't believe me, then check out yourself his page on the official FBI website. (To give you a clue here, the FBI says that it has no evidence linking Bin Laden with 911).
And secondly, if concrete and steel skyscrapers can so easily collapse, just because of a few fires, why are the Governments, and the BBC, not leading the Health and Safety brigade in warning the millions of people who live and work every day in such tall buildings around the world. Could it be because the World Trade Centre 7 tower was the only one to have fallen in history as a result solely of fire? Hmmm... most perplexing..
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Hmmm...
Just got interested in this debate after stumbling across it.
It seems that there are a lot of interesting and pertinent questions being asked by people who clearly have some understanding of events and facts surrounding 9/11. Also there seems to be some emotionally couched rejection and incomprehension of the need to ask these questions by those who feel they already fully understand the events. Why the unwillingness to seek further understanding?
If there are unanswered questions that official investigations have not satisfactorily provided answers for (e.g. how the vast bulk of a steel framed skyscraper collapses symmetrically in seconds from fire damage) then surely we all would like and benefit from objective answers?
It strikes me as very strange that after nearly seven years with all the current scientific/ engineering knowledge and power available through computer modelling that there is no definitive recognised explanation for this. Or if there is can someone point me in its direction?
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So we should be asking Reuters where they got their information then!
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rdrake98: eek, I just Googled "Conspiratology"
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Thomas Keane has admitted that the 9/11 Commission was set up to fail and Norad lied.NIST have never explained the total collapse of the towers and never had any intention of explaining the total collapse of the twin towers.They did however admit without the fire the buildings would have stood indefinitely.There have been 3 different investigations into those collapses by NIST,FEMA and Silverstein Weidlinger.Which do you pick Global collapse,pancake effect or column damage.Why would anybody think it acceptable for 3 separate reports to blatantly contradict each other.Who are these experts that can,t get their story straight.There are too many contradictions and very little hard evidence concerning 9/11 and i deal in facts not fairy tales.Now Mike Rudin has all the answers,well i wager Mike Rudin comes out of this looking like Comical Ali.And why would he make this when NIST have yet to publish their final report.FEMA attempted to explain why WTC7 collapsed but admitted their theory had very little chance of being correct.So that means nobody in an official capacity has ever explained anything yet Mike Rudin takes it upon himself to do just that.Reading this blog you are taking the same road as last time which ended in total humiliation for the BBC.Conspiracy files was an embarrassment,a huge joke.Rudin will explain nothing,he will give us soundbites and Popular mechanics,don,t expect any thing else.
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For anyone with even a passing knowledge of cutting and welding steel with oxy-acetylene torches, there is no conspiracy theory--9-11 was an inside job, and there is no question about it. End of story.
For those who question how secrecy could be maintained, what would you divulge if your family and loved ones were threatened for something you might say, and you might be killed, disappeared or imprisoned as well?
For anyone who still believes that their government could not possibly create or allow such things to happen, study history--look up Operation Northwoods; read John Perkins' "Economic Hit Man" and Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine"; Bill Blum's "Killing Hope" and many other informative books.
Conspiracies do in fact exist--it is a documented fact--and using the derisively defamatory label "theorists" only serves to distract others from learning and believing what in fact might be true.
In answering these questions for yourself, it is always good policy to 'follow the money' while asking yourself 'cui bono'?
Though much is public concerning 9-11, there are still many questions needing answers, and the real perpetrators needing to answer for what they have done, and the same applies to the later subway bombings in London. Both were excuses to hide real intent and ambitions, and both succeeded in the manipulation of people to allow actions which otherwise would have been impossible.
The BBC story this responds to is only a small part of the cover-up which allows similar atrocities to continue, perhaps abetted by some who are in denial and do not realize they are complicit.
Regards,,,John
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olddocross
Your post #47 - how interesting that you attempt to discredit my post #23 - I was on a fishing expedition, and you took the bait - you are a shill, aren't you?!
Those were perfectly reasonable questions, and you know it, don't you?!
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Thank you for the thoughtful article.
You may be interested in a scientific paper recently published that contains details about the collapse of WTC 7:
http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.4792
This will take you to a page hosted by Cornell University that will allow you to browse or download a copy of the paper.
Thanks again,
Sean Lynch
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strateshutr says "follow the money" in post 54. How very true...
One important fact that's not been brought up here so far (I think) is that people in the shadows profited to the tune of many billions of dollars after betting that US Airline stocks -- United Airlines (the operator of Flight 175 and Flight 93) and American Airlines (the operator of Flight 11 and Flight 77) plus banks and insurance companies, would fall heavily in the coming weeks. This type of transaction is the notorious "put option," a contract that allows holders to sell assets at specified prices by a certain date, allowing them to profit from declines in stock values.
In the days before the 9/11 attack, these shadowy individuals were behind the purchasing of huge volumes of put options of the two Airlines used in the "attack" as well as banks and insurance companies, suggesting a cabal knew exactly what would happen when the stock markets reopened for business a week after 9/11 occurred. And surprise surprise, American Airlines and United Airlines, plus quite a few insurance companies and banks, posted huge losses in stock values, so those holding the put options were in line to rake in billions and billions of dollars.
For a few days after 9/11, these stock irregularities got prominent mainstream media coverage. I remember seeing extensive reports on ITN News, and then suddenly there was a blackout of all coverage relating to the put option irregularities. Why?
I don't think it was a coincidence that before the 9/11 attack, there was also a huge surge in purchases of "call options" [the opposite of the put option -- betting that the value of companies would go up] in Weapons manufacturers. We all know that companies of this ilk would benefit financially in the long term from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't know about the readership here, but I'm smelling a rather big military industrial rat behind 9/11, but it's probably only one of many players, another being the Western world's financial sector -- as all the put and call option transactions should have been traced back to their holders, and these people brought to book, but no serious investigation took place.
As a footnote, it's not an "elected" government who was behind 9/11 in my opinion. We're talking about a shadow government entity here, that's 33 degree-masonic based and goes well beyond national borders, involving a whole host of different "compartments" buried within the intelligence agencies of the western world, the military industrial complex and the business and financial sector.
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Dozens of posts later, and still no one can deny the tens of thousands of witnesses who watched the events of 9/11/01 with their own eyes. For those of you who have never been to Washington, the Pentagon is ringed by a VERY busy civilian freeway. The attack occured during the morning rush hour. Hundreds of people saw the airliner descend on the Pentagon and slam into the building. I did not witness the actual attack (thank goodness), but I did visit the Pentagon shortly afterward and the damage was far more severe than it appeared on TV.
There can be no denying that 9/11 was a unique event in the history of mankind and engineering. How many other 110 story structures have been hit by commerical jets nearly full of jet fuel traveling at hundreds of miles an hour? The towers, built with late 1960s materials, were not designed to withstand that amount of structural trauma.
It is also farcical to think that the US government is blackmailing thousands of people to keep them silent. The US government is the most polarized it ever been and if there was even the slightest whiff of government involvement, the Democrats would be all over the story to discredit Bush. During the lead up to the Iraq invasion, the Pentagon and CIA were leaking like sieves as government employees opposed to the war tried to discredit and derail the Bush administration.
People from dozens of countries died that day. Have the UK, Russia, Japan, France, Mexico, China, Saudi Arabia and other governments miraculously formed a secret pact to protect the US government and president Bush?
For those of you who think that it is far-fetched for Muslim extremists to use hijacked airliners as bombs, did you think it equally far-fetched when Algerian militants hijacked an Air France jet in 1994 with the intention of crashing it into the Eiffel Tower? What about the man who was caught in 2001 trying to light a fuse on his shoe to bring down an American Airlines flight from Paris? Or the 2006 plot to use basic liquids to destroy dozens of aircraft over the Atlantic? We are facing a creative and skilled adversary and we ignore them at our peril.
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Briantist (#52): Thanks. Clearly I should've googled it first myself!
It was a spur-of-the-moment term. But I don't object to the association that much. Because by lumping together very thorough and disciplined researchers like Jones or Gage with hateful, racist loonies (as I take the authors of conspiratology.com to be, from a quick glance) the determined conspiratologist (in my terms) is as guilty for me as any racist bigot. Those who lump together the very good with the very bad, deliberately, in order to contaminate the good and prevent ordinary people from coming near the truth are themselves stooping to the level of the very bad. All the worst conspirators in history did this to their enemies: thus Hitler took the most evil of Jew in history and said "They're all like that and they're all conspiring against us." It's the same game.
What's needed is painstaking, critical thinking and analysis. That's on both sides. The biggest objection to a major CT of 9-11 is, as many have said here, the social issue of how hard it would be to rig the buildings for demolition beforehand without someone blabbing about it later. But the problems with the physics of the explosion and disintegration of the three massive steel-framed buildings (not just 'collapses') won't go away just because of that.
We need totally excellent thinking. I'd exclude the Loose Change people for exactly that reason. They've been much too sloppy, from everything I've read. Jones, Gage and a number of others have maintained a high standard throughout (though not without wrong turnings, like any scientist). That's the way to go.
And we seem to be getting there. Let's see how it's all handled on Sunday evening.
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Reuters Shmeuters.
The BBC was fed a tip on 9-11 about WTC7 that came from a source so highly-placed and unimpeachable that they didn't bother to check it by looking over their shoulders out the window.
And now they refuse to say who it was.
This documentary will not be credible no matter what it says, as the BBC is no longer credible.
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I can't believe we are even talking about a 9/11 conspiracy! I wonder what the relatives of those poor souls who died in that holocaust think about the maniacs who have the gall to advance such a preposterous theory.
Kudos to those bloggers who have ridiculed the conspiracy theorists with both commonsense and proven facts, and to those who even countenance such a horrific idea - you ought to be ashamed of yourselves!
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Sneak Preview news....Zero: An Investigation Into 9/11 premieres in Clapham Picture House July 29th and then goes on limited release August 22nd Nationwide. This film covers the main arguments surrounding what happened but also, crucially, exposes the links between Al Quaeda and The US Govt - did you know the name Al Quaeda is an arabic translation of the english 'the base' and if you add one extra work you get the database, the database of Mujahadeen soldiers created and paid for by the US Govt... ?
Anyway come and watch the film when it comes out. It was the hit of the Rome Film Festival and was shown to the EU Parliament earlier this year. If you want to watch an extended trailer go to www.zero911movie.com . FYI it stars Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo, and Gore Vidal....
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# 61. nobleFloridian wrote:
"I wonder what the relatives of those poor souls who died in that holocaust think about the maniacs who have the gall to advance such a preposterous theory."
Well actually they are some of the main critics of the Official Story: The so-called Jersey Girls, relatives of the victims basically lobbied for the 9/11 Commission and are still to this day the most consistant and critic voice of the process. They raised so many questions over, pre-knowledge of the event and why procedures were not followed and trying to establish basic facts. Guess what? Few of their questions have been answered.
Go see "9/11 Press for Truth" for more details.
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50. At 6:22pm on 02 Jul 2008, Andy_PN wrote:
"Hmmm...
Just got interested in this debate after stumbling across it.
It seems that there are a lot of interesting and pertinent questions being asked by people who clearly have some understanding of events and facts surrounding 9/11. Also there seems to be some emotionally couched rejection and incomprehension of the need to ask these questions by those who feel they already fully understand the events. Why the unwillingness to seek further understanding?
If there are unanswered questions that official investigations have not satisfactorily provided answers for (e.g. how the vast bulk of a steel framed skyscraper collapses symmetrically in seconds from fire damage) then surely we all would like and benefit from objective answers?
It strikes me as very strange that after nearly seven years with all the current scientific/ engineering knowledge and power available through computer modelling that there is no definitive recognised explanation for this. Or if there is can someone point me in its direction?"
Hi, welcome. I was where you are 12 months ago. I wanted to find the science and computer simulations to explain the 3 towers collapse. I feel as though I'm clever enough to understand with my education and professional background... but guess what there is none. The NIST report on the building performance firstly ignores WTC7 and for the twin towers only attempts to explain fire progression. There is no model that is in the public domain that simulates the collapse mechanism! A university has modeled the impact of the first aircraft in one of the twin towers and it is very good - I recommend it to anyone. It clearly shows the extent of the damage: some of the core columns are severed but the building is designed to transfer the stresses to other columns and it should not have fallen (or even explode into dust) even with the fires in the building. "Something else" must have made that happen.
The second aircraft impact has not been modeled but since it hit more of an angle, it should not severed as many columns. The second tower should have fallen down differently from the first. But it didn't.
WTC7 also fell down in a strange way - just like a controlled demolition rather than a progressive collapse that you would expect from a fire. All suscipous. Now add in the final bits of evidence: concrete turning into micro-fine dust, evidence of the use of thermite explosive in the dust, molten steel at the bases of WTC 1, 2 and 7 (that persisted for weeks) and suddenly you realised the official story is missing a huge chunk of explanation. Will I as a so-called "Conspiracy Theorist" ever believe the official story? Sure I will, provided the official story makes some sense(!), is not self-serving (ie a pretext for war and new laws) and addresses all of the evidence (manner of collapse, the dust, the molten steel, the eye witness testimony of secondary explosions), not just selected items that meet the criteria of the 9/11 Commission report (which was designed to solely support the story invented by politicians and given On The Day of 9/11).
Good luck with your investigations. Please report back anything new and substantial.
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i havent noticed anyone talking about the only black boxes in history to have completly melted or never been found. to covienent i say,also who benifited the most from all this.
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Hi Mike,
I'm with Dylan Avery in believing the BBC is not involved in any conspiracy associated with 9/11. However, it has been less than candid and is behaving more like the Ministry of Truth than any independent news organization. Do you think that 9/11 is so un-news-worthy and lacking in significance that it doesn't need to be examined in minute detail? Even now, nearly 7 years later 9/11 little is known about the basic facts of the day but its historical importance becomes larger and larger.
So why is the official story so full of holes? Why isn't the media addressing the issues? No air crash investigation, no judical investigation, the flawed 9/11 Commission Report (disowned by its authors), basic facts disputed (cell phones on planes, building collapse mechanism, skyscraper safety, molten steel, etc), insurance scams, pre-knowledge of 9/11, planted evidence such as the magic passports of the hijackers, indeed confirmation of the hijacker identities, who made the fake bin laden video, the cause of the DoD budget overspend reported on 10th Sept 2001... the list just goes on and on and on. And nobody in the mainstream media is investigating. It is left up to students and amateurs. Rather than pointing out the trivial mistakes they have made, why isn't the BBC (or anyone) investigating the very serious and valid points that are being made? (These points are not just "conspiracy theories"!)
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"nobleFloridian" is your real name Jeb Bush by any chance?
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I've read a fair few of these posts now and there seems to be a mixed veiw on opinions. One thing that stands out is that people who disagree with the conspiracy theorists, disagree with thier veiws vehemently, saying they can't possibly be true. Why? Because belief or understanding of an attrocity so great is a terribly frightening thing? Because we have been taught over the years to beleive hands down what we are told? Or because people don't use the amazing brain they have been given?
I don't know who said something along the lines that the most logical given answer to something regardless of how ridiculous it may sound must be the truth (something like that - if someone would like to correct me on that I'd be grateful)
Laws of physics state that a falling body falls at a given speed - freefall. You cant have the top floors of a 110 storey building fall at free fall through the remaining 70-90 or so floors without there being resistance to slow freefall speed. It's impossible, yet we see that happening, twice, for the first time in human history of skyscrapers. This is despite planes hitting other skyscrapers and standing. Most notable the Empire State Building, which as you know stands to this day. Yet we find ourselves a few hours later with a 47 storey building, which is distanced further away from the twin towers than other buildings that received greater damage that WTC7, but again are still standing. Also physics mentions about a falling body which has damage at a certain point falls unsymetrically, like a tree would in a forest when being cut down. It falls to the side with the least support. WTC7 was only damaged on one side, although this damaged was severe, its fall would not keep with the pattern of a building that has only been damaged on one side. It would fall toward the side with the least support, collapsing toward the Twin Towers. But it didn't it fell gracefully into a pile upon itself. This is impossible. It cannot happen. Try it with anything. Jenga, a snowman, a tree, anything that you have the ability to damage one side enough to make it collapse and it will fall toward the damage. WTC7 was brought down by controlled explosive, fire doesn't burn or can be controlled to an extent its temperature can make a structured collection of static steel girders (a building) uniformally, and universally collapse at exactly the same time.
My point is, those of you who completely disregard any type of conspiracy theory, listen to yourselves, the facts you're being told do not make sense . . logically. Think for as long as is needed to examine the facts and come to a conclusion. Who knows who attacked the WTC's? The point is that these buildings could not have come down in the way that you are being led to beleive - it is impossible. Open your minds a little and think about what you are being told rather than accept everything first hand. humans are intellegent animals and we need to re-learn how to use that intellegence rather than being lazy and just accepting everything.
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I am concerned that whenever there are programs on conspiracies it is considered appropriate for the producers to disseminate and destroy the "evidence" upon which the conspiracy has been built, rather than investigate the omissions, real or imagined, that have lead to the conspiracy.
9/11 was unique in that it was covered on live TV as it happened and once it was established "that a small plane has flown into WTC 1" (as reported on FiveLive by Simon Mayo) was actually part of a series of terrorist attacks.
I was impressed on that day by the speed with which the BBC connected incidents up, brought in studio comment to flesh up the visual information presented, and attempted to relate the horrors experienced by New Yorkers on that terrible day. "Conspiracy" could not have been further from my mind at the time.
However, with all the wealth of the visuals I had watched that day, came the realisation from the comments of others that I may have been cheated, and that the coverage may have been deliberately manipulated to add impact. For me this was a matter of trust, and, as has been suggested by other correspondents, the BBC had been found wanting in its reporting on other matters.
Layer on that the pitiful Hutton Enquiry and what we now know of Iraq and Afghanistan and it becomes apparent that our political leaders cannot be trusted and nor can our media.
My observation on programs that seek to explain conspiracy away is that they must also deal with official deceit and the reason why so many political leaders seem happy to lie to us, sell us deceits, and mislead us openly. There is never a moment when these lies, deceits and misrepresentation of fact is questioned in depth at the time. Instead we must wait three decades for material to become available.
At least the USA has attempted to deal with the subject matter of 9/11 and conspiracies by countering the evidence that "Loose Change", "Plane Sight" etc have produced. But even the USA has not tackled the political innuendo exposed in so many programs on 9/11 and its aftermath.
I would like to be able to trust the BBC to deliver news honestly and factually but it seems that increasingly they produce news in the same vein as many tabloids. I think it follows from this that many people will take programs produce by the Corporation with a large pinch of salt. We do need to know what political pressure the BBC has been under since it was humbled by Blair and Campbell if only to put its delivery of "news" into perspective.
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To DCHeretic
Why would it be necessary to silence people? I seem to recall that the exposure of Watergate took two journalists a very long time because a large number of those involved were unaware.
We also have the whole point of the USA being shell shocked at being attacked at home and not in some far away place. Exposing the fragile nature of your own defences against such an attack was perhaps the main concern post 9/11 rather than studying in minute detail what actually happened and in what order.
Too many things remain unanswered and not investigated for anyone to feel confident that what we are fed is actually true.
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It is hard to take this conspiracy theory seriously when bloggers are writing that the buildings were brought down by "fire." A jetliner weighing several tons slamming into the top quarter of a building at a tremendous speed is far more dramatic than a mere fire in the building. No skyscraper has ever experienced such an impact and hopefully never will again.
After listening to the debate and watching documentaries, the only possible conspiracy that I can accept is perhaps a conspiracy of silence involving a design flaw in the complex. And even that is doubtful.
For those of you who demand more empirical evidence, please make sure that any experiments use the exact same 1960s era steel and other building materials used in the WTC complex. Compare like to like.
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Gileshalton, you may be thinking of the statement Conan Doyle attributed to Sherlock Holmes, to the effect that once the impossible is eliminated, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. However, I think you should also consider Occam's Razor, that hypotheses should not be needlessly multipled, the simplest explanation that fits the facts is likely to be correct.
In this case, the simplest explanation is that the generally accepted version of events is correct, but does it fit the facts? You have put forward some suggested facts that would refute it, but are they correct?
To correct your physics, falling bodies fall with uniform acceleration, not speed, until they reach their terminal velocity, the speed at which gravity is balanced by resistance forces, typically air resistance. What we need to consider here is the time it would take the uppermost floors to reach the ground had they been falling through air, compared to the actual time they took. I take it you are saying these times are the same, therefore the lower part of the buildings offered no resistance, therefore it must have been destroyed by explosives before hit by the rubble of the upper floors. Measurement is complicated by a number of practical factors, including the huge clouds of dust that obscure the view on the videos, but seems to indicate that in fact the lower parts of the buildings did offer resistance. That they did, is actually shown very clearly on the videos of the collapse. Pieces of debris can clearly be seen falling faster than the collapse wave goes down the towers, therefore upper part of the towers was encountering resistance from the intact lower part, and the hypothesis of explosives is not required.
The Empire State Building was hit by a very much lighter aircraft travelling at a much lower speed and is of quite different construction. There is no reason for it to react in the same way.
WTC7 received very extensive damage from the falling towers, caught fire, and burnt attended for 7 hours. The firemen present were all expecting it to fall, and it duly did so. A normal building will never fall in the same way as a monolithic structure like a tree, a building is very largely empty space. The fall of WTC7 does seem surprisingly symmetrical at first sight, but actually it isn't, the penthouse disappears early, giving an indication of internal collapse. The building at its lower levels was very unusual, being built over the ConEd substation, with a few massive beams transferring load. Structure Magazine, for structural engineers, did a recent analysis putting forward a possible explanation. NIST may or may not agree with this when their report is eventually published. I would also recommend Dr Keith Seffen's paper on the collapse of the towers, which demonstrates that once collapse started, it would inevitably continue.
There is nothing impossible about the way the buildings collapsed, if it was the engineers of the many countries hostile to the USA would be shouting it from the roof-tops and delight in proving it. They aren't, and I think you should perhaps be more wary of what you are being told by conspiracy websites. See if any of them can answer the key question put by Noam Chomsky, certainly no friend of a republican administration, why should the US frame 19 nationals of Saudi Arabia, its most important supplier of oil in the region, in order to provide an excuse for attacking Iraq?
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Ambersil - your knowledge of physical science is obviously much greater than mine, and well done for correcting me on many of my points, but I still stand by the point that I was trying to make. Population on mass need to be less driven by what they perceive to be true and think about facts that once thought through don't add up.
The collapse of those buildings is dubious, albeit with some facts that are both disputed and some that are backed-up. The fact that there is an element of doubt should be something that should ring bells. The official story should be one of complete undoubting fact, if the events are exactly that. On September 11, many things happened, unprecedently so, on more individual occasions than heard of before. Buildings collapsing upon themselves due to fire, planes vapourising, paper passports surviving fireballs, parts of engines completely alien to the planes flown appearing on the street, pyroclastic clouds racing down New York Streets from destruction of buildings collapsing on themselves as is the norm from uncontrolled demolition. I'm not saying the facts you are producing are not fact, but there is to much grey area to think that all these things and much much more could all happen for the first time ever on the same day at pretty much the same time for it to be beleived the officail story is true. Coincidences are surely a product of maths, and when these maths are added up the chances are astronomical, however, not to say impossible.
I still beleive that the fall rate of the twin towers would have been greatly lengthened by a pancake effect compared to the 'near' freefall speed at which they did, and I can't see how a completely uniform drop of 2 110 story buildings could happen considering the impact heights and angles differed so much.
Thanks again for setting me straight on the science I was not acurate on. I do not claim to know everything about the issue, but my point was trying to make people aware of being aware that the media, who are in instances controlled by those who may have had a hand in instigating these things may not be telling the whole truth. We must open our minds to every possiblity that lays before us, rather than just the ones that people with possible bloody hands tell us. Would you (a populus, not you specifically) admit to a massive crime if you were involved?
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@Ambersil wrote: I always find it amusing to read these "explanations", especially the line about "correcting your physics", yet then providing not a shred of empirical data only "it seems". This building collapsed in *near* free fall speed, please explain how this was done without controlled demolition technology - and without inventing new laws of physics;)
Finally to conclude with the statement about Chomsky, questioning the sanity of the evildoers for fingering Saudi's, I am again amused that this is the best argument the deniers can come up with - another question, questioning the thought process of the evildoers. And I think we can all agree, whoever it was, we all question their rationality. One request: please don't say the U.S., it was not, that is like saying Italy when you are speaking of the Mafia, or Russia.
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"71. At 00:57am on 03 Jul 2008, DCHeretic wrote:
It is hard to take this conspiracy theory seriously when bloggers are writing that the buildings were brought down by "fire." "
Ok, so somehow you've done the research and have a better idea how this occurred than NIST? Really now.
I';m interested to see the rather naive and uninformed comments here it's rather obvious the bbc is bringing this to broader attention of those poorly informed about the events and the considerable research done by various parties.
Educate thyselves, people.
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Ambersil, the most possible hypothesis is that one of the most powerful and technologically advanced countries in the world could surmount such a diabolical plan to destroy thier figureheads of finance through a physical attack on the people of a nation is far more acceptable than a few men in a cave in Afganistan (as we are told is the official story) being able do the same thing. It happened in England too - the coincedences are amazing . . multimple tests of serious incidents at precicesly the same time in the same place, the accusations of Muslim people, the passports surviving fireballs where nothing else did etc it's too uncanny. I don't know if you're British or not, but the same denial that the British feel to 7/7 about any consipracy is rejected in the same way the Americans feel to 9/11 but yet we have reverse feelings about each others horrendous catastrophes as we do about the Americans catastrophe because we never beleive that our governments could do such a thing regardless of the cost
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Morning All
Mike Rudin - I hope you read these contributions because I have a suggestion for you of an area to explore.
What you need to do is focus on what happened BEFORE the attacks.
There is one piece of information that is fact and is not rational. It is this - there was an exceptionally abnormal increase in the number of put options ( right to sell) in American and United Airlines AND an exceptional increase in the number of call ( right to buy) in defense stocks and stocks of suppliers to defense contractors BEFORE the attacks. It is the AND that is key. If I knew of this in advance this is exactly what I would have done. Apologies guys if this seems technical but it is really very simple.
The beauty of the internet is that most of the time people do not declare who they are or their professional qualifications when posting. Lets change that here and now for the purposes of this debate. I am a law graduate with 22 years experience in investment banking and the reason I am telling you this is because not only has this taught me to focus on facts not emotions but relevant to what I said earlier it is simply not possible that the people who took the option positions both ways i.e. the right to sell the airline stocks and the right to buy the defense stocks did this out of pure speculation. Rational Investors with no inside information do not behave in this way. They would be risking billions in aggregate if these were speculative plays. It simply is not what happens in financial markets.
If you are a physics graduate or a metalurgist or a fire expert or an architect then please give your perspectives on what happened to the buildings. I have given mine in my area of expertise and I am not qualified on these areas.
Mike - get to the brokers and banks and find out who the buyers of the options were if you can and follow the trail. They were not doing this on their own account there must have been underlying clients. If they were doing it on their own account then that would be far more disturbing. Think about it !
Work on the facts .
The other fact is that the BBC did report the collapse of WTC7 12 minutes before it happened based on a Reuters wire. So Reuters by definition made the statement more than 12 minutes before based on an unnamed local source. What was Reuters source ? Tell us.
Good luck. Someone knew about this in advance without doubt - the question is how many people knew ?
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One more fact to be established.
Does anyone know if it is true that members of the extended Bin Laden family were flown OUT of mainland US to Saudi through the security cordon within hours of the attacks ?
Why ?
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I agree with lydgrace's comments on presenting a more thorough picture of events prior to the "attacks". Were there people for whom the development of a conspiracy theory would be a godsend? Were there people who did know what was about to happen at least in general if not in detail?
A program that demonstrates the development of conspiracies may actually reveal just how complicit high ranking people are in their feeding of red-herrings that mask any small truths that may be touched upon.
We know there are many conspiracies and we know that there is excessive media manipulation. What we do not know for certain is why.
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Mike,
I hope Richard Porter isn't your boss. He spent a week looking for the missing tapes and the blog...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/03/part_of_the_conspiracy_2.html
...went on for a year . It seems to be covering pretty much the same ground although with shorter and snapier contributions because the blog system was so unreliable. That blog would still be going if it wasn't for the bbc's change of technology which froze that blog to just 600 or so comments!
So how come you could quickly find the tapes and Richard Porter (if not your boss, then a senior guy in bbc world news) could not? Was Richard not even trying? Do you know who mislaid the tapes?
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Dear Mr Rudin,
The Conspiracy Files screened on the 1st of July was one of the worst pieces of journalism I have ever seen. The 3 'truth' seekers were not allowed to speak for more than about 5 minutes through the entire program and were hardly even allowed to present evidence to support their claims, and every time they did so the good old beeb would start playing on people's heart strings about how upsetting it might be for the victims families.
Not to mention factual inaccuracy. You mention the planes couldn't be tracked because of the transponders. I suggest you find out what Norman Mineta has to say about this (he was in the White House bunker with Dick Cheney by the way). A plane crash in Pennsylvania? I suggest you look on Google for what a plane crash looks like, there's usually this thing called wreckage.
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Here is a website that looks very closely at the various theories surrounding the World Trade Centre:
http://www.911myths.com
And here is a report from some real demolition engineeers:
http://www.implosionworld.com/Article-WTC%20STUDY%208-06%20w%20clarif%20as%20of%209-8-06%20.pdf
I hope that the programme producers have checked out these sorts of sources as well as Loose Change.
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Please could one of the proponents of what I will call the 'alternative conspiracy theory' surrounding the events of 911 (as opposed to the 'official conspiracy theory' which involved about 19 people or so who came from the middle east) please outline in more detail the extent of the conspiracy, the numbers of people involved, who they were (what were their skills?), what were they motivated by (this is very important, also did they get what they set out to achieve?), were they connected with those people in the 'official' conspiracy explanation (and if so how?), why did they get the BBC involved (surely not the wisest move...), are they the same people or part of the same conspiracy that led to 77 in London, what are these people up to now, how have they managed to get away scot free, etc etc.
Basically there are people posting on here obviously absolutely convinced of the 'alterative conspiracy' yet no-one has painted a anything close to a realistic picture of how this amazing plot was put together, and how they implemented it on the day (did these people have a control room somewhere managing this operation?) and how to this day they have managed to get away with it.
Oh and 'shadowy figures' etc is a cop out. Details please.
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Note that lydgrace is another poster asking the right kind of questions in the right kind of way. The ranters, whether for or against a particular conspiracy view, may appear to dominate but it's careful contributions like this that make the discussion worthwhile. And, very importantly, it's only such an attitude that pays due respect to those who died on 9-11 - the majority of whom did so in the very sudden disintegration of the twin towers, whose stability was self-evident for the hour or more after the planes' impact (which is why so many firefighters were sent inside). The memory and dignity of the victims should be our concern at all times, as others have said. But that has to include a passion to uncover the truth of what was done to pitilessly destroy them.
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To answer some of the points made in response to my earlier post, #72, may I say this:
Those who say that the towers falling at the speed they did without explosives being involved would violate the laws of physics need to demonstrate that, not just state it as though it were self-evident. Dr Keith Seffen, a professor of engineering at Cambridge, has written the most recent paper on the subject, available here:
http://winterpatriot.pbwiki.com/f/seffen_simple_analysis.pdf Attempts have of course been made to debunk it, that is to be expected, but not at all convincingly.
If the best argument against Chomsky's point is that the perpetrators were irrational, that is very much a self-defeating point. To argue that the assumed perpetrators of the most complicated plot the world has ever seen, perfectly executed, thousands of participants persuaded to take part and keep quiet afterwards, were not all there is beyond absurd.
No conspiracist has yet managed to produce even a coherent account of what might have happened that fits all the agreed facts, there are hundreds of different theories and varients, but one thing they have in common is that thousands must have been involved in the plan and its cover up. More are added every time a conspiracist comments, all the people at NIST, most of the media, acedemics who comment, all are assumed to be involved. What can their motives be, are they paid off, threatened, all with deep political motives? how could they be approached in the first place? "Hi, we are planning to murder thousands of your fellow citizens to give us a better excuse to suppress freedom and invade Iraq, can we rely on your support?" And everyone single one approached either signed up or kept quiet, is that in the slightest bit plausible in the land of the whistleblower, where even the President could not keep secret tapes made in his own office?
Some more minor points:
The idea that 9/11 could not be planned by a few Arabs in a cave is the one of the favourite scoffs of the conspiracists. Leaving aside the racist assumptions, bin Laden had access to considerable funds from his family business, and at the time al Qaeda occupied an extensive training complex, at Tarnak Farms.
Millions of pieces of paper were blowing around the streets of Manhattan, one of those pieces that survived from the towers was a passport, why should that be impossible?
If anomalous engine parts were found, that would indeed be significant. Bring on the evidence!
Pyroclastic flow occurs from volcanoes, dust clouds are something else.
The put options issue is extensively analysed here: http://www.nationalreview.com/rose/rose200407260700.asp American Airlines had issued a profits warning, analysts were recommending getting out of all travel stocks after the dot.com bubble burst, it is all quite rational.
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"83. At 11:05am on 03 Jul 2008, tapdancingdan wrote:
Please could one of the proponents of what I will call the 'alternative conspiracy theory' surrounding the events of 911 (as opposed to the 'official conspiracy theory' which involved about 19 people or so who came from the middle east) please outline in more detail the extent of the conspiracy, the numbers of people involved, who they were (what were their skills?), what were they motivated by (this is very important, also did they get what they set out to achieve?), were they connected with those people in the 'official' conspiracy explanation (and if so how?), why did they get the BBC involved (surely not the wisest move...), are they the same people or part of the same conspiracy that led to 77 in London, what are these people up to now, how have they managed to get away scot free, etc etc.
Basically there are people posting on here obviously absolutely convinced of the 'alterative conspiracy' yet no-one has painted a anything close to a realistic picture of how this amazing plot was put together, and how they implemented it on the day (did these people have a control room somewhere managing this operation?) and how to this day they have managed to get away with it."
Ok. Can we agree on basic facts first before we start pointing fingers?
If you go to
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/project.jsp?project=911_project
Which is factually-based timeline of events (facts: ie information from independent and referable sources of information). And if we can agree some of those facts then we have some opportunity for finger pointing. The BBC is involved only becuase they have not challenged any of the official story.
See number 66: the official story so full of holes and why isn't the media addressing the issues? No air crash investigation, no judical investigation, the flawed 9/11 Commission Report (disowned by its authors), basic facts disputed (cell phones on planes, building collapse mechanism, skyscraper safety, molten steel, etc), insurance scams, pre-knowledge of 9/11, "put" share dealings on companies to be affected by 9/11, planted evidence such as the magic passports of the hijackers, indeed confirmation of the hijacker identities, who made the fake bin laden video, the cause of the DoD budget overspend of $2.2trillion reported on 10th Sept 2001... the list just goes on and on and on. And nobody in the mainstream media is investigating. Why isn't the BBC (or other journalists) investigating the very serious and valid points that are being made? (These points are not just "conspiracy theories"!)
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I posted 2 comments on here yesterday (actually saying I think the conspiracy believers are mentally deranged), but both vanished into thin air... spooky, or a conspiracy??
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Thank you Tapdancingdan for asking very pertinent questions and rdrake98's endorsement of my request for factual focus.
I would also fully support his statement on memory and dignity of the victims being paramount . I may have mentioned earlier that the company I worked for at the time was housed in the building across the street from the WTC. We owe a duty to the victims to establish the facts. Several of my co workers families were in NYPD and the fire service.
So if there was a conspiracy who was involved and how would they benefit asks Tapdancingdan ?
The gains made on the financial positions I mentioned earlier were enormous. Where were they invested ? Not inconceivably in a war chest or somewhere else in the CIA's budget ? Farcical maybe but not impossible
The event led to a massive surge in Anti Islamic sentiment in the US and the West which in turn diminished exponentially opposition to the entry of the US into Iraq. The phrase War on Terror emerged.
Harnassing this sentiment Saddam is disposed and then US and western oil and oil services companies will secure over time long term contracts in Kurdistan and other parts of Iraq. This has happened and is happening today as we speak and long term contracts are being tendered
Who was involved ? Ok people will say it had to be FBI and CIA with Executive endorsement to achieve something of this scale? I do not know of course but consider what happened in Vietnam where for extended periods including the barbaric extension of the bombing into Cambodia and Laos it was a very small number of people who de facto executed this strategy - Kissinger in particular. It is not inconceivable that a similar concentration of decision making happened in 2001. In Vietnam it was anti communist paranoia and the Domino theory that justified any and all action in South East Asia. In 2001 Communism is replaced by Fundamentalism.
So Islamic fundamentalism is elevated as the new great evil, a fanatical tyrant is removed, the Arab is consistently potrayed in an adverse light by Hollywood and other parts of the media { watch "24" guys !}and access to critical oil and gas contracts secured. Before anyone asks I am a white, anglo saxon protestant !
Much of what I have written above is of course speculation but like I said earlier follow the financial trail and it will lead you to some dark recesses I am certain.
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72. At 01:28am on 03 Jul 2008, Ambersil wrote:
"To correct your physics, falling bodies fall with uniform acceleration, not speed, until they reach their terminal velocity, the speed at which gravity is balanced by resistance forces, typically air resistance. What we need to consider here is the time it would take the uppermost floors to reach the ground had they been falling through air, compared to the actual time they took. "
Don't you think that steel frames provide more resistance than air? So any collapse would be slower than free-fall and asymentrical? WTC 1 and 2 fell symetrically despite the aircraft hitting different positions. How do explain the steel beams being ejected horizontally from the towers? The pulvisation of concrete (and bodies!) to dust from the outset?
"I take it you are saying these times are the same, therefore the lower part of the buildings offered no resistance, therefore it must have been destroyed by explosives before hit by the rubble of the upper floors. Measurement is complicated by a number of practical factors, including the huge clouds of dust that obscure the view on the videos, but seems to indicate that in fact the lower parts of the buildings did offer resistance. That they did, is actually shown very clearly on the videos of the collapse. Pieces of debris can clearly be seen falling faster than the collapse wave goes down the towers, therefore upper part of the towers was encountering resistance from the intact lower part, and the hypothesis of explosives is not required."
How do you explain the "explosive" reaction of concrete to dust and the pools of molten steel in the basements of WTC 1, 2 and 7 which persisted for weeks after the event?
"The Empire State Building was hit by a very much lighter aircraft travelling at a much lower speed and is of quite different construction. There is no reason for it to react in the same way. "
Indeed the Empire State Building is a far weaker building than the Twin Towers.
"WTC7 received very extensive damage from the falling towers, caught fire, and burnt attended for 7 hours. "
Madrid tower: burnt for 23 hours with falling down. Please confirm independent sources for "very extensive" since this is not borne out by independent eye witnesses.
"The firemen present were all expecting it to fall, and it duly did so. A normal building will never fall in the same way as a monolithic structure like a tree, a building is very largely empty space. "
This is not very encouraging to all the people that have to work in skyscrapers...
"The fall of WTC7 does seem surprisingly symmetrical at first sight, but actually it isn't, the penthouse disappears early, giving an indication of internal collapse. "
As you would expect from a Controlled Demolition: this allows the building to collapse inwardly. Nb buildings either side of WTC7 were virtually undamage and are still there today.
"The building at its lower levels was very unusual, being built over the ConEd substation, with a few massive beams transferring load. "
Indeed: MASSIVE BEAMS!
"Structure Magazine, for structural engineers, did a recent analysis putting forward a possible explanation. NIST may or may not agree with this when their report is eventually published. I would also recommend Dr Keith Seffen's paper on the collapse of the towers, which demonstrates that once collapse started, it would inevitably continue."
Seffen's paper does not mention WTC7 and seems totally impenetrable. So much for my university maths qualifications! Maths does not explain away physics: note the chemical traces, energy required for dust creation and pools of molten steel.
"There is nothing impossible about the way the buildings collapsed, if it was the engineers of the many countries hostile to the USA would be shouting it from the roof-tops and delight in proving it."
Er... I think they are.
"They aren't, and I think you should perhaps be more wary of what you are being told by conspiracy websites."
And just believe George Bush? Come on, what about all the other anomalies of the day? The official story is full of holes. Don't you think this is important to have a real discussion?
"See if any of them can answer the key question put by Noam Chomsky, certainly no friend of a republican administration, why should the US frame 19 nationals of Saudi Arabia, its most important supplier of oil in the region, in order to provide an excuse for attacking Iraq?"
Are you asking who benefits?
- $2.2trillion DoD overspend (never investigated) announced on 10th Sept
- Huge additional sums spent on US DoD ever since. Check their budget: the auditor for 7th year cannot sign-off the accounts because of total chaos there.
- Gold Bullion at bottom of WTC7 not recovered.
- US economy M1 money supply blip in August 2001 unexplained.
- Silverstien's insurance scam on WTC was worth $7billion or more. WTC towers were a huge white elephant, btw...
- Requirement for gas pipleine in Afghanistan - now approved.
- Excuse to invade Iraq serves the military-industrial complex esp Halliburton (Cheney was CEO of Halliburton).
- US and UK Oil companies just received concessions in Iraq.
- Excuse to apply the Patriot Act (observely written pre-9/11 and waiting to be applied) and so change the US consituition.
Gee, I can't see who would benefit from that lot.
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"87. At 12:33pm on 03 Jul 2008, grimble22350 wrote:
I posted 2 comments on here yesterday (actually saying I think the conspiracy believers are mentally deranged), but both vanished into thin air... spooky, or a conspiracy??"
I think calling people mentally deranged for people saying that they don't believe George Bush isn't in the spirit of the bbc's guidelines.
Tell us why you believe George Bush when there has not been any real evidence for his claims (no air crash investigations, building reports that miss evidence such as the molten steel and reprots of secondary devices in the buildings), no evidence except for that extracted by torture. We're still waiting for the report tying Bin Laden to 9/11.
And then tell us why you want to ignore all the evidence that goes counter to the official story.
Then perhaps you can tell us where the logic fails. I am happy to listen to logical and well informed people.
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tapdancingdan (#83): we were within a minute of each other at 11.05 so I'll have a stab at your questions, which I do by the way appreciate and take to be honest ones.
First. the 'alternative conspiracy theory' you are seeking information about does not exist. For there are many such theories. That's why we need critical thinking, on either side of the divide. (And the divide is best characterised I think as between those that tend to trust most of the official version, as expressed in the 9-11 Commission Report and the NIST work, and those that have serious questions about it. Nobody in their right minds believes every detail or doubts every detail. The world is surely more complicated than that.)
"please outline in more detail the extent of the conspiracy"
Don't know.
"the numbers of people involved"
Don't know.
"who they were (what were their skills?)"
Don't know.
"what were they motivated by (this is very important, also did they get what they set out to achieve?)"
Don't know. But I do have some thoughts on this. Those that planned and made masses of money from 9-11 (as definitely happened, as lydgrace has begun to detail) were interested not just in immediate financial gain but also in setting on fire the pre-existing battle between Muslim extremism and the West. Arms sales in the 90s at the end of the cold war were down 50%. But even there it wasn't just the money. It was manipulation of the whole world into much more bloodshed, which has to be for some very dark purposes indeed. If any of us are even close to the truth on this we are clearly talking about something horrendously evil. But don't miss the fact that all this conjecture is based on the hard evidence of the way the WTC buildings were destroyed, which simply cannot have happened in the way the OV describes because of the laws of physics.
"were they connected with those people in the 'official' conspiracy explanation"
People disagree on this but I would say yes.
"(and if so how?)"
Don't know.
"why did they get the BBC involved"
They didn't.
"are they the same people or part of the same conspiracy that led to 77 in London"
Don't know.
"what are these people up to now"
Surprisingly, they haven't told me.
"how have they managed to get away scot free"
They haven't. Scholars for 9-11 Truth and Justice have recently had their first paper published in a peer-reviewed engineering journal. Even the BBC may be about to expose some of the obvious lying about WTC7. It may be small beer so far. But STJ911.org continually emphasizes that its aim is not to explain everything that happened - nobody can do that, especially from the outside - but to get an official inquiry that properly addresses the gross anomalies in the case, especially in the mass murder at the WTC site.
You're right that many people who doubt the OV of 9-11 sound much too sure of themselves and their theories. I suggest we need sensible people like you to look very carefully at the real problems of the case, then, armed with more solid information, join the fight for truth and justice from there.
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grimble22350 #87, can you go into detail why you believe "conspiracy believers" are "mentally deranged," or do you have to sign a release form from your local psychiatric hospital first?
I'd just like to say that if you're not in possession of all the facts, then it's quite easy to get a distorted view of reality. And when it comes to 9/11 and Building 7, most people's information is filtered by the mainstream television, who in turn get their info from government institutions, so it's not surprising that people believe in the "official" story.
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In reply to post 89:
The time taken for the towers to fall WAS slower than if they had fallen through air. WTC2 was seen to tilt to one side initially, ie did not fall symmetrically until global collapse commenced, then given how the top floors were falling on the lower, it was inevitable that the collapse would be symmetrical. Naturally in a chaotic collapse, some debris would be ejected sideways. There is simply no evidence that pulverisation of concrete occurred at the outset, and indeed there were large chunks of concrete in the remains. What is certain to have powdered early on was the many tons of gypsum wallboard, which probably accounts for a large part of the dust clouds.
There is no evidence for molten steel at ground zero, there are some accounts of molten metal, which are more likely to have been aluminium. molten steel is not anyway the result of the use of explosives.
The Madrid tower suffered all its steel component collapsing, just as the WTC did. What remained standing was the concrete core, which the WTC buildings did not have.
Not all the concrete was pulverised and calculations based on that assumption are flawed. Seffen deals with the towers, not WTC7, obviously. sorry you cannot follow his maths, neither can I.
The world's structural engineers are NOT falling over themselves to prove an inside job, whatever country they come from.
Accepting the 'official' account of what happened does not depend in any way on believing G W Bush, it depends on hard evidence and informed opinion, things the conspiracy theories notably lack. Imaginary anomalies cut no ice.
The unaccounted trillions at the Pentagon were known about before 9/11 and continued to be investigated afterwards. Silverstein lost out on the insurance, he was underinsured for the re-building, and has been in court against his insurers many times - his must be the most incompetant insurance scam in history! The pipeline was cancelled and is only now going ahead 7 years later. Fairy gold!
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Can I just repeat the observation from someone way back on the thread: the argument is continually made that hundreds or thousands must have been involved in such a conspiracy, and yet the people who say this believe that 19 Arabs carried it off.
Please clarify your position...
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Classic....you couldn't make it up.
"This content isn't available at the moment"
Realised it's a bit incriminating and been removed?
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Ambersil, #93
This link will take you to a photo showing the Twin towers being constructed...
http://911.yweb.sk/images/co-hovoria-o-pade-WTC-oficialne-spravy/03-WTC_Core_03s.jpg
As you can see, it is hard to miss the central steel core running up the centre of the building. This core housed the elevator systems.
If the floors were falling onto each other as you suggest, what made the steel core disappear. Shouldn't the steel core have remained standing, with a pile of floors at it's base?
I have included the above link to verify that the Twin Towers were not hollow in the middle, as many people still claim.
How was the central steel core's integrity weakened, completely, through both towers? How did the steel above pass through the steel below it with so little resistance?
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Loose Change is probably the worst researched investigative documentary of all time. Dylan Avery knows about video editing, but that's about all. Anyone who cites that film as some sort of 'evidence' of global conspiracy needs to take a step back and think. Occam's Razor is extremely applicable to the events of 9/11 - why invoke conspiracy of such huge proportion when the simplest explanations are that a) the US government was incompetent leading up to and during the events of 9/11 and b) that the buildings were not built to the stated specifications. Simple as that.
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ayjayhawk wrote:
Can I just repeat the observation from someone way back on the thread: the argument is continually made that hundreds or thousands must have been involved in such a conspiracy, and yet the people who say this believe that 19 Arabs carried it off.
Please clarify your position...
You clarify your position on what happened, then we will be in a position to estimate the numbers involved.
If you are prepared to believe that the perpetrators of an inside job were able to recruit 19 suicide hijackers to fly planes into buildings, which then collapsed, then indeed thousands of people would not need to be involved. However, few if any conspiracists say that. They normally postulate that specially modified remote control planes were used, those on board were gassed, voice morphing technology used to simulate phone calls, explosives planted in the towers, incriminating evidence removed, false reports prepared by FEMA and NIST, a continuing media cover-up, and so on.
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Complete nonsense.
If you want to know the true conspiracy behind the whole thing - look up:
A) Larry Silverstien
b) His purchase of the leashold (January that same year!)
c) The bidding process - how he lost and then the winners walked off the pitch and decided they didn't want it.
d) ...and then you can talk about the actual falling of the building.
The mis-reporting is just evidence of how Journalists have become no better than Sheep - not verifying their sources and checking the information is correct (I mean c'mon how can Reuters mistake then be propogated by both the BBC and CNN)
This whole thing was a classic INSURANCE FRAUD. You buy the property in a bidding process, which you loose - but then agree with the winners to a deal which gets you it for $50 million LESS than the winning bid.
Then you burn the thing down, and strangely you try to claim DOUBLE the insured amount ($7.1 bill compared to the insured amount of $3.55 bil)
The insurers object to this and it goes to court - but you don't worry because you're well connected - and hey presto - at the second trial the court reverses it's ealier decision and awards you nearly everything you were after.
I have no doubt whatsoever that in the country where the dollar is king - there are no morals in the making of that money.
If I had followed Larry's effort on a property in this country (but on a much smaller scale) - don't you think the insurance companies would smell fraud?
I suspect the conspiracy was that certain people knew the attacks were going to happen before January 2001 - Larry found this out and decided to profit from the situation.
Everyone benefited from this, the Government got the justification for the war they desperately needed to boost the flagging defence manufacturers, the terrorists got their martyrs, Larry got his $$$'s and the hawks got the patriot act and increased snooping powers.
All winners - except the 3000+ people that they murdered on that day.
But then as Hitler said:
"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it."
....just before he burnt down the Reichstag and then used it to justify the elimination of the Communist party in Germany.
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frasay wrote:
"If the floors were falling onto each other as you suggest, what made the steel core disappear. Shouldn't the steel core have remained standing, with a pile of floors at it's base?
How was the central steel core's integrity weakened, completely, through both towers? How did the steel above pass through the steel below it with so little resistance?"
Remember that collapse started with the equivalent of at least a 12 storey building dropping on to the lower lower section of the towers. Do you really expect the lower section to stand up to that dynamic load? The central core was very likely pulled apart sideways by the attachments to the floors, as the floors were knocked down. I am sure you have also seen a picture of part of the central core of one building, known as the 'spire' surviving for a short time as you think all should have.
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TheresOnly1Soupey wrote:
"This whole thing was a classic INSURANCE FRAUD."
Complete nonsense. Silverstein underinsured the buildings in relation to the rebuilding cost he was contractually bound to pay, and the contract was vague as to whether the attacks were one event or two, something you seem to half understand. Silverstein has therefore been involved in litigation ever since at huge expense and must have lost heavily on the deal. If it was an insurance fraud, it was the most incompetent in history!
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The site www.911myths.com clearly answers pretty welll every point made in ynda20's posting (message 89), not to mention in most of the other conspiracist postings on this board.
Conspiracists tend to make points, and ask "how do you explain these" ... but these points *have* been plainly explained!
I strongly suggest that conspiracists take a look at that site (it will take some time, as it is a big site that looks at the huge range of myths surrounding the whole tragedy).
You'll find that what you've heard is the "truth" doesn't stand up when it is closely examined. However, as the site itself explains, in the end you've got to make up your own mind.
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Hi Ambersil,
Thanks for the reply and info. We disagree on some of the basic facts so inevitably we are going to reach different conclusions... let me discuss
"93. At 2:23pm on 03 Jul 2008, Ambersil wrote:
In reply to post 89:
The time taken for the towers to fall WAS slower than if they had fallen through air. "
I think it all depends on when you take your timings. The difference is really small! Viscosity due to steel beams would I suggest be somewhat more than air by some margin.
"WTC2 was seen to tilt to one side initially, ie did not fall symmetrically until global collapse commenced, then given how the top floors were falling on the lower, it was inevitable that the collapse would be symmetrical."
For both towers? The second aircraft hit lower down and to one side. Are you sure it was inevitable? Where's evidence for that? (Don't point back to Steffan!)
"Naturally in a chaotic collapse, some debris would be ejected sideways."
I don't see anything natural about it. Where is all the lateral energy coming from?
"There is simply no evidence that pulverisation of concrete occurred at the outset"
What were those plumes at the very beginning if not concrete dust plumes?
"and indeed there were large chunks of concrete in the remains".
Sure.
"What is certain to have powdered early on was the many tons of gypsum wallboard, which probably accounts for a large part of the dust clouds."
Calculations of the amount of dust appear that the dust mainly came from concrete. The gypsum was a much smaller proportion of the volume of the building.
"There is no evidence for molten steel at ground zero, there are some accounts of molten metal, which are more likely to have been aluminium."
This is where we part company on basic facts. There is lots of evidence of molten metal - ignored by NIST, unexplained by NIST or any official story. Why more likely to aluminium. Why not steel? (As reported at the time) Many girders show melted edges. The only source for the aluminium would be the aircraft, surely there is not enough aluminium to maintain a molten state for weeks!?
"molten steel is not anyway the result of the use of explosives."
Actually it is if thermite is used. And there is evidence for the use of thermite in the dust.
"The Madrid tower suffered all its steel component collapsing, just as the WTC did. What remained standing was the concrete core, which the WTC buildings did not have."
No that story is stated in a debunking website and is obviously false: there was lots of steel left, including a steel crane which was there before and after the fire. Yes, the Madrid building did have a moderate collapse. Asymmetric and after 23 hours of fire, no dust produced either. Dust is usually easily consumed by fire.
"Not all the concrete was pulverised and calculations based on that assumption are flawed. Seffen deals with the towers, not WTC7, obviously. sorry you cannot follow his maths, neither can I."
QED. I can usually follow most mathematical arguments and appreciate materials and natural phenomenon. Why is this so special?
"The world's structural engineers are NOT falling over themselves to prove an inside job, whatever country they come from."
Try www.ae911truth.org
"Accepting the 'official' account of what happened does not depend in any way on believing G W Bush, it depends on hard evidence and informed opinion, things the conspiracy theories notably lack. Imaginary anomalies cut no ice."
There is not enough informed opinion because of the inadequate NIST study, no aircraft investigation, etc. Where we do have informed opinion, such as the authors of the 9/11 Commission Report ("Set up to fail") or the Jersey Girls (relatives of the victims) - they say we need further investigation...
"The unaccounted trillions at the Pentagon were known about before 9/11 and continued to be investigated afterwards."
I don't think so. See auditors report of DoD finances. I'll find the link if you can't.
"Silverstein lost out on the insurance, he was underinsured for the re-building, and has been in court against his insurers many times - his must be the most incompetant insurance scam in history! "
Thanks for that info. That's cheered up my day! :-)
"The pipeline was cancelled and is only now going ahead 7 years later. Fairy gold! "
Ok, thanks. I'll check that out. I see you tacitly agree with the other sources of money derived from 9/11.
Since we have disagreed with some facts and processes, don't you think that means we do need a further investigation of 9/11?
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Hi Roly,
Thanks for the message
"102. At 6:59pm on 03 Jul 2008, Roly_Hermans wrote:
The site www.911myths.com clearly answers pretty welll every point made in ynda20's posting (message 89), not to mention in most of the other conspiracist postings on this board.
Conspiracists tend to make points, and ask "how do you explain these" ... but these points *have* been plainly explained!"
Actually if they had been I'd be happy and content. Most Debunkers pick out some small detail and try to explain that away without including all the evidence holostically. See my note above to see some of the problems.
When dealing the tower collapses, debunkers ignore the dust and molten steel at the bases of WTC 1, 2 and 7. The argument above saying it was "aluminium" not steel ignores the molten metal at the bottom of WTC7. Anyway the whole debate gets messy when you can't even agree the facts. If we do that first then we can have a decent debate.
"I strongly suggest that conspiracists take a look at that site (it will take some time, as it is a big site that looks at the huge range of myths surrounding the whole tragedy)."
Yes, I have done that but it is frustrating when important evidence is omitted. Plus why do I have to go to debunking site? Why isn't it fully explained at an official website?
Just "Debunking 9/11 Debunking" by David Griffin - the debunking text is just as spurious as the official story and, let's face it, many of the conspiracy theories too! Just look into the basic facts and see how they marry onto the official story. Lots of holes there, I'm sorry to say.
"You'll find that what you've heard is the "truth" doesn't stand up when it is closely examined. However, as the site itself explains, in the end you've got to make up your own mind."
I agree that you need to make up your own mind. Get to the facts. View them like you are Mrs Marple and make up your own mind.
Or better still, ask for a better, independent investigation: just like the relatives of the victims of 9/11: the Jersey Girls and 9/11 Press for Truth. Surely they deserve some answers, don't you think?
Let me know some fact that really positively confirms the Bin Laden connection. Please!
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ynda20, thank you for your response. It seems some of what we are talking about is a differance of opinion. For instance, I find no difficulty with debris being ejected sideways from the collapse. To give an example, drop a glass on a hard floor, and bits will shoot sideways, though without any apparent horizontal force, other than the chaotic disintegration of the glass. Drop a 14 or 30 storey building on top of another, and I am quite prepared to believe the same effect will occur. I cannot find details of the amount of wallboard in the towers, but it must have been considerable, forming the internal partitions, and used in multiple thickness to form the fire-proofing of the lift shafts, an innovative use. Concrete was used on all the flooring, so both were there in considerable quantities. The dust plumes were made up of both, and also particles of glass.
i agree that reports from ground zero talk of melted steel, but there is no suggestion anywhere that it was actually analysed. All the exterior of the buildings that were not glass were clad in aluminium, all the exterior columns, so there was a considerable amount of aluminium present, apart from the aircraft, and naturally that would melt before the steel. The molten metal seen is therefore more likely to have been aluminium than steel, in my opinion.
Thermite could certainly melt steel, but is an incendiary, so would not account for an explosive collapse of the buildings, and cannot be used to melt steel horizontally. Thermate is explosive, so would not melt steel. What accounts for steel remaining molten for weeks? That just does not seem to fit with either. It does fit with underground fires that could have stayed hot enough to keep aluminium molten. Some chemicals present in thermite were present in the dust, that does not mean that thermite was present and Steven Jones does some very careful footwork and editing to support his theory.
The steel crane on the Madrid building was on top of the concrete core. The structural steel collapsed, no doubt about it, in fact concrete suppliers used that to promote their product!
ae911truth is not an impressive organisation, see ae911truth.info.
The 2.3 trillion accounting problem emerged at the Pentagon in 2000, and has been in the news ever since, if 9/11 was meant to hide it, it failed dismally.
I do not see how any investigation could improve on NIST's work on the collapse of the towers.
I agree with the 9/11 families, what is needed is an investigation into why all the intelligence available about the attacks did not lead to them being thwarted. That is the area of interest, not thoroughly debunked fantasies that the buildings were demolished.
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Hello,
I've noticed throughout the day that the most recent points have been firmly regarding the collapse of WTC 1 + 2. The anti-conspiracy theorist have come up with many good arguements as to why and how things happened. And to a large extent there is a good deal of acceptable arguments, science, and maths going on. As this now seems to be a full-blown 9/11 post rather than just WTC 7, can I also point you to the other events of the day (which we are all aware of but as a theorist myself, when questioned about why we say 'explain that', I would like answers to the other issues that have not been answered) that have little credence to the official story.
The Pentagon. There was no entry hole damage to the building other than a hole that peirced the lower half of the building. As mentioned in many documentaries, where's the damage from wings, tail-fins, engines? explain that.
Why was all footage from security cameras surrounding one of the worlds most watched buildings collected by the FBI, and not release apart from a few pictures and a few long shots of a fire ball? If there was complete proof that a plane did indeed fly into the Pentagon, why is it not being released, in order to shut all us theorists up? Surely that would dent all of our beleifs massively, and go some part to proving that it was indeed a terrorist attack. The lawn outside also had markings on it before the event in the same flight path that the 'plane' would then travel. Why?
Flight 93.
Please someone explain where is the wreckage of it? I have seen footage of plane crashes, as I'm sure you have also, and they are immense consuming things that spread debris over hundereds of metres, scortching the earth and scattering itself and passengers and their belongings everywhere. However, there is little to prove that this is so, as the offical story leads us to beleive. The element of doubt again casts its head on this story also.
Conspiracy theorists indeed do pounce on sometimes irrelevent 'facts', but if an incident happens, then the results of the resulting report should clear up all those grey areas. There should be no doubt cast.
How do 4 planes vapourise? One of which into something as non-descript as a field? How do things such as passports and driving licences survive a plane crash that had enough force to melt itself to the point where the metal used (aluminium as mentioned before) can appear as molten metal at the BOTTOM of the towers? How could the bombers be identified so quickly despite not one person naming them other than the government? There were no survivors to look through hundreds of pictures of potential terrorists. How can phone calls be made in a plane thousands of feet above the nearest antenna? etc . . .
Until these answers have also been answered logically and openly there will always be a conspiracy theory about the events of that monumentally dreadful day. If the answers are so obvious, why doesn't the American government give the people the facts they want to see. Not the 9/11 commision, but the photos, films, the voice recordings etc that we are still waiting to hear. If there was no inside job these would become public knowledge straight away. This is the biggest singularily intended man-made catastrophe we have ever seen. People will always ask questions, and to which they should be answered. 7 years on and we still don't have one image of a plane crashing into the Pentagon. Why not? If you wanted to clear your name about a mass-murder and had the evidence to hand, you would produce it immediatly, not continually hide info that would clear your name and stop 'looneys' like myself doubting what you have been told.
Explain that
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Ambersil,
In your analagy of the glass falling to the floor, wouldn't of having a surface with a density stronger than the glass itself have expelled the force sideways because it cannot continue downward? Whereas the floors of the buildings are ultimately made up of the same thing? I don't know, this is an area of science that I have little knowledge of. If you know I'd be interested to find an answer to it.
Also you mentioned Occam's Razor in your first post, something again that I was not completely familiar with. On looking it up, it comes from the 14th centuary. Not to far prior to that, we thought the world was flat. Concepts and ideas change throughout time, and I beleive that this could be similar. If you're interested in the changing world of ideas and beleifs, and in physics especially (you see4m like a clever person so I guess this would be something of interest.) look up Nassim Haramein on google video. Things change with knowledge and I don't beleive that Occam's Razor is as pertinent today as it was then
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Hi Ambersil,
Thanks for your response and I am happy to agree that we may only be separated by a few differences in interpretation. Thanks for the reasoned arguments and links etc. To discuss...
"105. At 10:24pm on 03 Jul 2008, Ambersil wrote:
ynda20, thank you for your response. It seems some of what we are talking about is a differance of opinion. For instance, I find no difficulty with debris being ejected sideways from the collapse. To give an example, drop a glass on a hard floor, and bits will shoot sideways, though without any apparent horizontal force, other than the chaotic disintegration of the glass. Drop a 14 or 30 storey building on top of another, and I am quite prepared to believe the same effect will occur."
Sure. If they were dropped. But the resistance of the structure would slow the collapse and stop the drop. If you compare against any building on fire, parts of the building sags and then folds, breaks off etc. The fire was burning for less than an hour and it appears to blow up.
There is a great computer sim of the crash
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vmIGGKvIms
Why isn't there an equivilent sim to explain the collapse?
"I cannot find details of the amount of wallboard in the towers, but it must have been considerable, forming the internal partitions, and used in multiple thickness to form the fire-proofing of the lift shafts, an innovative use. Concrete was used on all the flooring, so both were there in considerable quantities. The dust plumes were made up of both, and also particles of glass."
Sure. But the dust was being created instantly and in huge volumes. This doesn't happen in other building on fire. So how was this possible?
"i agree that reports from ground zero talk of melted steel, but there is no suggestion anywhere that it was actually analysed. All the exterior of the buildings that were not glass were clad in aluminium, all the exterior columns, so there was a considerable amount of aluminium present, apart from the aircraft, and naturally that would melt before the steel. The molten metal seen is therefore more likely to have been aluminium than steel, in my opinion."
Ok, good point.
"Thermite could certainly melt steel, but is an incendiary, so would not account for an explosive collapse of the buildings, and cannot be used to melt steel horizontally."
Good point, but either you agree there was an extra agent for the collapse or not. Firemen reported secondary devices in the building but this was not investigated as a possibility by NIST.
"Thermate is explosive, so would not melt steel. What accounts for steel remaining molten for weeks? That just does not seem to fit with either. It does fit with underground fires that could have stayed hot enough to keep aluminium molten."
Only by the volume of molten steel and then cooling using following a cooling curve where the hot spot was insulated by the concrete and asbestos dust.
Check out
http://pubs.acs.org/cen/NCW/8142aerosols.html
which says
"In mid-October, in the evening," said Thomas A. Cahill, a retired professor of physics and atmospheric science at the University of California, Davis, "when they would pull out a steel beam, the lower part would be glowing dull red, which indicates a temperature on the order of 500 to 600 °C. And we know that people were turning over pieces of concrete in December that would flash into fire--which requires about 300 °C. So the surface of the pile cooled rather rapidly, but the bulk of the pile stayed hot all the way to December."
Chemical engineer reporting steel and steel beams. Other people report molten rivers of steel. This is backed up by NASA photos of hotspots under WTC 1, 2 and 7.
"Some chemicals present in thermite were present in the dust, that does not mean that thermite was present and Steven Jones does some very careful footwork and editing to support his theory."
Ok. What was the theory to explain the thermite traces then?
"The steel crane on the Madrid building was on top of the concrete core. The structural steel collapsed, no doubt about it, in fact concrete suppliers used that to promote their product!"
Ok. If you insist then I'll admit that steel melts after 23 hours of fire.
"ae911truth is not an impressive organisation, see ae911truth.info."
There are several "bonehead" mistakes in ae911truth.info too. This looks like a typical "hit piece" - where are the hundreds of people willing to back ae911truth.info? (cf number of engineer's willing to put their name on ae911truth.org)
"The 2.3 trillion accounting problem emerged at the Pentagon in 2000, and has been in the news ever since, if 9/11 was meant to hide it, it failed dismally."
Sure. But my point was that the missing trillions have not been found and the auditors have failed to sign off DoD accounts.
"I do not see how any investigation could improve on NIST's work on the collapse of the towers."
Study into the dust, molten metal, possibility of secondary devices as reported by firemen, collapse sequence and mechanism, design of skyscrapers? NIST says WTC 1 and 2 fell because of damage (which it was designed to compensate for) and fire - apparently it was poorly designed. NIST is likely to say WTC7 fell because of minor damage and fire - apparently it was poorly designed. What about the pre-knowledge of collapse and non-working sprinkler systems, sounds of explosions etc? Basically the NIST report is not complete.
"I agree with the 9/11 families, what is needed is an investigation into why all the intelligence available about the attacks did not lead to them being thwarted. That is the area of interest, not thoroughly debunked fantasies that the buildings were demolished."
Debunked maybe. But this debunking has itself been debunked, leading to my point that all aspects of 9/11 need to be re-examined. Thanks for agreeing that the 9/11 families have a point.
Thanks for the discussion.
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gileshalton
OK, here goes:
The Pentagon
The damage by you speak of was identified in detail in the Building Performance Report
Why do you believe it was the most watched building in the world? That seems just a convenient and unevidenced peg to hang theories on. Explain that.
Why do you ignore the video footage obtained by Judicial Watch under FOIA? Explain that.
Why do you expect gas station cameras to point at a nearby building not the gas station? Explain that.
Why would marks on a lawn help to fly a plane into one of the world's largest buildings? Explain that, particularly if you do not accept that a plane was flown into it.
Flight 93
Why do you expect a plane crash into the soft and disturbed earth of an abandoned strip mine to look the same as one on to hard ground? Explain that.
Why do you dismiss all the evidence of debris found, including the aircraft recorders. Explain that.
Why do conspiracy theorists call for more reports, when they have never accepted the results of a single one? Explain that.
What form of report could possibly convince you, unless it confirmed some inside job theory? Explain that.
Why do you claim four planes vapourised when they clearly did not, substantial debris being found from all of them? Explain that.
Exactly how intact do you expect a light alloy structure to remain when flown at 400 mph into a building? Expalin that.
When millions of pieces of paper were spread over the streets of Manhattan, why is it so strange that one of them was a passport? Explain that.
Why do you assume that metal was melted prior to the collapse of the towers? Why ignore the underground fires that burned for weeks in the debris piles? Explain that?
Why ignore all the films photos and voice recordings already released, and demand that photos, videos and voice recordings are released? Why assume there should exist an image of the plane crashing into the Pentagon? Why pretend it would silence conspiracy theorists when images of the planes crashing into the WTC do not? Explain that.
Why ignore the existance of Verizon Airfones in the planes? Why pretend that cell phones can never work in planes in spite of much evidence that they sometimes can? Explain that.
Why, if the truth stands out to them, do conspiracy theorists have to resort to misrepresentation and lies so very frequently? Explain that, and that of course is not directed at you personally.
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gileshalton, OK, drop a glass on to another glass, will the pieces stay together or will some shoot out sideways? I suggest in any chaotic breakage, debris will be flung in a variety of directions, not always in the direction of the original force.
Occam's Razor is an aid to rational thought, rather than a law of science, and is as helpful today as it ever was. Applying it to the question of whether the Earth is flat, we might say something like, we can see that the horizon from a high view point appears curved. Now is that because a) the horizon is in fact curved because the Earth is round, or b) strange vapours issuing from the ground are distorting our vision and making the flat Earth appear otherwise. All things being equal, and in the absence of any evidence of vapours, we would prefer explanation a) Note that does not prove a) it simply means it is a more useful line of enquiry to take.
Nassim Haramein's approach to unified field theory seems interesting, but far over my head, I'm afraid.
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Further to these explanations some of which sound pretty far fetched like a Hollywood movie! If the US government were not involved in 911 then firstly, why was the only plane to enter/leave the US for 48 hours after 911 full of the Bin Laden family sending them from the US back to Afghanistan and to safety, weird? Secondly, whilst President Bush was at a school when 911 was happening and was asked by a school pupil what he's initial thoughts were as 911 was occurring he answered quote "well son, I watched the first building collapse via a satellite link" which would be impossible if he wasn't involved as nobody filmed the first tower collapsing and so there would be no footage. The first official footage was that of the second tower collapsing via amateur footage. Also whilst he was at the school, from the time he was initially advised that 911 was occurring, why did it take him over an hour to contact US intelligence and other Government officials? Sounds a bit iffy to me. Just a few points that still seem to discredit the official statements that have been made.
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Giles ... your questions about the Pentagon etc. Again, please go to the site I have referred people to - it DOES explain what you have said, or where necessary provide the true story (eg the supposed lack of wreckage etc) ...
www.911myths.com
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Study of the thermate claim:
http://www.911myths.com/html/traces_of_thermate_at_the_wtc.html
Study of the molten steel:
http://www.911myths.com/html/wtc_molten_steel.html
Study of the pulverised concrete and the dust cloud:
http://www.911myths.com/html/pulverised_concrete.html
Study of the fire size in WTC7:
http://www.911myths.com/html/wtc7_fire.html
Study and photos of Pentagon plane wreckage:
http://www.911myths.com/html/757_wreckage.html
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As usual a thousand flaky assertions spring up and it's hard to see the wood for the trees.
Sorry to single out gileshalton (#106) but this misguided internet pundit starts by conceding that "many good arguments" have been made by proponents of the official version of the destruction of the World Trade Center but that the small size of the hole in the wall at the Pentagon stands as a key argument against the official story.
Exactly opposite to the truth, as Jim Hoffman of wtc7.net has pointed out for many years. A small hole at the Pentagon is completely to be expected, as a plane meets a solid concrete structure. It is evidence of nothing suspicious at all, one of many 9-11 red herrings. The way the WTC buildings were destroyed, on the other hand, is completely unexplainable within the official story, as Hoffman has also written hundreds of careful pages to demonstrate.
It's vital that this is understood as the bedrock on which all sensible doubts of 9-11 are based. Two contributions later ynda20 (#108) calls it right:
"... the resistance of the structure would slow the collapse and stop the drop. If you compare against any building on fire, parts of the building sags and then folds, breaks off etc. The fire was burning for less than an hour and [the south tower] appears to blow up."
The nature of the destruction of all three buildings - WTC2, WTC1 and WTC7 - is the heart of the problem with the official story. As I heard a retired, senior UK government physicist say recently, "It is because of the way the WTC buildings fell that we know that the official story of 9-11 is false."
This is the key thing to explain: how "the resistance of the structure" went from massive to nothing instantaneously, in the case of all three buildings. Human beings only know of such a thing happening to a steel-framed building through controlled demolition. Three such demolitions of massive structures on the same day would have needed to be planned in advance. It is totally implausible for Al-Qaeda to be responsible for this. That is the rock-solid basis for 9-11 revisionism of all kinds.
(The massive financial transactions shortly before the mass murder that lydgrace has pointed to here are disgraceful and vital and should also be much more fully investigated - but they could presumably have all derived from Al-Qaeda and its financial backers. The destruction of the buildings could not.)
Mike Rudin started this thread because of his programme on Sunday on WTC7. It's interesting then to consider his interview on News 24 this week:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/conspiracy_files/7485111.stm
One minute in Rudin has already made the key point very well: "... a huge skyscraper that collapses neatly and symmetrically and people say if you look at it, it looks like a controlled demolition."
The rest of the five minutes is taken up with the red herring of the BBC having reported the collapse of WTC7 20 minutes too early. It's a peculiarity but it neither proves nor disproves the official story. It's the nature of the collapse that does that.
The most helpful two pages I've read from a scientist on this key point is by Frank Legge of Scholars for 911 Truth and Justice. Google "Legge WTC7 die-hard" and you'll find his final letter to a friend who still cannot bring himself to doubt the official story. In it Legge shows how the top of WTC7 started to come down at very close to free-fall acceleration. That simply won't happen with a steel structure that is beginning to fail from fire. But we have clear video of the event (unlike the two towers, where the top of the buildings is soon obscured in a dust cloud - another tell-tale sign of explosions but less cut and dried on the speed of collapse).
Nobody from NIST has yet dared to try to explain the collapse of WTC7. And this is the remarkable task they have: to rewrite some very fundamental laws of physics. This singular event is enough to prove the official story of 9-11 false. Where that leaves us all ... God only knows. And that last phrase is far from flippant.
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The paper ?On Debunking 9/11 Debunking? paper looks at David Ray Griffin?s criticisms of NIST.
http://www.911myths.com/drg_nist_review_2_1.pdf
This paper also clearly counters many of the claims made in rdrake98's posting 114.
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Hi Mark,
111. At 01:34am on 04 Jul 2008, markbeef
All good points, note that where you said "collapse", I think you meant "aircraft crash".
I have this thing about the word "collapse" associated with the towers fall. They didn't just "collapse" as you'd expect from a fire. They Exploded. Suddenly, shockingly, huge plumes of dust and debris (made up of concrete, metal beams, gypsum and (unfortunately) bodies) that is not usually associated with the word "collapse". Despite firemen going in (without fear of the building falling down), reports of secondary explosion, sounds of explosions, the look of explosions, the remains of explosives, metal beams showing signs of explosives. No official study have ever been made into whether explosives were used. And anybody that even suggests (like me) that perhaps explosions could have been used is described as a "nutter" (or some other suitable insult). If explosves were not used, are skyscrapers really that fraile? Shouldn't we stop using them altogether and abandon New York and other major cities as being too risky for human occupation?
If you say it was the design (lack of fire insulation) - then we know that at least TWO different designs are poor: the design of the twin towers and design of WTC7. Doesn't that mean we should review the design of every existing skyscraper? Knock them all down and build low-rise?
It seems to me you can't have it both ways. Either skyscrapers are inherently unsafe or explosives were used.
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Thanks to those people above for trying to fill in a bit of detail about the 'alternative conspiracy theory'.
You'd have to admit though that in fact there is very little detail (none really) given.
At least the 'official conspiracy theory' (the one citing 19 middle eastern hyjackers) is plausible.
Those questioning the offical line seem unable to offer anything in terms of detail on how their version of events unfolded, on who was responsible, and on how they achieved what they achieved.
One name has been mentioned - Larry Silverstien (the unfortunate holder of the lease-hold of the World Trade center at the time of the attacks). Was this successful property dealer from New York the ringleader of the 'alternative conspiracy'? Was he part of a small group of powerful men who together planned this? Who are the others? How did the plan come together, how was it executed?
Nothing anyone has posted has come remotely near offering a plausible/coherant 'story' that could explain the events of 911?
Those questioning the official story are doing exactly that, but they are not offering anything as an alterative.
Any rational anaylsis of their claims only leads to one conclusion - they have no (plausible) explanation of the events of 911. Anyone who values reason can only come to the conclusion that the 'alternative conspiracy theorists' currently have nothing to offer in terms of detailing the actors involved in 911, and how their actions lead to the events of that day. This leads me to beilieve that in fact the 'official conspiracy' is much closer to the truth than any of the alternatives being offered on these threads and around the internet.
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Hi Roly,
Many thanks for the link below. I will go and read it thoroughly.
"# 115. At 09:57am on 04 Jul 2008, Roly_Hermans wrote:
http://www.911myths.com/drg_nist_review_2_1.pdf"
I have already spotted one mistake though in its opening arguments claiming that no explosive evidence was found on th steel beams of the wreckage.
There is a discussion here
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/metallurgy/index.html
which references main stream media reports and other technical work.
Again, no disrespect, we will always playing ping-pong until we establish an agreed baseline of facts and evidence, which can only be done by having a new independent investigation.
Don't you think that there is enough uncertainty about the nature of the explosive collpases and events of the day to justify this? It is what the relatives of the victims of 9/11 want, after all...
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Hi Dan,
So you want to move from "establishing the facts" to "establishing the guilty"? That's a big jump and rather counter-productive as we get into a bunch of finger pointing which will go nowhere until the facts are truly established. There are lots of theories on the internet. But don't you think we start wars we do actually have a really good case!?
"117. At 11:01am on 04 Jul 2008, tapdancingdan wrote:
Thanks to those people above for trying to fill in a bit of detail about the 'alternative conspiracy theory'.
You'd have to admit though that in fact there is very little detail (none really) given.
At least the 'official conspiracy theory' (the one citing 19 middle eastern hyjackers) is plausible."
Actually this really one of the least plausible: The 19 were mainly Saudis... not terrifically good Muslins, just spent the previous evenning drinking in bars etc, had forwarding airline tickets, were physically small and unlikely to wrestle with ex-Vets that flew the aircraft, poor piloting skills, appeared to be more like agents for the US rather than for Bin Laden. What's the linkage? Just because they are Saudi? Some the hijackers are reported (even by Auntie Beeb) to be misidentified, some (like Atta, for instance) still alive(!?), planted evidence: especially the magic passports of the hijackers that appeared at both WTC and shanksville! The evidence found in a car boot (apparently). None of this has ever really been investigated "independently". So no not really that plausible.
"Those questioning the offical line seem unable to offer anything in terms of detail on how their version of events unfolded, on who was responsible, and on how they achieved what they achieved."
Read up on False Flag operations. This is how governments persuade the masses to go to war.
"One name has been mentioned - Larry Silverstien (the unfortunate holder of the lease-hold of the World Trade center at the time of the attacks). Was this successful property dealer from New York the ringleader of the 'alternative conspiracy'? Was he part of a small group of powerful men who together planned this? Who are the others? How did the plan come together, how was it executed?"
There's a list of names at one of the truthers sites of key people that would have had to have been "in" on the plot. If there was one. We have to establish the facts first though, don't you think?
"Nothing anyone has posted has come remotely near offering a plausible/coherant 'story' that could explain the events of 911?"
False Flag operations. Google Northwood. Google CIA History.
"Those questioning the official story are doing exactly that, but they are not offering anything as an alterative."
Establish the facts first.
"Any rational anaylsis of their claims only leads to one conclusion - they have no (plausible) explanation of the events of 911. Anyone who values reason can only come to the conclusion that the 'alternative conspiracy theorists' currently have nothing to offer in terms of detailing the actors involved in 911, and how their actions lead to the events of that day. This leads me to beilieve that in fact the 'official conspiracy' is much closer to the truth than any of the alternatives being offered on these threads and around the internet."
Are you asking who benefits?
- $2.2trillion DoD overspend (never investigated) announced on 10th Sept
- Huge additional sums spent on US DoD ever since. Check their budget: the auditor for 7th year cannot sign-off the accounts because of total chaos there.
- Gold Bullion at bottom of WTC not recovered.
- US economy M1 money supply blip in August 2001 unexplained.
- Silverstien's insurance scam on WTC was worth $7billion or more. (The WTC towers were a huge white elephant, btw...)
- Plans for gas pipleine in Afghanistan
- Excuse to invade Iraq serves the military-industrial complex esp Halliburton (Cheney was CEO of Halliburton).
- US and UK Oil companies just received concessions in Iraq.
- Excuse to apply the Patriot Act (observely written pre-9/11 and waiting to be applied) and so change the US consituition.
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Ambersil, #100,
Thanks for the reply. I appreciate the time you've put into your research and responses.
A 12 storey dynamic load would have put enormous pressure on the floors below, but I still have a problem with the lack of resistance offered by the floors below,
(as Rdrake, Ynda and others have also written about above). The 12 storeys load is proportionally, kind of like, if my neck suddenly disappeared, and my head dropped down onto my shoulders, I wouldn't expect my head to blast it's way through my spine, hips and legs, with no resistance at all.
In some videos it looks like the collapse sequence is at a rate of descent faster than steel girders still falling through the air above. This could only be achieved with the addition of explosives.
The towers crumbled away like they were made out of modelling plaster.
I have the footage of the spire remaining for a moment, before it collapses. It looks to me like it is cut with explosives, because it seems to "walk" as if cut on a 45 degree angle.
There are also many witnesses who say they heard or felt explosives in the buildings, which we can't dismiss at this stage, just like we can't dismiss the witnesses who saw a plane hitting the pentagon.
Some accounts say explosives went off just before the first plane hit.
And the fact that for 5 years, the mainstream media refused to air the video footage of the third building collapsing, WTC7, suggests it was possibly too suspicious to show on television.
But I agree that floors collapsing could eject central beams out horizontally, and you make some strong points.
Thanks again.
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Au contraire, ynda20, there have been no traces of explosives found. Only traces of some elements that could be associated with explosives, but are also with lots of other things.
Significantly, there was also a lack of traces of other elements that would be associated with explosives (barium, anyone?).
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PS: I love this one ... the Irish did it!
http://www.911myths.com/html/the_irish_did_it___or_did_they.html
... or did they?
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Roly (#115), I detect a reluctance to deal with what I actually said (#114).
You mention my 'claims' but I made only one claim. You refer to a document of 313 pages when I had pointed to a beautifully simple one of just two! And you make no link between the rock-solid argument of Frank Legge, who proves beyond doubt that WTC7 could not have fallen as a result of fire, and any part of what Mr Ryan Mackey has written. Indeed a search of his 313 page PDF for 'Legge' yields zero hits.
Here's a url this time for the easy to understand Dr Legge:
www.journalof911studies.com/letters/f/LeggeLastTry4.pdf
A page number where Mackey specifically deals with the acceleration visible and measurable in the collapse of WTC7 and how it could possibly have arisen from fire damage is now needed. Or even a verbal summary from yourself.
Until you do, I can only assume that your aim is to waste time, not to deal with the key anomalies of 9-11 or to arrive at the truth, despite the importance to the whole world of that.
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Hi Ambersil,
You posed a series of questions. Could I try to respond?
"109. At 00:12am on 04 Jul 2008, Ambersil wrote:
The Pentagon
The damage by you speak of was identified in detail in the Building Performance Report
Why do you believe it was the most watched building in the world? "
Because of the number of security cameras around it? From memory it is about 48.
"That seems just a convenient and unevidenced peg to hang theories on. Explain that."
What? Sorry?
"Why do you ignore the video footage obtained by Judicial Watch under FOIA? Explain that."
Because its inclusive. It also looks kind of rigged when each frame is examined.
"Why do you expect gas station cameras to point at a nearby building not the gas station? Explain that."
Why did the FBI take all the CCTV footage then? Why has there been no air crash investigation? Why no details of serially numbered items in the wreckage?
"Why would marks on a lawn help to fly a plane into one of the world's largest buildings? Explain that, particularly if you do not accept that a plane was flown into it."
Ok. (It does look kind of a coincidence though, don't you think?)
"Flight 93
Why do you expect a plane crash into the soft and disturbed earth of an abandoned strip mine to look the same as one on to hard ground? Explain that.
Why do you dismiss all the evidence of debris found, including the aircraft recorders. Explain that."
Evidence of data recorders do not match observations at either shanksville or the pentagon. Why? I don't know. We need an investigation.
"Why do conspiracy theorists call for more reports, when they have never accepted the results of a single one? Explain that."
Because they are not independent. 9/11 Commission was tainted and so too is NIST - its a governemtn agency. Don't even get me going on Popular Mechanics (foreword by John McCain - so no bias there then!)
If you go to
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/project.jsp?project=911_project
I accept that.
There is a great computer sim of the crash which I accept.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vmIGGKvIms
Why isn't there an equivilent sim to explain the collapse?
"What form of report could possibly convince you, unless it confirmed some inside job theory? Explain that."
Independent research and study. And good explanations of the maths and physics via computer simulation (like that shown above).
"Why do you claim four planes vapourised when they clearly did not, substantial debris being found from all of them? Explain that.'
Where is the air crash investigations so that we can debate this sensibly?
"Exactly how intact do you expect a light alloy structure to remain when flown at 400 mph into a building? Expalin that."
Titanium alloy is pretty strong - where did that go? With no air crash investigation how can we debate this sensibly?
"When millions of pieces of paper were spread over the streets of Manhattan, why is it so strange that one of them was a passport? Explain that."
Because it came from the vaporise aircraft? Also another "magic passport" was found at Shanksville. Coincidence? Surely planted evidence.
"Why do you assume that metal was melted prior to the collapse of the towers? Why ignore the underground fires that burned for weeks in the debris piles? Explain that?"
NASA photos of the WTC hot spots.
"Why ignore all the films photos and voice recordings already released, and demand that photos, videos and voice recordings are released?"
Providence of the photos etc. What voice recordings have been released? Only a couple between FAA and DoD and a transcript of the shanksville crash. Conflicting information re Barbara Olsen supposed phone calls.
"Why assume there should exist an image of the plane crashing into the Pentagon? Why pretend it would silence conspiracy theorists when images of the planes crashing into the WTC do not? Explain that."
Disinformation caused by the "no-planers" - Disinformation is standard tactics of any PysOp.
"Why ignore the existance of Verizon Airfones in the planes? Why pretend that cell phones can never work in planes in spite of much evidence that they sometimes can? Explain that."
FBI reports that Barbara Olsen's phone connected for zero seconds. The airlines have confirmed that Verizon Airfones were not operational in the aircraft. Reports of calls coming from the aircraft toilet so they couldn't be seatback phones. This whole area is a really confusing. And needs an investigation.
"Why, if the truth stands out to them, do conspiracy theorists have to resort to misrepresentation and lies so very frequently? Explain that, and that of course is not directed at you personally."
Two causes: one is people not being listened too become rather excited and over-enthusiast and secondly, without a doubt, if this was a false flag operation then either Dept of Homeland Security or CIA or whoever is behind such deception, would be mounting a sustained campaign to discredit legitimate and fair investigation. Hence, again, we need a new, independent, investigation of 9/11.
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I am afraid this is going no-where.
Plausible - having an appearance of truth or reason; seemingly worthy of approval or acceptance; credible; believable
Are you saying that is implausible that a group of say 19 committed individuals could plan and execute something like 911. Why is that implausible?
People can hyjack planes. People can fly planes. There are people who are willing to sacrifice their lives (and the lives of other people) in order to further what they see as a far more important cause. There is nothing implausible about the 'official story' of 911. It hangs together, unlike the alternatives, most of which don't even try to hang together. You say the '19 hyjackers' are the least plausible story. OK outline a more plausible one please.
Human beings are in some ways very simple creatures. We love to know things that other people don't. If we possess a secret, especially one that be headline news all over the world, one that will bring us fame and noteriety, the urge to divulge that secret is overwhellming. This is human nature. How many actors were there that planned and executed the 'aletrnative conspiracy'? Once the numbers go up (more than say 10 people) it becomes more and more unlikely that the secret will remain a secret. 7 years after the attack it is implausible to suggest that there was an alternative conpiracy and nothing has come to light. They comiitted the most unbelievable, audacious (arguable ridiculouus) crime and got away with it. We are expected to believe that these people (presumedly already rich and powerful) choose carry out these actions and risk everything they already have. Why exactly? These people are presumedly immensely skillful and intelligent. Their 'plan' seems anything but.
Can you imagine the conversation during the planning?
Mastermind1: "lets get some agents to fly planes into the WTC"
Mastermind2 : "Great idea, but I don't think the buildings will collapse with just being hit by a fully laden commercial passenger jet"
Mastermind1: "You're right. Lets plant some explosives in the buildings and set them off so everyone thinks its the planes that collapsed the buildings"
Mastermind2: "Good idea, that should be fairly straightforward. I know someone good with explosives. We can also fire a missile into the Pentagon just in case"
Mastermind1: "Perfect - this plan is foolproof. Has mastermind3 finished his piloting lessons?"
Mastermind2: "Yep says he's ready to go. Although he is still complaining saying he's being given the short-straw. But agrees its necessary if this thing is going to succeed"
...
OK I am rambling now but you get might point. Where is the plausibility?
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Hi Roly,
"121. At 12:21pm on 04 Jul 2008, Roly_Hermans wrote:
Au contraire, ynda20, there have been no traces of explosives found. Only traces of some elements that could be associated with explosives, but are also with lots of other things.
Significantly, there was also a lack of traces of other elements that would be associated with explosives (barium, anyone?)."
Well we appear to have different basic facts, which would obviously lead us to different conclusions.
Why don't you support the 9/11 families and ask for a new investigation, as per this Youtube plea:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2ZbC6oWy2I
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Hi Dan,
Thanks for the post - it was really good.
"125. At 1:05pm on 04 Jul 2008, tapdancingdan wrote:
I am afraid this is going no-where."
I agree. But don't you think we deserve to investigate 9/11 properly. As per the wishes of 9/11 families?
I thought this was really good:
"Can you imagine the conversation during the planning?
Mastermind1: "lets get some agents to fly planes into the WTC"
Mastermind2 : "Great idea, but I don't think the buildings will collapse with just being hit by a fully laden commercial passenger jet"
Mastermind1: "You're right. Lets plant some explosives in the buildings and set them off so everyone thinks its the planes that collapsed the buildings"
Mastermind2: "Good idea, that should be fairly straightforward. I know someone good with explosives. We can also fire a missile into the Pentagon just in case"
Mastermind1: "Perfect - this plan is foolproof. Has mastermind3 finished his piloting lessons?"
Mastermind2: "Yep says he's ready to go. Although he is still complaining saying he's being given the short-straw. But agrees its necessary if this thing is going to succeed"
You'd obviously been listening in! :-)
I agree the whole 9/11 thing is crazy. I don't understand all the craziness but the scenario with these hijackers and box cutters is also crazy, in my ever-so humble opinion. I'm sure we could create another skit parallel to your funny one above reflecting the official story. (Oh the truthers have concluded the aircraft were flown by remote control, btw)
Thanks again for the discussion (and the laugh).
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Dear Mike,
to me it starts with the investigation of WTC 7: there was no on-site investigation; half a year later, only four (4) steel pieces of WTC 7 had been salvaged for investigation; some of these four pieces manifested a "very unusual phenomenon", including intergranular melting of the steel - and the "detailed further study" called for by FEMA was never conducted (NIST is on the record saying that "no steel was recovered from WTC 7").
This is clearly not the way in which major building disasters are investigated: by first destroying the evidence without investigation and then starting a 7-year speculation about what might have happened inside the walls of a skyscraper! The collapse cause and mechanism could have been conclusively determined by carefully investigating and documenting the debris.
BBC has created great investigative documentaries in the past (such as "The Power of Nightmares" and the documentaries about the large-scale Cold War conspiracy named Operation Gladio), but both 9/11 and 7/7 seem to be off limits for serious investigative journalism within the BBC.
It is totally inappropriate to imply that WTC 7 is the "final mystery" of 9/11. Just a few examples of the numerous other mysteries: There has never been an explanation for why Pentagon was not protected by fighter jets from the Andrews Air Force Base, located only 12 miles from the Pentagon. And the Pentagon could be hit a whopping 1,5 hours after the first plane had started to show sings of hijacking! On the other hand, if everything was - somehow - the result of incompetence, why has no one been fired? By contrast, many people in key positions on the fateful day have been promoted.
And how come there was an anti-hijacking exercise going on at the same time as the real attacks? Has BBC looked into this? It certainly hasn't looked into the bomb drill in London on 7/7 that took place in the same underground stations and at the same time as the real bomb attacks did, as acknowledged by Peter Power of Visor Consulting. And it hasn't looked into how the entire scenario, in turn, was depicted in a BBC Panorama program (about an imaginary terror attack in London) a year earlier! Surely such a *triple coincidence* would be worth a very serious inquiry (especially as one bears in mind what many statisticians have said)?
There have always been, and will be, smaller and larger conspiracies, and the BBC needs to start dealing with the often well-grounded criticism of the official theories with an open mind. In other words, it needs to start fulfilling its role as the watchdog of those in power, instead of acting as their lapdog.
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Larry Silverstein, the controller of the destroyed WTC complex, stated plainly in a PBS documentary that he and the FDNY decided jointly to demolish WTC 7 late in the afternoon of 9/11. "I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, 'We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse." "PULL" being the terminology used by Americans for controlled demolition. Silverstein holds a ground lease for the site from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. In January 2001, Silverstein made a $3.2 billion bid for the lease to the World Trade Center and was was outbid by $50 million by 2 competitors who ended up withdrawing their offer and Silverstein's bid for the lease to the World Trade Center was accepted on July 24, 2001, 7 WEEKS before the buildings were destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks. This was the first time in the building's 31-year history that the complex had changed management....how convenient that 7 weeks later..........!!!!
Why Building 7 was brought down is pretty obvious, all boils down to MONEY as everything does with those who have plenty of it
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Frank A. DeMartini, Manager, WTC Construction and Project Management, discusses the fact that the WTC towers were designed to take multiple hits from airliners and not collapse, comparing it to poking a pencil through fly netting.
The melting point of steel at 2,800 degrees F is about 1,000 degrees higher than the maximum burning temperature of jet-fuel-based fires, which do not exceed 1,800 degrees under optimal conditions; but the NIST examined 236 samples of steel and found that 233 had not been exposed to temperatures above 500 degrees F and the others not above 1200.
Underwriters Laboratory certified the steel in the buildings up to 2,000 degrees F for three or four hours without any significant effects, where these fires burned neither long enough or hot enough?at an average temperature of about 500 degrees for about one hour in the South Tower and one and a half in the North?to weaken, much less melt.
If the steel had melted or weakened, then the affected floors would have displayed completely different behavior, with some degree of asymmetrical sagging and tilting, which would have been gradual and slow, not the complete, abrupt and total demolition that was observed. Which means the NIST cannot even explain the initiation of any ?collapse? sequence.
These are excerpts taken from Scholars for 9/11 Truth, written by vastly more knowledgeable persons than myself.
What I want to know is, if these buildings were not built to the high engineering specification as designed, then why has no litigation ever been pursued by the revelant bodies? I don't understand why, in the most litigious country in the world, no-one has been brought to court for this heinous failure.
There are so very many holes in the official investigation it is no wonder that many of us find ourselves questioning the whole event. The only question I have no difficulty answering is that a US Administration containing so many members/signatories of the Project for the New American Century would carry out such a false flag operation - of course they would.
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ask ur self this question from the point of view of a leadership (not just bush) who have proven interests in the worlds most ever becoming rare and very valuable natural resources (oil AND gas):
are a couple of thousand lifes worth obtaining an excuse to invade afghanistan and iraq and capture the vast resources?
deep down we all know that governments would often be prepared to sacrifice a few for the future security of a nation. this would be a serious step too far, but...
note:
-bush and co had entertained the taliban on a state visit. they had not entertained the US idea of installing a gas pipeline through afghanistan.
-iraq, incase you did not know has the 2nd largest stocks of oil. saudi (1st) is practically captured anyway through the agreements in place. think about it - the us and uk had supported saddam not so long ago by supplying him with wmd in his fight against iran. the cia even helped put him in power!.
i have only mentioned facts that are widely known and only asked a question for you readers to think about before i am slated for fuelling conspiracy.
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bloomineck (#129), like many others you come across to me as too confident in your assertions. You also fail to mention the counterarguments that have been offered since September 2002 when the PBS documentary was first shown.
The short but notorious section in which Silverstein gives his recollections is available on audio from Alex Jones at
http://www.prisonplanet.com/pullit.mp3
I think almost anyone, on any side, would agree that these comments are mighty strange.
However, it has been argued since, by a spokesperson, not by Mr Silverstein himself, that when he said "the smartest thing to do is to pull it" the wealthy leaseholder was referring to ordering the withdrawal of any remaining fire crew inside or perhaps near the WTC7 building.
It doesn't strike me as the most obvious meaning in the context. On the other hand, if by "pull it" Silverstein meant "let's demolish it", are we to read into that
1) that the decision to demolish WTC7 had not been taken by anyone prior to the afternoon of 9-11 itself?
2) that nevertheless, the building had been rigged in advance for controlled demolition, just in case, and that both Larry Silverstein and the 'fire department commander' he was talking to knew this and so were able to communicate about this drastic option through the highly informal phase "pull it"?
Any way you try to understand this claimed recollection it makes absolutely no sense. The answer? A criminal investigation and trial in which Silverstein would have to make clear under oath exactly what he did mean - and indeed his involvement of otherwise in everything that happened on 9-11.
Until then it's hard to argue anything much from this. Just as it's hard to assess the significance of the fact that Reuters was reporting WTC7 fallen half an hour or more before it was.
The key phrase in Silverstein's account is this: "we watched the building collapse".
As they watched, the firefighters, the leaseholder and everyone else, the acceleration of the top and indeed the rest of the building, at near free fall speed, would have been apparent. And that physical fact proves controlled demolition. Simple as that. They and we don't need anything else.
Smokescreens and red herrings are a feature of the case. But let's be smart and keep our eye on the ball.
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Just one more thing... anyone who wants more expert/professional comment on the likelihood of an "inside job" vist this site.
www.patriotsquestion911.com.
I've just visited it for the first time and I think my mind is made up now.
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To those believers of the official 911 conspiracy theory (i.e. that 19 Arab highjackers, led by a man in a cave thousands of miles away, outwitted the most heavily monitored and defended airspace in the world for an hour and a half without any fighter interception, defying the laws of physics in the process) who ask unbelievers such as myself for a plausible alternative theory, I would say this.
If a man was accused of murder, and I had one crucial bit of evidence in my possession to prove to the police that he had not committed the crime, would the police say to me ?We will not release him until you let us know who did it and how?. They would not. So why should we have to provide an alternative plausible theory of 911 to satisfy your questions? The official conspiracy theory is riddled with so many anomalies and holes in the story it is laughable that anyone even tries to defend it.
What is needed is a thorough non-political criminal investigation by the proper American authorities, with far reaching legal powers of subpoena and gathering of facts, witness testimony and other evidence, just like any normal criminal investigation.
What is not needed is another scam 911 politically led commission. You may know that the Bush administration tried hard not to hold any inquiry at all, and it was the families of some of the poor victims killed during 911 who pressed for an investigation and eventually got one, although it turned out to be a powder puff farce of one.
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wow !!!!!!!!!!!!!
the amount of learned comment and factual persuasion generated on this discussion is impressive, to say the least
there is, however, one fact which is indisputable --- on September 11, 2001, 3000 innocent human beings were murdered and there was NEVER any kind of serious investigation into the crime --- we were told what happened, how it happened and who did it --- period --- end --- case closed
the murder of a two-bit hooker in miami would get more investigation than the events of 9/11 did
did anybody even notice that the structural remains somehow ended up in pieces which were conveniently sized for quick and easy loading onto flatbed trucks and then taken to be melted somewhere in asia before anybody had a chance to forensically examine them ???
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Giggidy (#135): Thank you, you've put one of the most important points extremely well. Whoever planned and implemented 9/11 knew all about the effect of trauma, not just on a few individuals but on a nation, including its law enforcement officials. This is the only way such basics as preserving the evidence at a murder scene could have been so completely bypassed. It was brilliant, it was totally evil, yet through our courage and compassion for the victims it will not prevail!
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Mr Rudin,
Why is the BBC currently obsessed with debunking conspiracy theory's?
Why is your program being forcibly advertised DURING the evening news on BBC1? (4th July 2008)??
This should already make alarm bells ring, i feel your program was way too obvious/blatant, as soon as i started to watch your program within the first few minutes i could see that it was going to end up ridiculous. Your program essentially suggested that people who do not follow the official version of events are psychologically flawed 'X-Files' fans who do not have the abiility to accept reality as it is!.
Typically, as to be expected from the BBC or any other mainstream media organisation, its rubbish, designed to foster a selective viewpoint into certain sections of the watching audience who are not aware or motivated enough to research.
The only way for the BBC to even the balance is to air a program in the opposite direction, for example a program that is not debunking conspiracy's but promoting them, then it becomes balanced.
You cannot just present everything from one constantly predictable angle.
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BBC news front page announces
9/11 third tower mystery 'solved'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7485331.stm
So it was just fire... And lots of damage apparently. It will be interesting to see the new pictures of this damaged side. And, of course, the computer models for the collapse. Zzzz. I wonder what they did with ae911truth's Richard Gage's input to the study...
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@ rdarake98 (message 123)
There is no reluctance on my part to address issues, only lack of time and inclination. I also am not here to waste others' time - in fact, it is probably my own time that I'm wasting, as everyone here is too set in their own positions to change their minds (mine or yours).
All I wanted to do was ensure that readers of this blog would have the opportunity to look at BOTH sides of the issue - the initial posts made it look like there was only one side.
The site I am constantly referring people to ( www.911myths.com ) says everything much more clearly than I ever could (or have the time to do). I strongly recommend taking a thorough look through it ... and then making up your own mind.
Even a cursory look through that site would point out there are many huge holes in the conspiracy theory. Using the conspiracists own logic, you could say that the huge amount of holes in the conspiracy theory means that it must be itself a conspiracy!
In all, I'm afraid that a conspiracy of 19 fanatical suicidal men using simple weapons and relatively easy logisitics, is to me much more credible than a group of James Bond-style evil masterminds with a cast of 100s of mute lackies planning an incredibly complex and over-planned operation (bombs AND planes?) with majorly difficult logistic requirements. Occams Razor certainly applies ...
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@ ynda20 (message 138)
Here are the pictures of the damaged side of WTC7 you want to see:
http://www.911myths.com/html/wtc7_fire.html
This was the biggest ever fire event in a skyscraper ... not to mention that it had been hit by pieces of falling buildings from about 50 stories higher than it.
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The oddities of 9-11 extend far beyond the perfect, first time collapse of three steel buildings designed for such impacts in downtown New York.
Every level of every civilian and military agency designed for safety in such occasions failed as well. Surprisingly, all at the same time.
Not to mention countless errors in early warning intelligence and in agencies like the FBI where Osama bin Laden could have been easily apprehended months before the attacks.
As to whether all of these individuals in all these agencies share in the secret and payout of 9-11, I seriously doubt it.
Is it surprising that massive military exercises were underway at the exact same time 9-11 was going on and that is why the US military had such a slow response?
Is it also surprising that the subject of these exercises was a terrorist attack on the US with airplanes being flown into buildings?
Confusion with real world events and false military drill abounded among communications with FAA and military response teams throughout that fateful morning.
After watching the election of Bush in 2000 live on four separate networks it is not hard for me to understand the possibility of confusion and mass manipulation of media for selfish purposes.
The "perfect storm" explanation for the course of events that occurred that morning just does not begin to satisfy many people's curiosity or begin to explain the absurd number of coincidences that occurred that allowed thousands of civilian deaths in New York as well as the subsequent death of hundreds of thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Still no one is convicted or held responsible in any position of power in the United States government. No one has suffered, only civilians.
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This wasn't about a lost BBC tape, but rather a day in history which defied the laws of physics. The official story, the one that the BBC is trying so hard to back up just doesn't stack up and the fact that it's the second time the Conspiracy Files series has dealt with the subject, just goes to show what the BBC's motives really are.
WTC buildings 3, 4, 5 and 6 suffered much more direct damage from the collapses of WTC1 and WTC2, yet they were still standing for many days before they were eventually demolished. No planes were at Shanksville or the Pentagon. Bush and Cheney were unable to get their stories straight and unwilling to be questioned separately by the 9/11 Commission. Rumsfeld was unable to remember his script and contradicted himself many times after the event, Condi Rice denied prior knowledge of such a terrorist attack ever being considered by the US intelligence services, war games going on the same day, Cheney being given control of NORAD that day, it having been arranged months before, war games taking place that same day, air traffic control transcripts being destroyed of that day .. FEMA arriving in town the night before, the plan for attacking Afghanistan being signed off on one day prior to the 9/11 attacks took place .. the list goes on. But 2 PLANES evaporating? and 3 towers falling within hours of being hit? Concrete turned to dust?
The Bush administration are proven liars and responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. They have spent trillions of dollars on wars yet denied the 9/11 first responders the dollars necessary for their proper health care due to the illnesses that they now suffer.
The people standing up and protesting are being ridiculed, threatened while the media shoots them down at every opportunity.
And you can sit back and tell me that the BBC has done all the research in a 60 minute program which should put all our minds at rest!
As George W Bush once said " You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on."
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rik_james (#142): "This wasn't about a lost BBC tape, but rather a day in history which defied the laws of physics. The official story, the one that the BBC is trying so hard to back up just doesn't stack up and the fact that it's the second time the Conspiracy Files series has dealt with the subject, just goes to show what the BBC's motives really are."
Excuse me? You're saying that because the Conspiracy Files is dealing with the subject of 9/11 twice this proves that the BBC's motives are evil?
I don't get this reasoning, just like I don't get the reasoning that equates the very clear physics of the WTC collapses - which Scholars for 911 Truth and Justice have shown must imply the use of explosives - with the crazy idea that there was no plane at the Pentagon (despite all the eyewitnesses on the highway next door who saw one).
This kind of ridiculous combination contaminates the real, serious job of getting a criminal investigation of the mass murders on 9/11.
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Roly (#139), we are arguing at two completely different levels. You seem to have taken the craziest ideas of the 911 conspiracy nutters and quite rightly are not convinced. Since 2005, with a degree in Maths from a famous UK university, I have taken a serious look at the physics of the destruction of the three World Trade Center buildings. Let me let you in to a secret. At that point I was a UK supporter of both the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions - the latter not least because I'd worked with victims of terrible torture under Saddam during the 1990s. I was not therefore a natural convert to 911 'truthism'. But the careful arguments of Jim Hoffman about the WTC collapses at wtc7.net (it may have helped that we're both programmers in another life) convinced me that the official story of 9/11 could not possibly be true.
From your answers it seems to me that you have not grappled with this evidence from the WTC disaster, including the easy to understand two page letter from Frank Legge that I referred you to in both my earlier posts. Even so, I wish you well.
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Well Madrid's tower burnt for 24 hours
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/02/14/spain.block.fire/
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Hi rdrake
Roly's Occam Razor argument is very powerful and I see why he holds the opinions he does. However, my experiences with "coincidences" which the official theory relies upon, makes it untenable from my viewpoint. Each coincidence makes the official story more and more unbelievable, and so I tend to favour the the evidence that fits my knowledge and experience better. I find lots of evidence that supports that viewpoint and each day brings a new detail to light to make the official story less likely. I am always keen to hear other people's research.
So can you describe your own work on the physics of the WTC towers?
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Why has Mike Rudin in his piece on 9-11: Conspiracies adn ControveriesIII ignored the evidence of Barry JenningsDeputy Director, Emergency Services Department, New York City Housing Authority,
who claimed he was in WTC7, saw dead bodies and heard explosions...all prior to the fall of the first two towers.
'Mr. Jennings is still confused as to why Building 7 had to come down at all, and does not accept the official reason that the noises he heard were from a fuel oil tank, "I know what I heard, I heard explosions". '
http://www.infowars.com/?p=2807
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRaKHq2dfCI
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ZEITGEIST THE MOVIE get the bigger picture
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Very irresponsible reporting in your piece "Collapse of Building Seven Solved?"- you've neglected three points...
First, your own reporter at the time, live on air, reported the collapse of building seven over twenty minutes before it fell, with the building in sight over her shoulder. It's easily found on youtube, just search for the words building seven before.
Two, the owner of the property later admitted that the decision had been made to "pull it."
Third, engineers universally agree that there was no fire of sufficient temperature to melt steel or even weaken it.
Whitewash.
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BBC you make me laugh! I watched the trailer and the 3 snips, and the big thing is that you misplaced the tape? No, the problem is that your journalist said that WTC7 was down! not eventually coming down or we were told around noon that the building would be coming down? as BBC journalists the question is why WTC7 is down like controlled demolition and not WTC6 closer to WTC1?
If you are commenting like steve that it is not a conspiracy because nobody is coming FORWARD!? For the same reason that as a soldier you are told to go to Afghanistan and kill the population there since 2003! or like Dallas 1963, where Oswald from behind shoots JFK in the forehead! YOU could rest assure because nobody came forward, but at the same time you cannot explain why 3 buildings collapsed in their own footprints on September 11, 2001, and only 3 buildings in history due to fire! And on 911 the first two were told to be resulting from the impact of jet and jet fuel from 2 airplanes on the first day of the event, ... and NIST after 7 years of investigation, is telling you that the same happened at free fall speed with only fire involvement when you were told that the jet fuel travels from impact to lobby levels on 911 in WTC1+2 ? come on ;-) you are right nobody, came forward after all, ? and Bush was still reading the Pet Goat, and the Pentagon was hit 1 hour after WTC1+2 with no fighters under alerts, and Cheney saying no change in orders with plane 50 miles, 30 miles, 10 miles from Pentagon ;-) off course, no sweat there! Nobody came forward!
Molten steel at WTC1, 2 +7, nothing at WTC5 + 6, no sweat there again! Nobody came forward!
Or the justification that you cannot satisfy a conspirationist, although the writer would say that no matter the explanation he will not convince you that steel gets soft at 451 degrees Celsius like paper ;-) Or the government is so stupid that they can come up with something so complicated? but the guy in the cave was able to do it!
To Bionic, if it was so convenient to WTC7 to collapse for Silverstein (and other agencies in the building) I don?t see what it is mundane compare to WTC1 +2: it is actually showing a link between WTC1, 2, 7 same controlled demolitions! To Magic, you are describing an asymmetrical collapse; damage on one side will not end in a controlled symmetrical collapse! To Pakuba: molten steel not a problem in WTC7 engulfed fire?
As to the size of the Pentagon breach, a Cessna or a Tomahawk Land Attack Missile? Common sense please! As for WTC7, I can?t wait to see how the BBC will again simply explain what took 7 years for NIST to fabricate!?
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Hi MacXLL, 150,
You may care to view (gasp) at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7491020.stm
A 60second hit job reported on News24.
Richard Gage had a one liner (note evidence omitted which fires don't do: (There was no or little smoke coming from the building when it finally fell, the dust, the countdown, the pre-knowledge, the molten steel, the evidence being shipped away, independent witness testimony).
Then a demolition expert says "No" (so that's it then (I guess these guys aren't really needed after all!)).
A bit of misinfo: no water (actually no-one even tried to use the fire ships which could provide as much water as you from the Hudsen river which were nearby)
Then from the same guys that failed to explain the twin tower explosions, a rather interesting computer sim which shows an asymmetric break(!!!) Not terribly convincing from the little clip I saw.
At least the BBC said, unlikely to satisfy Truthers.
Hopefully it will prompt some people to review ALL the evidence and allow them to draw their own conclusions.
So opportunity missed. We may have to wait another 7 years before we get a truly INDEPENDENT study. By which time, any wrong-doers will be long gone...
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brianct (#147) writes: "Why has Mike Rudin ... ignored the evidence of Barry Jennings, Deputy Director, Emergency Services Department, New York City Housing Authority ..."
And how can you be sure that he has ignored it, when the whole point of his blog post here is to advertise a hour-long BBC TV programme he has made which none of us sees until Sunday at 9pm?
All through this discussion various (not all) 911 conspiracy advocates seem happy to assume that they know what is in Rudin's film. These are people who berate others for not facing clear facts about 911. In some areas I agree with them about that. But can I advise them that the credibility of their current attacks on Rudin would be that much greater if they'd actually seen what he'd produced over the kast few months? Irony apart, how are they expecting anyone to rate their opinion as greater than worthless when their approach is so obviously prejudicial?
The case of the testimony of Barry Jennings sounds an important one. Here's somebody in the discussion at infowars.com who has the right idea ...
June 24th, 2008 at 5:34 am
Has Barry Jennings made a witnessed, signed statement of his account, that can be used as evidence in a court ? - or are anybody trying to see to this ?
A signed statement might be very useful especially with the plans for a trial in connection with the papers on http://www.journalof911studies.com.
Best regards,
Anders 8
(from Denmark)
Does anyone know the answers to these questions? Does anyone even care about such details, before they point to a inconclusive video of Jennings made by one of the Loose Change people, which he later refused to allow them to use in their 'Final Cut'?
The key piece of evidence throughout, as I've said many times, is the way that WTC7 fell. The outward structure went from stable to virtual free-fall acceleration in an instant, leading to total collapse and disintegration, with the debris landing almost totally within the 47-storey building's original footprint, all within seven seconds.
That kind of catastrophic, complete collapse is simply not possible through fire damage. That means the building must have been rigged for demolition - and that surely must have happened before 9/11. That fact has never been admitted or the reasons for it explained, just as for the two towers, whose collapses were equally catastrophic, though with the wave of visible explosions moving from top to bottom, unlike a conventional demolition.
The video testimony of Jennings may well help to fill in details of what went on in building 7 during 9/11. But Anders from Denmark is right: such matters should be dealt with in a very thorough investigation and trial. The central thing we need to know right now is that the official story is false and that means a mass murder has not been properly investigated and tried.
Because Rudin, this time, has interviewed two heavyweight critics of the official story, Steven Jones and Richard Gage, I am hopeful that his film will present this very important view and the evidence for it with clarity (if not unopposed, which would neither be likely or indeed right).
Please, let's wait for Sunday night and then judge Rudin. Doing so now. on his own blog, is ridiculous and must further reduce the credibility of all 911 "conspiracy nuts" - a category that I am still hopeful of escaping, at least in the long run.
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"Omission is the greastest form of lie"
George Orwell
On Sunday we'll all be observers of any glaring "omissions"
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benblack (#153): 'On Sunday we'll all be observers of any glaring "omissions"'
And indeed of glaring inclusions. A couple we already know of are direct interviews with ex-BYU Physics Professor and leader of Scientists for 911 Truth and Justice, Steven Jones, and founder of Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth, Richard Gage. Neither of these were included in Rudin's original piece on 9/11. A key aspect for me will be how well the important thinking and research of both men is represented, so that hopefully the open-minded viewer can go out on the net afterwards, read their and opposing stuff and make up their own mind.
Unlike some I'm ready to applaud Rudin for these key inclusions. It seems to me a major step, compared to more flaky conspiracists he highlighted last time, whose more extreme ideas were much easier for mocking official version advocates to pick off.
As you imply, we'll have to wait and see.
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ynda20 (#146):
I can't describe my work on the physics of the WTC towers, no. Well, not easily. I could write you a thousand pages but even then I'm not sure which ones would be the most valuable. A more practical approach is to refer you to people I have studied, who are much further ahead than me on this subject. In fact, I have already done exactly that, in various of my contributions here. People like Jim Hoffman at wtc7.net, Steven Jones at stj911.org and various other scientists including Frank Legge at journalof911studies.com.
One of the things I have noted about your own substantial contributions here is that you haven't made as clear the key sources of your thinking into 9/11. It's better for others that you do, in my view.
Lastly you mention Occam's Razor in a positive light and that reminds me of two 20th century comments along the same lines:
Albert Einstein: 'Things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.'
Antony Sutton: 'Neither Hoffman nor anyone else has yet pointed out in this regard that in science the "simplistic" answer is the more acceptable answer - the simple explanation is to be preferred over the complex one, providing it covers all the facts.'
The latter quote comes from Sutton's 1973 book "National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union". It was an important study that wasn't highly publicised. I was interested in such things in those days and this particular sentence has stayed with me since. He's referring to a disparaging review in the New York Times of a classic conspiracist book of 1971. But the general point stands. Both Einstein and Sutton warn that there are limits to simplicity: we have to get all the facts in as well.
Do that with 9/11, my son, and you'll be on the right track!
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Hi rdrake,
"152. At 09:43am on 05 Jul 2008, rdrake98 wrote:
"...And how can you be sure that he [Rudin] has ignored it, when the whole point of his blog post here is to advertise a hour-long BBC TV programme he has made which none of us sees until Sunday at 9pm?"
I agree about that. But many of the comments above were in response to the bbc's July 1st late night re-run of "Conspiracy Files" about 9/11 - if Mike's WTC7 "Final Mystery" is anything like that then we are going to be rather miserable.
The BBC news report yesterday which I refer to at 151 (sorry about the dreadful grammatical errors, by the way) also implied that the only evidence from truthers is the similarity between WTC7 collapse and controlled demolition. This one liner was then rejected by a line up of three arguments against the CD theory (a demolition expert who said "No" (no explanation), mis-info: lack of water, and the NIST computer sim (showing asymmetric failure!)) then cut back to the bbc presenter who says "the truthers still won't be happy though" or some such. Er... the reason why we are unhappy is the ommission of all the other evidence and the rather flakey response from NIST (the same people who can't explain the twin towers explosions and collapse!).
So, I just want to warn everyone about to watch out for omissions in Mike's documentary:
a) is dust or its chemical analysis discussed?,
b) molten steel at the base of WTC 1,2 and 7?
c) pre-knowledge: independent witnesses who talk about sounds of explosions and the countdown to the fall.
I will be very keen to hear the explanation for the symmetrical collapse...
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Hi rdrake,
"155. At 11:19am on 05 Jul 2008, rdrake98 wrote:
I can't describe my work on the physics of the WTC towers, no. Well, not easily. I could write you a thousand pages but even then I'm not sure which ones would be the most valuable. A more practical approach is to refer you to people I have studied, who are much further ahead than me on this subject. In fact, I have already done exactly that, in various of my contributions here. People like Jim Hoffman at wtc7.net, Steven Jones at stj911.org and various other scientists including Frank Legge at journalof911studies.com."
I presume you've signed up with ae911truth.org?
"One of the things I have noted about your own substantial contributions here is that you haven't made as clear the key sources of your thinking into 9/11. It's better for others that you do, in my view."
Sure, ok. If there are any areas where I haven't backed anything up then I am happy to provide further info.
"Lastly you mention Occam's Razor in a positive light "
Positive only so much as it is often used by apologists for the official story and I welcomed a debate to see whether Occam's razor can be used in an area where someone is set out to trick you. Like in a magic trick, for instance. Occam's razor surely can only be applied where you know the rules of physics/science and the motivation of the people describing what you are seeing.
"...and that reminds me of two 20th century comments along the same lines:
Albert Einstein: 'Things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.'
Antony Sutton: 'Neither Hoffman nor anyone else has yet pointed out in this regard that in science the "simplistic" answer is the more acceptable answer - the simple explanation is to be preferred over the complex one, providing it covers all the facts.'"
Covers all the facts: that's the key! With omissions people are going to draw different conclusions.
"The latter quote comes from Sutton's 1973 book "National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union". It was an important study that wasn't highly publicised. I was interested in such things in those days and this particular sentence has stayed with me since. He's referring to a disparaging review in the New York Times of a classic conspiracist book of 1971. But the general point stands. Both Einstein and Sutton warn that there are limits to simplicity: we have to get all the facts in as well."
So again we need to repeat the other facts: dust, molten steel, chemicals, pre-knowledge: all of which contradict the official story of fire alone as the cause of the collpase.
"Do that with 9/11, my son, and you'll be on the right track!"
Yeah, yeah. I'm a grey hair. Enough of the "my son" business! :-)
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ynda20, you still haven't said who you've most studied or who has most influenced you on 9/11. Isn't it much more important, for example, what Steven Jones and Richard Gage think of Rudin's programme than you or me? They've paid the price, more than most of us. Mind you, you've said nothing of your academic or work background. Theirs is obviously far more relevant than most.
I'm not wanting to dampen down all amateur commentary - not least because Jim Hoffman, a programmer like myself, made many of the key breakthroughs in this area in 2003-4, before Jones or Gage were even aware of there being a problem with 9/11. But by now there are some well-known names in the public domain calling the official story of into question. I've chosen ones to study that seem to me to take the greatest care with the evidence. (I should add that I value David Ray Griffin's contributions in many ways.) There are others that have not been so careful. Again, I'm encouraged that two of the best in the field were chosen for interview this time by Rudin. He cannot possibly in an hour do justice to all their work. We know for sure he's interviewed others who disagree, including the poor people from NIST. But as long as the message of Jones and Gage is not totally distorted in the editing I assume we have an advance on anything the BBC has done before.
Don't let's lose this major opportunity to let others know of the deep problems with the official view of 9/11 if so.
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If the BBC or Mike Rudin were serious about investigating the 911 attacks they would have a series investigating them.
Instead they "investigate" "conspiracy theories".
Investigate the US governments' 911 story and it soon falls to pieces because there is no evidence supporting it apart from the the alleged ramblings of its severely tortured alleged "mastermind".
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The last 9/11 mystery?
How dare you?
How convenient that my list with over 40 unadressed 9/11 mysteries wasn't published here.
Go to 911 blogger, visit my blog and see for yourselves.
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@rdrake (message 144)
You stated: "From your answers it seems to me that you have not grappled with this evidence from the WTC disaster, including the easy to understand two page letter from Frank Legge that I referred you to in both my earlier posts. Even so, I wish you well."
Nor, I suspect, have you grappled with the evidence in the easy-to-understand 12-page report from the a demolition industry viewpoint which I have previously linked to (even a cursory skim through will point to an *awful* lot of holes in the theory of a controlled demolition):
http://www.implosionworld.com/Article-WTC%20STUDY%208-06%20w%20clarif%20as%20of%209-8-06%20.pdf
However, controlled demolition or no (and I fall clearly into the latter camp), my chief beef with these conspiracy theories is to do with the sheer scale and numbers of minions/stooges that would need to be involved.
- How were all these people recruited?
- What happened to the ones who said no?
- What has happened to ones who have had a change of conscience since then (especially seeing as the war it was supposed to cause has not been wildly successful)?
- Or the ones driven mad over time by the knowledge they were involved in the deaths of thousands?
- How did they get these explosives into the buildings (do you know how long and complex a process it is to rig a buildling for demolition, and this would've been them other of them all)?
- How did they ensure the planes or burning fuel didn't prematurely set them off?
- Why have such a complicated plot involving bombs AND planes anyway?
- If it is so obvious that this was a controlled demoliton, where are the foreign investigators (if you say the US ones are muzzled)?
- Where are the statements from the greater bulk of the world's demolition experts, as they would all recognise a controlled demolition if they saw one, but they're all remaining strangely quiet about it?
Sorry, but 19 fanatical/suicidal men in a daringly simple but clever plan, backed by well-organised but again simple logistics, is a far more believable plot ...
Finally, I also wish you well, rdrake (unlike a few other forums on this topic that I've come across over the last day or so, at least everyone here, while not prepared to change minds, are perfectly civil to each other!
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Hi rdrake
"158. At 1:21pm on 05 Jul 2008, rdrake98 wrote:
ynda20, you still haven't said who you've most studied or who has most influenced you on 9/11. "
Griffin's "Debunking 911 Debunking" was sort of the clincher for me. It was only then that I realised that the web of disinformation that was mudding the waters out there.
Whenever I came across some of the truthers' "ridiculous" suggestions like Marvin Bush, George's brother, being involved in the security firm that ran the World Trade Center site or the aviation firm affiliated with the supposed hijackers training. I would rush off and chase down the company records to check whether they were right. Yep. They all checked out. After checking my 10th "fact", my brain did an Orwellian flip and it is difficult to go back thinking about politicians being on "our side" ever since.
Having tested my revelations on many people, I am invariably told by people "I am being fooled" or being paranoid. Yet, I see no real "facts" for the official story at all. The whole official story came out on the day of 9/11 and hasn't changed.
"I'm not wanting to dampen down all amateur commentary - not least because Jim Hoffman, a programmer like myself, made many of the key breakthroughs in this area in 2003-4, before Jones or Gage were even aware of there being a problem with 9/11."
My background: decades in IT, degree in natural sciences. An interest in computer simulations (I write my own!) and Psychology.
"... as long as the message of Jones and Gage is not totally distorted in the editing I assume we have an advance on anything the BBC has done before."
We'll see.
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A PS to my message 161:
I have tonight taken the time to carefully read Mr Legge's 2007 letter that rdrake referred me to:
http://www.journalof911studies.com/letters/f/LeggeLastTry4.pdf
It contains a lot of theory, particularly about the lean of a building ... however, that is directly countered by the actual experience of the demo experts in the (2006) report I linked to:
http://www.implosionworld.com/Article-WTC%20STUDY%208-06%20w%20clarif%20as%20of%209-8-06%20.pdf
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Roly_Hermans wrote ?How did they get these explosives into the buildings (do you know how long and complex a process it is to rig a buildling for demolition, and this would've been them other of them all)??
Actually, it would have been very easy, far easier than in much smaller buildings. A Mr William Rodriguez stayed with me for a week-end last June, on his speaking tour of the UK and Europe. If you have never heard of him, he was the janitor in the North Tower when the first plane hit and who helped rescue many of the survivors who were trapped in the WTC1, and also helped the firefighters get access to the building. He heard explosions going off in the building even prior to that first aircraft hit. See our webpage at http://www.cornwall911truth.info/pages/rodriguez.aspx for some background information.
William tells us that the WTC buildings were truly massive, cities within a city, with thousands of people working in them. There were continual comings and goings of maintenance men, equipment and tools. So a few well trained men (possibly military?? but here I speculate) could easily have rigged up thermate cutter charges around the steel supports, without anyone noticing.
Incidentally, and thinking of the physics of the collapse of all the buildings (and yes, I have also studied physics to university level), people were moving around these buildings, escaping, rescuing, fighting fires and so forth, so the temperatures couldn?t have been that hot. There are even photographs on the Internet of people waving for help from the gashes caused by the planes. Yet we are told that the fires weakened or melted the steel. Come come now. Furthermore, think how hot the steel gets on your cookers, or in the engines of the planes you fly in. Do these melt or weaken to the point of collapse?
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@spivver (message 164)
Here's 911myths take on William Rodriguez's statements:
http://www.911myths.com/html/william_rodriguez.html
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Roly_Hermans, have you ever met and spoken with him?
Thought not, somehow.
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Here is my list of several demolition experts who reject the official "fire demolition" hypothesis:
http://www.demolitionexpertsquestion911.blogspot.com
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Roly (#161,163):
Thank you for some thoughtful feedback. I had read the Brent Blanchard implosionworld piece before but I will fully admit that it has not remained sufficiently in the forefront of my mind as I came back to the WTC question this week (and I hadn't spotted your earlier reference to it either, sorry). As I remember thinking when I first read it, it's one of the most important and informed testimonies to cause the CD theorist of 9/11 pause for thought. I don't think it can be conclusive though. For I cannot see how WTC7 could fall so fast, or so evenly, after very uneven damage and fires, just as Dr Legge argues. But I'm going to think further about the points Blanchard makes before commenting further.
The other reason we CD types should be very tentative is the social issue of successful recruitment and cover-up, as I called it in #59, and as you spell out in a lot of detail. Blanchard adds some credible detail to this too. I'm not going to try to argue more on this here. Only to stress once again that the speed and nature of fall of all three buildings has been my key difficulty. I'm still not over that, just as Legge, Jones and Gage aren't. But I'm genuinely open.
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@ Roly_Hermans, Thanks for your comment 161.
Your hypothetical stooge number estimate may be too high.
In another hypothetical scenario (linked below) it is estimated that a core of a dozen people, in-the-know, within the military command structure could engineer an event like 911:
http://911research.wtc7.net/sept11/analysis/scenario404.html
Can anyone reading this thread please point me in the direction of supporting evidence for the al Qaeda/bin Laden conspiracy theory?
The US government promised to provide definitive proof for its assertion that bin Laden was responsible for the attacks. Where is it?
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Dear Mike,
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Roly (#161,163): Following up my previous message, I'm now studying Jim Hoffman's critique of the Blanchard implosionworld piece:
http://911research.wtc7.net/reviews/blanchard
Note how Hoffman is the source for me on this and for 911-was-mind-rape on the possible number of people in-the-know. Although the 'professionals' like Jones and Gage have come in since - and Jones in particular has been very important in the analysis of the dust and other areas - they and we all owe an enormous debt to Jim Hoffman.
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As preposterous as the conspiracy theory is, I wondered what group of professionals would be watching the dialogue with the most interest. Anyone want to guess? There are no prizes for the correct answer, because it's too obvious!
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Firstly thanks to the many informed contributors to this thread.
Since my previous comment some days ago I have spent a lot of time looking into the available information that the wonderful www brings to all of our fingertips (yes, I know, ?life? ?need? ?I? and ?to get? come to mind...)
Having said that, it is quite a compulsive eye-opener to see how much material there is available on both "sides" (if that's not an over-simplification) of the debate.
I am not an engineering or physics expert, though I do consider myself relatively intelligent and unbiased. Without going into the many links and references that I am sure all interested parties will all ready be aware of I am now persuaded of two things:
It seem extremely unlikely that the nature of WTC7's collapse could have been caused through the combination of the structural damage and the fires that assailed it on 9/11.
It seems extremely unlikely that WTC7 was rigged in advance for an explosive demolition that was executed to reduce it to rubble.
Strong negative arguments exist to dissuade the (temporarily at least...) dedicated amateur web researcher from either scenario. Likewise there are no thoroughly convincing positive explanations to support either case.
So what is to be believed? Either one of these extremely unlikely events actually happened that day. If it was the first case, another highly implausible event to add to that incredible and tragic day, that seems already over-burdened with its share of improbability. If it was the second case then implications spread out in all directions that are so appalling that they are hard to countenance.
Is there a grey area anywhere in between this?
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Dear Mike,
But, it is not just the seemingly official silence in answer to reasonable questions re the official story on 9/11 and 7/7 (and 21/7 and 22/7), is it?
I have one big worry, and I think it is shared by many reasonable people: there does seem to have been a successful conspiracy to silence the mainstream press, including the BBC, at a time when, more than ever, we need the press to be courageously speaking out on for example the crucial importance in a democracy of observing due process of law (which observance is vital to preserving the legitimacy of those in power).
So, the very serious issues raised by my post #31 in your preceding thread
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2008/06/controversy_and_conspiracies_2.html
re the dodgy Intelligence and the infamous Goldsmith legal advice which together dragged this country, my country and yours (the United Kingdom), and four others (the United States, Australia, Poland and Denmark), into waging aggressive war on a sovereign state (Iraq), which according to the Geneva Conventions constitutes the "supreme international war crime", go virtually unreported and no mainstream journalist seems to be doing any good old-fashioned investigative journalism, connecting all the dots and drawing the appropriate conclusions. The perpetrators are thereby scandalously still in power. How can these very serious matters not have been deserving of extensive mainstream media comment and analysis?
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(continued from post #174)
Another example is the official silence (including mainstream press silence) over the obvious subversion of due process in the investigation into the death of Dr David Kelly (including no mention of the possibility of an important connection to the Plame Affair, and Judith Miller's role in both affairs, or of the possibility that Kelly was NOT Gilligan's original or prime source). Please see these articles (re Kelly) on the highly regarded Internet site Global Research (Chief Editor: Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa, Canada):
"Sexed up" Report on the Death of David Kelly: Lord Hutton Findings challenged by Medical Doctors
by Dr. C. Stephen Frost and Dr. Christopher Burns-Cox and Dr. David Halpin
No Inquest into the Death of Dr. David Kelly
The Elephant in the Living Room of the United Kingdom
by Dr. C. Stephen Frost and Dr. David Halpin and Dr. Chris Burns-Cox
The Death of David Kelly and the "Sexed Up" WMD Report
Was BBC Andrew Gilligan's Original Source a Senior Member of Her Majesty's Government?
by Paul Brandon and C Stephen Frost and David Halpin, Christopher Burns-Cox
How do you see the mainstream media's (including the BBC's) role in a healthy democracy?
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Andy_PN states ?If it was the second case then implications spread out in all directions that are so appalling that they are hard to countenance.?
I could not agree with him more. Some two years ago, when I had the first realisation that something was wrong with the official conspiracy theory, I thought the same thought. I?m through that now, having reached the stage of pure determination to see all the wrongs righted, and the true criminals put on trial.
And zeuszeus00 has summarised amply the wrongdoings which all have stemmed from 911. And, hence, those politicians who have refused proper criminal investigations into 9/11 and 7/7 and who have marched on to war as a result of these so called attacks, need to face a Nuremburg style International War crimes tribunal for their illegal wars. And this just pertains to their wars. Our rights, freedoms and privacies have been stripped as a result of 911. The US now countenances kidnapping and torture, to name just a few policies stemming from 9/11.
Oh yes, the enormous implications spread out in all directions, yet our mainstream media, including the BBC, remain all but silent on these issues, preferring to just parrot the official conspiracy theory.
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I have decided to repost below my entire post #31 (referred to in my post #174 on this blog) from Mike's preceding blog:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2008/06/controversy_and_conspiracies_2.html
31. At 8:14pm on 29 Jun 2008, zeuszeus00 wrote:
This is becoming difficult, but here goes:
I can understand the argument that the mainstream press have to be responsible over what they say, otherwise the press alone could generate social disorder or even anarchy, for no reason at all.
But, given that we now have war criminals in power in both the United States and the United Kingdom [Bush and Blair agreeing in 2002 to "fit the Intelligence around the policy" re war with Iraq, and the subsequent concoction of that Intelligence (though the British Government claimed that they had not even sexed it up!?), and the concoction of the infamous twice-changed legal advice of Lord Goldsmith, the British Attorney General (the Americans apparently told Blair, after Goldsmith's pre-invasion visit to the US, that "we had trouble with your Attorney General but ...", or similar], and given that the American neo-conservatives (Bush, Cheney et al.) published a document called PNAC (Project for the New American Century) in the late 1990s, calling for American domination of the world, but saying that that could not be achieved "absent a Pearl Harbour-type event", the very least the BBC could and should do in my opinion is to call for a PROPER investigation into 9/11. In a single stroke this would restore the reputation of the BBC, in the eyes of the very many people around the world who have grave doubts re the official story propagated by those currently in power in Washington and London, and who feel that they have been betrayed by the BBC (whose duty primarily is to inform the public, not to protect, especially in extremis, the politicians who the people have elected to SERVE them).
There is much, much more which one could reasonably write but ... for the moment, let us confine ourselves to this: we know we are being governed by war criminals and some (not I) seem prepared to accept that. The burning question is are we also being governed by traitors, prepared to indulge in huge false flag operations (9/11, and, yes, the 7/7 bombings in London ARE also a worry) against their own citizens, in order to justify the global ambitions of those traitors? For this reason, we MUST get to the truth of this matter ie 9/11 (and while we are at it perhaps get to the bottom of what really happened to Dr David Kelly?), BEFORE we can move on. It looks to me like we NEED an orderly purge, and I think many reasonable people feel the same.
So, together, and with courage, let us search for the truth, wherever it leads, for the sake of our children. I do not see the problem - if we do not do the necessary now, things will only become inexorably worse, and then there will inevitably be an even bigger long-term price to pay.
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Moderator
Sorry! - I have not been able to post on this blog for the past 2 days or so - so, in the end, I tried to solve the problem by creating a new user name zeuszeus01 - however, the problem was eventually solved by other means - so, I intended to post #177 using my original user name, zeuszeus00 but as you see I made a mistake, and I can't delete - so, this is just to inform you (and everyone) that zeuszeus01 is zeuszeus00. Hope that is clear?!
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@ rdrake (message 171)
Even if Mr Hoffman has submitted his counters to the Implosion World report (Hoffamn hinmself has, I believe, been counter-counted in the 311-page document I referred to much earlier), the point remains that the Implosion World report exists at all.
Implosion World is a site for/of real demolition experts. They, of anybody, could recognise what a controlled demolition would look like. Yet they point out all the features of 911 that were different from a controlled demolition.
Howcome, if this was a controlled demolition, every demo engineer in the world isn't jumping up and down about it, and not just a handful?
You're telling me that while amateur theory conspiracists are telling us that this collapse was so *obviously* too fast etc to be anything other than a controlled demolition, all of the world's demo professionals (apart from a handful) don't see it that way?
Are you saying that most demolition engineers are more incompetent than amateur conspiracists? Or that they are gagged (even the many who aren't from the US)? Or that they are too un-caring about it to comment?
I would say you are doing the demolition industry a massive inservcie!
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PS from my message 179:
"I would say you are doing the demolition industry a massive inservice!"
... particularly the many demolition experts (including the report writers) who were involved in the clean-up operation and investigation, who therefore (if the conspiracy theory were true) must have ALL been somehow gagged to stop them talking about the obvious tell-tale signs of a controlled demolition that would have been in the wreckage ... you're telling me all these civilian experts could live with that knowledge weighing on their consciences?!
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@ rdrake 171
Ryan Mackey's paper "On Debunking 911 Debunking" (v2.1 May 2008), addresses Hoffmann's claims.
http://www.911myths.com/drg_nist_review_2_1.pdf
There is a one page summary of findings on Hoffman on page 184.
The thorough discussion of Hoffman's individual claims is currently in Appendix D, starting on page 234.
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There are two types. Those who base their opinion on what they are told and those who look at evidence. No evidence can change the view of the former. 9/11 is proved an inside job by evidence but until the BBC or Bush admits this some will not accept it. The BBC knows about 9/11 but lies. It's not worried about future repercussions. Does it know that there is no future?
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Absoutely true, frenchplasticnemice!
Conspiracy theorists have not been able to offer any peer-reviewed scientific studies where the evidence supports their case.
Peer-reviewed scientific studies have come to conclusion that the evidence shows that the accepted version is the most plausible one based on the evidence.
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To paraphrase a commentator on another documentary:
"When one plane hits a building, that's an accident. When another plane hits a building, that's a pattern. When a third plane hits a building, that's a program."
How insightful.
Keeping in mind that the whole purpose of modern structural engineering in the context of high-rise buildings, is to erect structures that resist gravity, high wind, fire and airplane strikes, all whilst bearing their own load; what chance that three buildings that suffer differential, localised, asymmetrical damage, would all suffer such a similar fate on the same day? Symmetrical, near-freefall speed collapse, pulverizing concrete into dust and shredding steel beams into truck sized ribbons; a fate suffered by no other building before or since under [apparently] similar conditions.
Accident? Pattern? Program?
What energy source accounts for hundreds of thousands of tons of concrete being reduced to dust?
What energy source acounts for the lateral ejection of tens of tons of steel up to 400 yards, some with enough force to embed them into adjacent buildings?
Considering the similarities between the collapse of WTC7 and towers 1 and 2, it seems rather ridiculous to try and treat WTC7 as an isolated 'mystery'.
I wonder if tonights offering from the Conspiracy Files will answer my concerns and questions?
I wonder also if I will be able to regain respect for the BBC and be able once more to cherish it?
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As Jones said in Improbable Collapse : You can't have it both ways ... the weight of each floor impacting on the lower ones and the creation of dust!
I see dust !
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Roly_Hermans
You are depending on other people to tell you what happened. If the world's greatest scientist tells me 2+2+763.7 I will disagree with him. What will you do?
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@ waspbloke
Three buildings hit by fully-laden jetliners during the same well-conceived, simple plan, along with one failure.
Two tall buildings collapse as a result of the extreme violence of aircraft hits and consequent fires.
Another building collapses due to the extreme violence of being hit by equivalent of a 50-storey building falling on it and the consequent fire (the most involved fire in a skyscraper ever).
Read the papers I have referred to in my postings above, particularly Implosion World (Blanchard, 2006) and "On Debunking 911 Debunking" (Mackey, v2.1 2008) ... they completely answer/negate your points about the physics of the fall, speed, pulverisation, shredding etc.
The main bulk of the international demolition industry, who should know better than any of us if the building collapses exhibited signs of being controlled demolitions, have either remained silent or have refuted the claims of the very, very few who have come to the conspiracy point-of-view (see Blanchard) ... or are they ALL part of the conspiracy too?
No conspiracy theory studiy has ever gone through a rigourous peer-review process (see Mackey), whereas there are several peer-reviewed studies that support the accepted view (again, see Mackey).
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The BBC now accept advertisements from oil companies (Exon Mobile - on this site now). Goodbye independent BBC..............
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That should read 2+2=763.7
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Good one, Frenchplasticnemice! The difference being, of course, that no scientist in a peer-reviewed study will say 2 + 2 = 763.7 ... and, if they did, then there might actually be something in it.
Most of us, anyway, have to believe what someone is telling us about this, as we don't have the requisite knowledge/expertise in such a technical and complex case as this. I mean, how would WE know what are the signs of a controlled demolition?
So, yes, what you've got to do IS in fact to listen/read what other people with the appropriate expertise tell you (I'm sure you've done that too, Frenchplasticnemice). But then you also have to look at the rigour of the methodolgy they have used to come to their conclusions.
I personally favour those who use a scientific method (Mackey). And I also favour those who have experience in the demolition industry (Blanchard).
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PS from my message 190:
"I'm sure you've done that too, Frenchplasticnemice" ... unless, of course, you actually ARE a demolition expert, Frenchplasticnemice??
But even then, the question remains as to why the greater majority of your demolition colleagues right round the world have not been concerned at all, or have actually stated that from their experience they do not agree it was a controlled demolition (eg Blanchard).
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Hi Roly,
I must say you are doing a good job at defending the official story. And I do like your approach. However, as I said before there are so many anomalies of the day that I feel we could argue all day. Where is the air crash investigations (which would wrap all this up rather quickly) and th evidence that Bin Laden was behind it (which would do likewise)?
"190. At 06:08am on 06 Jul 2008, Roly_Hermans wrote:
Good one, Frenchplasticnemice! The difference being, of course, that no scientist in a peer-reviewed study will say 2 + 2 = 763.7 ... and, if they did, then there might actually be something in it."
I provide a link scientific and peer reviewed journal below.
"Most of us, anyway, have to believe what someone is telling us about this, as we don't have the requisite knowledge/expertise in such a technical and complex case as this. I mean, how would WE know what are the signs of a controlled demolition?"
Actually humans are very good at recognizing patterns. I heard on radio 4 just the other day about an examination of how humans can detect man-made materials just by touch and sound. However Pyschology 101 says Most humans will comply with "Authority" - if someone in authority says something then we will do it (A subject will continue to electrocute of others when the man in the white coat says so - I can get you the reference) or Peer pressure (all but one person is in a room is part of the control, supposedly taking an exam and smoke appears. Most test subjects just do what the other people do (who are in on the test) and ignore the smoke).
So your appeal to authority (when actually the paper you mentioned is not a peer-reviewed scientific paper either, is not perfect.
"So, yes, what you've got to do IS in fact to listen/read what other people with the appropriate expertise tell you (I'm sure you've done that too, Frenchplasticnemice). But then you also have to look at the rigour of the methodolgy they have used to come to their conclusions."
Yes, but have they examined the totality of the craziness of the day. The delay in the fighters, the amazing 270 degree descending turn to hit the empty-ish part of the pentagon. Why not straight down? The pre-knowledge (share dealings). I have personal examples of minor pre-knowledge myself, plus you have to factor int the seemingly impossible explosions - plumes of debris from WTC 1 and 2 and the highly improbable WTC7 collapse. The totality of the evidence against the official story then has to set against the actions both before and after 9/11 where there looks like a major cover up. All I'm asking is, like the relatives of the 9/11 victims, that a new, Independent Inquiry is held
The scientific paper I mentioned is called "Fourteen Points of Agreement":
http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCIEJ/2008/00000002/00000001/35TOCIEJ.SGM
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I just browsed the website of BBC archives and the people there seem very competent. I'm trying to picture someone bringing a tape labeled something along the lines of "BBC world news 5PM 11.09.2001" and trying to place it in the 2002 slot for that date. Surely they would find a tape labeled something along the lines of "BBC world news 5PM 11.09.2002" and then they would say to themselves something along the lines of "Oops, better check this tape to see if I'm putting it back in the right place". Unless of course the BBC archive is just a big messy room where all the tapes are lying about in no particular order.
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@Roly_Hermans
*All* of the video evidence of the collapse of towers 1 and 2 shows very clearly that the pulverization and shredding occurs from the outset of the collapse. This continues all the way along the wave-front of collapse. The majority of the weidgt of the towers becomes suspended as dust in the air and as freefalling beam segments before it can transfer it's load onto the remaining structure below. This also begs the question that if the concrete were of such a poor standard, why it had not initiated it's own destruction before the buildings had even been completed.
Again, the video evidence is clear, WTC7 was not hit by the "equivalent of a 50 storey building", rather , it was pelted by small fragments and dust ejected from the explosive wave-front of the collapsing towers.
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@ ynda20 (message 192)
The peer review of the Bentham paper is discussed here, on pages 263, and also on page 278:
http://www.911myths.com/drg_nist_review_2_1.pdf
If what the 911myths author says is true (and I have no way of knowing that, of course) there are some major problems with the peer review of "Fourteen Points".
While the Mackey report itself is not peer-reviewed, you'll see he is referring to evidence in peer-reviewed publications about the engineering side of things, and these all point to the accepted version of events - certianly not, as you state "seemingly impossible explosions - plumes of debris from WTC 1 and 2 and the highly improbable WTC7 collapse".
Again, I've not got the time or expertise (nor frankly the interest - this flurry of messages from me just filling in time on a cold rainy weekend after having stumbled across this BBC blog, and I'll probably lose interest on Monday when the real-world steps back in!) to check the sources myself to confirm they have indeed been peer-reviewed and have been properly referenced by Mackey.
Finally, no-one has yet answered my query about the fact that the major proportion of the world's demolition industry do not appear to share the view it was a controlled demolition ... when they, of all of us, would be the most likely to detect a DC at a glance (eg Blanchard).
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@ waspbloke (194)
I reference you again to the information in Mackey, which discsuss the shredding and pulverisation:
http://www.911myths.com/drg_nist_review_2_1.pdf
Shredding - page 244/245
Pulverisation - starting at page 93
Also, read the short (12-page) Blanchard report for a demolition industry view on the collapses that all of us saw that fateful day - their inference varies totally from yours. I think their expertise to judge is higher than yours (or mine).
http://www.911myths.com/drg_nist_review_2_1.pdf
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@Roly_Hermans 196
I appreciate your response but the sources you cite provide no information which makes me feel that the wealth of video data should be ignored.
Clearly we see that the load above the wave-front no longer exists in an integral and coherent form, able to conduct its load down into the structure below. The explosive nature of the wave-front of collapse removes much of the material, disconecting it from the main structure.
Even if I allow the gravity theory some credit, given the incontrovertible and conclusive video evidence, it stops making any sense in a very short space of time.
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I agree, andymurphy, comment 193, that Rudin's claim that the controversial tape, which, for a while, the BBC denied even existed, was accidentally "put back on the wrong shelf" sounds pretty flakey!
It's worth noting, though, that incompetence has been the favourite alibi of those trying to explain the huge number of bizarre coincidences of the 911 and 7/7 events.
Well funded intelligence agencies, we are told, failed to respond to a single warning (they received many) about 911, the air defences were unable to launch a single aircraft into the sky, the British security services were unable to stop people they already had under surveillance from planting bombs. Why? Because, the authorities claim, they are incompetent and, furthermore, they need even more taxpayers' money to make themselves competent!!
No-one, of course, has lost their job because of this claimed incompetence.
Mike Rudin, you have an innocent face but I suspect you may be lying about the BCC WTC7 tape. Or is it just that the TV licence fee isn't high enough yet to enable the BBC organise a professional, backed-up archiving system?
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@ Roly_Hermans - comment 180
I do not find it remotely reassuring that the people who wrote the Implosion Demolition report were the same people employed to sanitise the WTC crime scene.
Because of them there is no physical evidence to examine - hence the proliferation of meaningless computer models which enable "scientists" like those working for NIST to manipulate abstracted data to fit their forgone conclusions.
Destroying evidence at a crime scene is a criminal offence in the US.
Fire experts at the time called for an immediate halt to the removal of WTC evidence. Implosion World criminals ignored them. Why?
In early 2002-Bill Manning, Fire Engineering's editor in chief, warned that unless there was a full-blown investigation by an independent panel established solely for that purpose, "the World Trade Center fire and collapse will amount to paper- and computer-generated hypotheticals." Manning explained: "Clearly, there are burning questions that need answers .... The lessons about the buildings' design and behavior in this extraordinary event must be learned and applied in the real world."
He wrote:
?THE DESTRUCTION AND REMOVAL OF EVIDENCE MUST STOP IMMEDIATELY?
http://www.fireengineering.com/articles/article_display.html?id=131225
Writing about this this outrage this fire expert asked:
"Did they throw away the locked doors from the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire? Did they throw away the gas can used at the Happyland Social Club Fire? Did they cast aside the pressure-regulating valves at the Meridian Plaza Fire? Of course not. But essentially, that's what they're doing at the World Trade Center.
For more than three months, structural steel from the World Trade Center has been and continues to be cut up and sold for scrap. Crucial evidence that could answer many questions about high-rise building design practices and performance under fire conditions is on the slow boat to China, perhaps never to be seen again in America until you buy your next car.
Such destruction of evidence shows the astounding ignorance of government officials to the value of a thorough, scientific investigation of the largest fire-induced collapse in world history. I have combed through our national standard for fire investigation, NFPA 921, but nowhere in it does one find an exemption allowing the destruction of evidence for buildings over 10 stories tall.
Hoping beyond hope, I have called experts to ask if the towers were the only high-rise buildings in America of lightweight, center-core construction. No such luck. I made other calls asking if these were the only buildings in America with light-density, sprayed-on fireproofing. Again, no luck-they were two of thousands that fit the description.
Comprehensive disaster investigations mean increased safety. They mean positive change. NASA knows it. The NTSB knows it. Does FEMA know it?
No. Fire Engineering has good reason to believe that the 'official investigation' blessed by FEMA and run by the American Society of Civil Engineers is a half-baked farce that may already have been commandeered by political forces whose primary interests, to put it mildly, lie far afield of full disclosure. Except for the marginal benefit obtained from a three-day, visual walk-through of evidence sites conducted by ASCE investigation committee members- described by one close source as a 'tourist trip'-no one's checking the evidence for anything."
Bill Manning, Editor-in-Chief of Fire Engineering Magazine
http://www.fireengineering.com/articles/article_display.html?id=131225
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@ waspbloke
... but those sources DON'T ignore the video evidence, they explain it!
And, again, most of the international demolition industry don't appear to have come to the same conclusions as you from the same video evidence (I'm sure they'll have examined it just as much as you or I have - or probably more, that being their professional field, and the slurs that the conspiracy throws on their occupation) ...
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Hi Roly,
We are arguing again from different information sources and so inevitable we are going to reach different conclusions. This is why I think a new, independent inquiry (just like the 9/11 Families want) - you have so far failed to respond to that point.
"195. At 11:00am on 06 Jul 2008, Roly_Hermans wrote:
The peer review of the Bentham paper is discussed here, on pages 263, and also on page 278:
http://www.911myths.com/drg_nist_review_2_1.pdf
If what the 911myths author says is true (and I have no way of knowing that, of course) there are some major problems with the peer review of "Fourteen Points".
While the Mackey report itself is not peer-reviewed, you'll see he is referring to evidence in peer-reviewed publications about the engineering side of things, and these all point to the accepted version of events..."
Well the argument appears to be about its peer review status not about specific items which is a bit rich in a non-peer reviewed document, don't you think?
I am annoyed that you cannot cut and paste from the Mackey report since it has some really "amazing" statements that I would take issue with.
One of them on page 278 "Why the Towers collapsed" - "is all about initiation and not sustainment - so that's all NIST studied"... Which I find absolutely incredible. No it isn't! Building are not suppose to blow up in the way we say in WTC 1, 2 and 7. In fact I can think of no natural mechanism for such a collapse. Why was that not studied?
"...certianly not, as you state "seemingly impossible explosions - plumes of debris from WTC 1 and 2 and the highly improbable WTC7 collapse".
The plumes have not seen in any other building fire. (Hence my term "impossible") and WTC7 fell due to fire - the first skyscraper to do so - I would repeat my statement "highly improbable" even NIST says highly improbable in their first report. Are we saying both designs for the WTC and WTC7 were poor? Shouldn't all skyscrapers be reviewed to see whether they should collapse as well?
Remember NIST is a government agency. People that don't tow the line are sacked. There are several examples of this happening. The 9/11 Commission Report was "set up to fail". There are much wider issues here than a technical discussion on building design.
"Again, I've not got the time or expertise (nor frankly the interest - this flurry of messages from me just filling in time on a cold rainy weekend after having stumbled across this BBC blog, and I'll probably lose interest on Monday when the real-world steps back in!) to check the sources myself to confirm they have indeed been peer-reviewed and have been properly referenced by Mackey."
Ok. But suppose, Just suppose. 9/11 was a false flag event as believed in many parts of the world. Don't you think that the organisation that arranged such a plot would also be capable of mudding the waters so much, that it would be hard to separate fact and fantasy. And don't you think that there is enough evidence to settle the argument one way or the other but those truly independent studies just haven't been done? Let's start with air crash investigations. Not been done. The black box data that has been released does not tally with other evidence for example.
"Finally, no-one has yet answered my query about the fact that the major proportion of the world's demolition industry do not appear to share the view it was a controlled demolition ... when they, of all of us, would be the most likely to detect a DC at a glance (eg Blanchard)."
Controlled Demolition Inc had the contract to clear up the WTC site. And they are one of the largest CD companies in the world. If you want business (mainly from defense and government) I suggest they would not be rocking the boat.
The only non-US CD expert that I know of said straight away (para-phrased) That's Controlled Demolition. How on earth was that set up?!
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Unfortunately, where I live I won't be in a position to see the BBC documentary ... but I'll be intrigued to read the responses to it here tomorrow.
It'll be interesting to see if their experts will also find that the "incontrovertible and conclusive" video evidence stops making sense in a very short space of time?!
G'night, all!
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Roly_Hermans, Comment 195, wrote:
"....this flurry of messages from me just filling in time on a cold rainy weekend after having stumbled across this BBC blog, and I'll probably lose interest on Monday when the real-world steps back in!"
I don't believe you!
"...Finally, no-one has yet answered my query about the fact that the major
proportion of the world's demolition industry do not appear to share the view it was a controlled demolition"
Professional people who voice doubts about the official 911 story risk destroying their careers.
It also also very difficult for anyone unfamiliar with governments' well-established record of staging false flag attacks to launch wars to accept that governments will sanction the murder of their "own" people for political and material advancement.
Few people who come to accept US government complicity in the 911 attacks do so without feeling emotionally traumatised by the realisation. It is a very shocking and threatening truth to face. It can be compared to a realisation that our own parents have sexually abused us. It is something that few people want to be true.
Furthermore, I am unaware of any independent poll asking world demolition experts their opinions on the unprecedented, mid-air disintegration into dust of the WTC buildings. Do you know of one, Roly?
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Was that non-US expert Norwegian, Ynda? I'd be quite interested in following up your comment.
As for independent review of the CD theory, I think that you'll find that in general terms (certainly from the distance I'm viewing this at), the conspiracy theory is seen as a rather outsider fringe element.
To the mainstream, from the reading I've done this weekend, and also the tlaking to friends etc, the collapses were so obviously not CDs that it would be a waste of money/effort when there are much more important issues relating to why/how the tragedy of that day occurred.
So, probably a BBC investigation is all that it warrants (after all, they're from a different country, don't have a horse in the race, can bring in independent experts etc)!
Anyway, this time I'm REALLY off to bed .. g'night!
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@ 911-was-mind-rape
"I don't believe you!"
Er ... you're probably right - I'm still here at the computer instead of heading to bed!!!
So far as your last comment is concerned, no, I don't know of such a poll. But that isn't the point - many CD professionals who saw 1,000s of deaths clearly caused by a CD, would've come forward of their own volition by now, especially in this whistle-blowing culture of today! I can't see hundreds of CD experts all over the world being so meek and mild that they all wring their hands and say, "Oh, but we'll lose our jobs!" ... sorry, that just doesn't wash.
Hopefully, really, good night this time!!!
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Some 911 researchers, such as Michael Ruppert, author of the groundbreaking "Crossing the Rubicon. The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil" warn against to getting involved in debates about physical evidence, especially when said evidence no longer physically exists, having been destroyed by the authorities.
Such discussions quickly degenerate into "expert' ping pong.
There is more than enough documented evidence in the public domain contradicting the official version of the 911 attacks without having to establish how the WTC buildings, including such items as glass and the carpets, were reduced to lethal, microscopic dust, in a few seconds.
(Even the military has claimed that it lied about its response to the attacks. Their new "true" version, though, seems to be another lie so maybe they told the truth the first time!)
It is very hard to argue that there has been no 911 cover-up. Exactly what is being covered up is up is harder to establish. Only a properly funded and empowered independent inquiry could find out. The BBC and Mike Rudin certainly won't!
Members of the Bush administration are suspects in this crime. Who else had the means, the motive or the opportunity? It is ludicrous that they have been allowed to run 911 investigations themselves! Their manipulated reports, written by Bush insiders, should not be trusted.
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What are you fellows mumbling about? Mike himself pointed to hundreds of architects, structural engineers and experts who are blowing those whistles as hard and as loud that it would wake the polar bear from his mellow summer slumber.
Patriots question 9/11, ask members of the media why they fail to write about it.
Question of some basic freedom this is, Tom said it well; the fact is: '9/11 attacks harm First Amendment'
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Sincere thanks to ynda20 (#200) for tackling at least some of the 313 turgid pages of the Mackey report, which Roly, to the detriment of us all, has come to accept as a model of the scientific method.
Kudos also to waspbloke for some very crisp description of the rock-solid scientific case against the official view. And that brings me right up to 911-was-mind-rape (#205):
'Some 911 researchers, such as Michael Ruppert, author of the groundbreaking "Crossing the Rubicon. The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil" warn against to getting involved in debates about physical evidence, especially when said evidence no longer physically exists, having been destroyed by the authorities. Such discussions quickly degenerate into "expert" ping pong.'
I very strongly disagree with Michael Ruppert on that. But his misjudgment probably rests on missing something Jim Hoffman points out a lot - physical evidence includes not just steel beams, DNA and the like but the copious videos and photographs we have of the WTC disaster. And these items, outside the control of the US authorities, prove controlled demolition beyond the shadow of a doubt.
That scientific fact does not in itself imply that Bush say was part of the plot to commit mass murder of his own people (and I wish some of us could control our urges to get into all that in discussions like this). The whole point of a full independent investigation, followed by criminal prosecutions, of the kind that Steven Jones, ynda20 and many others here are advocating, is that it's absolutely crucial to find out who committed the mass murders and why, using due process.
Such a process will surely change the Western world forever - for the good. Let the chips fall where they may. But let's not miss the crucial point that the WTC destruction is the evidential foundation for all of that.
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Agree with #205. One of the many many "anomalies" of that day was the behavior of the Secret Service Presidential Detail. The only reason for their existence is to protect the president. At the Booker school that morning after the information about a second attack had reached them ("America is under attack") Bush SHOULD have been unceremoniously manhandled out of that school (kicking and screaming if neccesary) and brought to safety. But they didn't leave till about 9:35. The only credible explanation for that is that the SS knew he wasn't in any danger. In this link at about 1:10 you hear Karen Hughes stating that the Secret Service "IMMEDIATELY secured the president....". Since when does 30 minutes later mean immediately? [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
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When two or more people plan to commit a crime, there exists by definition a 'conspiracy'.
Therefore, any theory about who did it, or how it was done, is by definition a 'conspiracy theory'.
The question is then not whether you are a conspiracy theorist, but for which conspiracy theory you find the evidence most compelling.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
rdrake98,
Thanks for your comment (207) and your other very well informed contributions.
From what I remember Michael Ruppert's viewpoint was based on his bitter experience as an LA detective seeing cases with apparently rock-solid evidence failing to end in convictions. He was also involved in supporting Robert F. Kennedy's election campaign. Ruppert noted that the very walls (plus bullet holes) of the room in which Kennedy was shot were removed, never to be seen again! Sound familiar?
In his book (now in the Harvard library) Ruppert was interested in building an effective case against Dick Cheney as chief suspect as orchestrator of the attacks. He did so without the support of physical evidence. It is well worth reading to get an understanding of the context of the attacks in the other, well-established and documented organised criminal activity that now passes for government in the US and elsewhere.
I agree that existing photographic/video evidence is pretty damning. Seeing depictions of the inexplicably explosive, rapid disintegration of the Twin Towers is what first punctured my own faith in the official account, several years after the event. I, too, wondered how huge chunks of steel were blown, at high speed, many hundreds of feet sideways into neighbouring buildings.
Ruppert's point was that, in the (IMO and his) extremely unlikely event of the perpetrators being put in the dock, such physical evidence as remains would not be enough to convict them.
My point in my comment above was that there is plenty of other well-documented evidence proving that we have been lied to about what actually happened. It seems to be in the perpetrators' interest to keep us focussed on physical evidence.
There have been years of intense debate about the Pentagon hole-in-the wall and we're really none the wiser for it. Donald Rumsfeld was the first person to mention a missile in that context.
I doubt that Mike Rudin will be running around America gathering information about the contradictory and changing accounts offered by the military and air traffic controllers, the strange flight paths followed by the hijacked and many other planes or the unusually large number of war games and security drills taking place that day. He won't be interviewing Intelligence spokespeople from the various countries that sent very specific (and ignored) warnings to the US about the impending attacks.
Visual evidence is sexier and has more immediate power to make the public question what they have been told and, to be sure, for the official account to hold sway, it needs neutering! Here comes the BBC with its bespectacled truth castrator! In a PR sense too many people believing that the Towers were blown up is dangerous to the official al Qaeda yarn. Legally, it is not so threatening.
Individual dissident experts can easily be discredited by experienced Intelligence operatives. Ruppert himself, an expert in criminal investigation, appears to have been knobbled by them.
I believe an independent investigation is vital. If one ever happens it will totally alter my cynical perception of international politics!
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Sweet dreams, Roly!
You'll be back!
I also find it hard to believe that you have not already researched this subject in depth before this weekend. Your opinions are rather too well formed for someone who has just stumbled on the topic yesterday!
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Subject: Swiss Cheese Mystery.
What's been taking them so long so long? (NIST say it's because they decided not to take on enough staff.)
Hopefully, now, at last, NIST or the BBC or Mike Rudin are about to solve what the New York Times called:
?perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation."
(The 'Deep Mystery' of Melted Steel, WPI Transformations, spring 02)
"intergranular melting capable of turning a solid steel girder into Swiss cheese."
(An Initial Microstructural Analysis of A36 Steel from WTC Building 7, JOM, 12/01)
FEMA called for further investigation into this mystery.
The later, NIST investigation, ignored it (in favour of abstract, fantasy, computer modelling).
Has NIST investigated this "final" steel cheese mystery yet?
?Evidence of a severe high temperature corrosion attack on the steel, including oxidation and sulfidation with subsequent intergranular melting, was readily visible in the near-surface microstructure. A liquid eutectic mixture containing primarily iron, oxygen, and sulfur formed during this hot corrosion attack on the steel.?
References:
http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/metallurgy/index.html
Watch BBC2 tonight and find out!
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See what people don't realise is that world trade center 7 was actually made of straw. And was most likely brought down by a big bad wolf with links to Al-Qaeda.
Final 9/11 mystery solved? I think so.
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Hi Roly,
"203. At 12:34pm on 06 Jul 2008, Roly_Hermans wrote:
Was that non-US expert Norwegian, Ynda? I'd be quite interested in following up your comment.
As for independent review of the CD theory, I think that you'll find that in general terms (certainly from the distance I'm viewing this at), the conspiracy theory is seen as a rather outsider fringe element.
To the mainstream, from the reading I've done this weekend, and also the tlaking to friends etc, the collapses were so obviously not CDs that it would be a waste of money/effort when there are much more important issues relating to why/how the tragedy of that day occurred.
So, probably a BBC investigation is all that it warrants (after all, they're from a different country, don't have a horse in the race, can bring in independent experts etc)!"
Well, I entirely disagree with you and your friends about CD. Were your friends even aware of WTC7 before they commented?
As for the European CD expert
Check out
http://patriotsquestion911.com/engineers.html
Where 500 engineers have stood up and poo-poo-ed the official story. Including the Dutch engineer Danny Jowenko ? Proprietor, Jowenko Explosieve Demolitie B.V., a European demolition and construction company, with offices in the Netherlands. Founded 1980, Jowenko Explosieve Demolitie is certified and holds permits to comply with the Dutch Explosives for Civil Use Act and the German Explosives Act. Jowenko's