Exploring BBC Conspiracy Files: 9/11 the Third Tower
Timgos | 29.07.2008 04:52 | History | Other Press | Terror War
This piece does a 'walk thru' of the TV documentary by the BBC on the collapse of WTC7
on 11 Sept 2001 which was shown originally on BBC on 6 July last.
The most significant sequences in the programme are described with critical comment following where appropriate.
on 11 Sept 2001 which was shown originally on BBC on 6 July last.
The most significant sequences in the programme are described with critical comment following where appropriate.
Exploring 9/11 – The Third Tower - Conspiracy Files
A Nonymous
Shown BBC2 – 6th July 2008 28 July 2008
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE 1: [...] indicates comments.
NOTE 2: The “straw man” is a deceitful technique used in argument where an
opponent is falsely alleged to take a certain position which is then later
demonstrated to be false, thus discrediting him.
NOTE 3: This piece assumes a certain amount of background knowledge
on controversies surrounding the Sept. 11 2001 events in New York City.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The programme claimed building 7 in the World Trade Centre complex was the
“first and only skyscraper on the world to have collapsed because of fire”
[But what of the other two WTC buildings according to the 9/11 Commission Rpt?
That official government report into “9/11” stated that WTC1 & WTC2 had collapsed
due to fire. So the BBC began by contradicting the official US Gov. report into
the events!!]
Later the programme told us the “Final Gov. Rpt on the 3rd tower has still not been
published..”
There was an interview with Barry Jennings, an African American who was in WTC7
before the collapse.
There was a clip simultaneously showing the collapse of WTC7 and a high-rise
building being demolished by controlled demolition. They both collapsed at the same
speed and in about the same way. This clip was displayed by Dylan Avery the director
of Loose Change, the Internet movie which has had phenomenal success in
disseminating “9/11 Conspiracy Theories”.
The programme admitted “all the steel was taken away to be melted down”, [so
the crime scene had been destroyed before a proper investigation could get under way.]
It showed one piece of steel that, it claimed had survived. It was in a strange mangled
state. It appeared to have undergone some sort of melting process. There was a
reference to a New York Times report which claimed how the piece of metal was in
its present state was the “deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation”.
[A phrase like “deepest mystery” is a queue to the viewer to take something
significant on board. Be alert here too for a “straw man” being set up.]
A Prof. Sissan was introduced discussing the steel piece.
The entire alarm system for WTC 7 was placed on “test” early in the morning of
Sept. 11, so that all alarms would be ignored.
WTC7 contained the offices of various federal agencies. It was evacuated for fear of
an attack on it. B Jennings was unaware of the evacuation order.
He was “the “key witness” in “the “controversy over building 7”.
[Note with the phrase “key witness” another “straw man” is being set up.
Note no ‘911 Truther” confirms the claim that Jennings is a “key witness”. ]
Problems with a lack of water supply for fire fighting were mentioned.
Architects & Engineers for 911 Truth was referred to. It was stated the organisation
had more than 390 professionals from around the world. Richard Gage, an
architect represented the organisation on the film.
There was a reference to experiments in Britain in the mid-1990s to see how well steel
framed buildings could stand up to fire. Fires as hot as 1000 C did not cause a collapse.
Bldg 7 suffered fires to the maximum temperature of 600 c (so the BBC says). At this
temperature steel loses half its strength.
Barry Jennings was trapped inside for 3 hours. A Police officer told him to run, he said,
as “they had more information of bombs”.
Deputy Fire Chief Hayden, said “one particular engineer” advised that collapse of WTC7
was a possibility. And gave them about 5 hours, and “he was pretty much right on the
money, that he said in its current state, you have about 5 hours.”
[Interestingly the film did not elaborate and tell us who this engineer was. It would
have been intriguing to discover who this individual was who was able to accurately
predict the onset of occurrence of a physical phenomenon, which it was admitted had
never occurred in history before, accurate to a matter of minutes.]
The film claimed this had been taken by some as “evidence the Fire Dept. and others
were planning its destruction”. [ Again another “straw man”]
In a documentary the owner of the site, Mr Silvestein, in an interview is shown saying
it had been decided to “pull it”, in reference to tower 7. It has been alleged this could
only refer to an act of controlled demolition, as to “pull” is jargon for just that. R Gage
said the language used by Silverstein was strange but “who knows”, in the end it was
“just speculation” as to what was originally meant.
Fire Chief Daniel Negro, NYFD, said they had to make a decision to stop rescue efforts
& pull fire fighters from the building. The decision came from the Fire Chief and him
alone, he claimed. He discussed the notion of conspiracy briefly and dismissed the
possibility.
The CNN and BBC broadcasts where the collapse of tower 7 was reported more than 20
minutes before it happened were briefly shown and then discussed. Jane Stanley was
the reporter for the BBC. She was interviewed briefly. There was a suggestion that
the main accusation was that the media were part of the conspiracy.
[Here another straw man.] [This distracts from the enormous anomaly which was
revealed. The explanation was that they had received a misleading report from Reuters.
The question this immediately provokes as to how Reuters came by such an odd
report was not pursued. The programme makers displayed a lack of curiosity.]
R Gage is shown further discussing the collapse and asserting that for a high-rise
building to fall neatly into its own footprint as shown, explosives would have been
required. A structural engineer Kamal Obeid, a member of Gage’s group said all
columns failing at the same time due to fire as claimed “was an impossibility”.
“Impossibility” exclaimed the interviewer, taken aback.
The film told how “Loose Change” found one demolition expert, Daniel Jowenko, with 28
years of experience who believed the towers had been brought down by controlled
demolition. It showed the clip from a Dutch TV investigation of 2006 where Jowenko,
without him knowing what he was being shown, observed a video of the collapsing
tower 7 and was asked to describe what he saw. He said it was certainly a controlled
demolition he was seeing. Only then was he told it was WTC 7. “Then they worked
hard”, he said with a air of surprise.
“But it is not a view shared by other demolition experts” according to the programme.
To validate this claim it interviewed the sum total of ONE demolition expert, and this
a man compromised by his personal connection to 9/11 and the US government.
Again active curiosity appears seriously hampered.
The boss of Controlled Demolition Incorporated, Mr Loizeau then made a major
contribution. He said the preparation of a controlled demolition on site takes months.
Parts of the structure need to be knocked in and this is a noisy business. Much cable
has to be laid down.
Gage was asked when he thought explosives could have been placed. He suggested the
possibility that they could have been placed even when the building was first erected
in the 1980s. [This sounds on the daft side. Perhaps he gave more plausible answers
also which were edited out and not shown.]
Loizeau: Windows would be shattered in buildings “all the way around” if explosives had
been used. Also detonation chord would have been an obvious give away after the event.
Dr Gene Corley of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) said he had
checked for evidence of controlled demolition and then ruled it out.
The film then turned its attention to Prof. Steve Jones. It introduced him as “his theory
is so controversial he left his job as a Prof. of Physics, because of it”.
[The reality is that he was constructively dismissed after his college had been
subjected to outside pressure.]
It said he “thinks he’s found evidence of an unconventional explosion, in the dust from
the WTC”. This was an explosion using a form of thermite, a substance that when
ignited can melt steel. He explained how the dust residue left after the collapse of
the three towers contained traces, such as characteristic tiny iron spheres which he
believed could only be the result of thermite explosions in the buildings.
Then the film reported on how a NASA plane flew over the scene “5 days” after the
collapse. It measured the ground temperatures at ground zero below. The highest
temperature was in the “tower 7 footprint”, which was 720 C. These temperatures,
the programme admitted were “extraordinarily high”.
Then the programme admitted that Loizeau, the expert supporting the official
explanation of the events, could be biased because he was and is in receipt of generous Government contracts.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Then the documentary launched into its final section where it attempts to debunk the
conspiracy allegations.]
It was announced that “new evidence” had emerged that supports the official theory
that fire brought WTC7 down.
Gage, the “9/11 Truth” architect was then shown claiming there was little in the way
of fire going on in tower 7 on that fateful day.
A photographer/video maker who was there and took pictures claimed heavy fires had
taken hold of the building. Some of his video film was shown. [However, it failed to
show a wide view of the fires burning in tower 7, preferring to opt for close-up images.
Thus, the unevenness of the fires over the whole building was de-emphasised.]
Then a fire fighter who said he was there claimed there were large scale fires in the
building. So, the fire fighters pulled back. Then the building fell. He said he heard no
explosive charges going off.
BBC personnel, including Jane Stanley discussed the reporting of the collapse 26
minutes early. It was down to a mistaken report from Reuters. [It did not occur
to them to inquire of Reuters how they get it so wrong. Again the lack of curiosity which
haunted the film was evident.]
The losing of the tape with the anticipatory report of the collapse of tower 7 was
explained as a mistake. It had been filed mistakenly with 2002 material, they said.
[How strange this matter was so deluged with screw-ups.]
Barry Jennings appeared again and said he did not believe in the conspiracy theories
and then appeared to contradict a statement he had made on other occasions about
walking over dead bodies as he made his way out of the building. Dylan Avery, director
of Loose Change made a good job of exposing contradictions in his evidence by playing
a snippet of a a previous interview he gave on a handheld device. [Remember,
the programme had previously introduced this man as “the key witness”.]
Then what was claimed to be a steel remnant from WTC7 was produced. It had been
mentioned earlier in the programme. It was claimed to had been found “in a salvage
yard”. It was made of the same formulation of steel as WTC7.
It had undergone analysis in a laboratory by a Prof. Jonathan Barnett.
The outcome of the analysis was commented on by Prof. Sisson of Worcester
Polytechnic Institute.
“It was attacked by a liquid slag” he said. He stated “Hot fires in the debris cooked
the debris over weeks”.
[The idea is that it was eroded in the fires that lasted at ground
zero for weeks. Thus this was not the result of an explosion using thermite.
Most tellingly, in the exposition concerning the piece of deformed steel the “Truthers”
do not get to make the merest contribution. What is their position on this piece of
steel? We do not learn it. We were left in the dark.
Nowhere in the film do the conspiracy proponents refer to or make any claims for this
piece of deformed metal. So, technical debunking related to it in effect qualifies
as a “straw man” argument.
How can we be fully sure this piece of steel really came from ground zero? That is
another vital question that was not answered.]
A Dr Sunder, apparently from India, the leading investigator of the current Bldg7
investigation said as they had no steel to study they had developed four models to
study what had happened. He explained the swift and even collapse by stating “it
turns out that when you have connections that essentially don’t have strength, ah,
for the loads they are being subjected to, ah, and you have this massive failure of
a column, you..it does not take time, the structure has lost all integrity at that point
in time.”
[The idea that “the massive failure of a column” should cause a structure to “lose
all integrity”, virtually instantaneously, conflicts with everything we must assume to
be true regarding professionally constructed high-rise buildings. Such a structure
may not display the characteristics of a “house of cards”, as this statement implies.
Dr Sundar was not shown providing any further justification for his claim.]
The programme said what had happened with tower 7 was unique; there had been a
lack of water to fight the fire, there were many fires, it was built over an electricity
substation which undermined it structurally.
Prof Barnett now began to assume the role of expert on behalf of the official position.
He displayed evidence by way of film of Bldg 5 soon after the events where steel
beams had been broken and there had been a partial collapse. He had been there
at the scene himself, he said.
[However, evidence from the same site is not convincing, when one thinks about
it. One could credibly theorize the same explosive materials which had brought down
the other towers contributed to the partial collapse within tower 5.]
The experienced politician Richard Clarke, who had been counter terrorism adviser to
President Bush at the time opined that governments are not competent enough to
carry out such conspiracies. Also they can not keep secrets. All the state secrets he
has been privy to, he said, eventually came out in the New York Times or the
Washington Post. [What Clarke has to say about the eagerness of these two
newspapers to uncover the truth, tells you all you need to know about the
reliability of his statement.]
Finally, the film cut to the fire fighter who did not believe in conspiracies and then to
Chief Negro, who basically says “conspiracy theories” are fiction.
[However, the argument based on the examination of the piece of steel allegedly from
WTC7 does not convince for reasons described above. Similarly the argument based
on the condition of WTC5 post-attack is very weak, as discussed just above.
Tower 7, being built partially over an electricity sub-station should not cause it to
collapse evenly into its own footprint as it did. In fact, due to the uneven distribution of
weight over the superstructure such a situation would cause, the collapse ought to
have been yet more uneven.
The extent of the fires and the lack of water to combat them ought not to have
provoked a collapse. The programme admitted such a structural collapse had never
happened before that day in history anywhere in the world. Yet, more aggressive and
consuming fires had occurred on high-rise buildings before without initiating a
catastrophic collapse.
Dr Sunder, who leads the current WTC7 investigation merely provided a description
of what was officially claimed to have happened.
There were distractions and straw men aplenty as well as half truths and outright
falsehoods. The “new evidence”, on closer examination, turned out to be limp.
The profound question the “911 Truthers” posed; how could a high rise building
simulate the appearance and effects of a controlled demolition without actually
undergoing one itself remained unanswered.]
A Nonymous
Shown BBC2 – 6th July 2008 28 July 2008
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE 1: [...] indicates comments.
NOTE 2: The “straw man” is a deceitful technique used in argument where an
opponent is falsely alleged to take a certain position which is then later
demonstrated to be false, thus discrediting him.
NOTE 3: This piece assumes a certain amount of background knowledge
on controversies surrounding the Sept. 11 2001 events in New York City.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The programme claimed building 7 in the World Trade Centre complex was the
“first and only skyscraper on the world to have collapsed because of fire”
[But what of the other two WTC buildings according to the 9/11 Commission Rpt?
That official government report into “9/11” stated that WTC1 & WTC2 had collapsed
due to fire. So the BBC began by contradicting the official US Gov. report into
the events!!]
Later the programme told us the “Final Gov. Rpt on the 3rd tower has still not been
published..”
There was an interview with Barry Jennings, an African American who was in WTC7
before the collapse.
There was a clip simultaneously showing the collapse of WTC7 and a high-rise
building being demolished by controlled demolition. They both collapsed at the same
speed and in about the same way. This clip was displayed by Dylan Avery the director
of Loose Change, the Internet movie which has had phenomenal success in
disseminating “9/11 Conspiracy Theories”.
The programme admitted “all the steel was taken away to be melted down”, [so
the crime scene had been destroyed before a proper investigation could get under way.]
It showed one piece of steel that, it claimed had survived. It was in a strange mangled
state. It appeared to have undergone some sort of melting process. There was a
reference to a New York Times report which claimed how the piece of metal was in
its present state was the “deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation”.
[A phrase like “deepest mystery” is a queue to the viewer to take something
significant on board. Be alert here too for a “straw man” being set up.]
A Prof. Sissan was introduced discussing the steel piece.
The entire alarm system for WTC 7 was placed on “test” early in the morning of
Sept. 11, so that all alarms would be ignored.
WTC7 contained the offices of various federal agencies. It was evacuated for fear of
an attack on it. B Jennings was unaware of the evacuation order.
He was “the “key witness” in “the “controversy over building 7”.
[Note with the phrase “key witness” another “straw man” is being set up.
Note no ‘911 Truther” confirms the claim that Jennings is a “key witness”. ]
Problems with a lack of water supply for fire fighting were mentioned.
Architects & Engineers for 911 Truth was referred to. It was stated the organisation
had more than 390 professionals from around the world. Richard Gage, an
architect represented the organisation on the film.
There was a reference to experiments in Britain in the mid-1990s to see how well steel
framed buildings could stand up to fire. Fires as hot as 1000 C did not cause a collapse.
Bldg 7 suffered fires to the maximum temperature of 600 c (so the BBC says). At this
temperature steel loses half its strength.
Barry Jennings was trapped inside for 3 hours. A Police officer told him to run, he said,
as “they had more information of bombs”.
Deputy Fire Chief Hayden, said “one particular engineer” advised that collapse of WTC7
was a possibility. And gave them about 5 hours, and “he was pretty much right on the
money, that he said in its current state, you have about 5 hours.”
[Interestingly the film did not elaborate and tell us who this engineer was. It would
have been intriguing to discover who this individual was who was able to accurately
predict the onset of occurrence of a physical phenomenon, which it was admitted had
never occurred in history before, accurate to a matter of minutes.]
The film claimed this had been taken by some as “evidence the Fire Dept. and others
were planning its destruction”. [ Again another “straw man”]
In a documentary the owner of the site, Mr Silvestein, in an interview is shown saying
it had been decided to “pull it”, in reference to tower 7. It has been alleged this could
only refer to an act of controlled demolition, as to “pull” is jargon for just that. R Gage
said the language used by Silverstein was strange but “who knows”, in the end it was
“just speculation” as to what was originally meant.
Fire Chief Daniel Negro, NYFD, said they had to make a decision to stop rescue efforts
& pull fire fighters from the building. The decision came from the Fire Chief and him
alone, he claimed. He discussed the notion of conspiracy briefly and dismissed the
possibility.
The CNN and BBC broadcasts where the collapse of tower 7 was reported more than 20
minutes before it happened were briefly shown and then discussed. Jane Stanley was
the reporter for the BBC. She was interviewed briefly. There was a suggestion that
the main accusation was that the media were part of the conspiracy.
[Here another straw man.] [This distracts from the enormous anomaly which was
revealed. The explanation was that they had received a misleading report from Reuters.
The question this immediately provokes as to how Reuters came by such an odd
report was not pursued. The programme makers displayed a lack of curiosity.]
R Gage is shown further discussing the collapse and asserting that for a high-rise
building to fall neatly into its own footprint as shown, explosives would have been
required. A structural engineer Kamal Obeid, a member of Gage’s group said all
columns failing at the same time due to fire as claimed “was an impossibility”.
“Impossibility” exclaimed the interviewer, taken aback.
The film told how “Loose Change” found one demolition expert, Daniel Jowenko, with 28
years of experience who believed the towers had been brought down by controlled
demolition. It showed the clip from a Dutch TV investigation of 2006 where Jowenko,
without him knowing what he was being shown, observed a video of the collapsing
tower 7 and was asked to describe what he saw. He said it was certainly a controlled
demolition he was seeing. Only then was he told it was WTC 7. “Then they worked
hard”, he said with a air of surprise.
“But it is not a view shared by other demolition experts” according to the programme.
To validate this claim it interviewed the sum total of ONE demolition expert, and this
a man compromised by his personal connection to 9/11 and the US government.
Again active curiosity appears seriously hampered.
The boss of Controlled Demolition Incorporated, Mr Loizeau then made a major
contribution. He said the preparation of a controlled demolition on site takes months.
Parts of the structure need to be knocked in and this is a noisy business. Much cable
has to be laid down.
Gage was asked when he thought explosives could have been placed. He suggested the
possibility that they could have been placed even when the building was first erected
in the 1980s. [This sounds on the daft side. Perhaps he gave more plausible answers
also which were edited out and not shown.]
Loizeau: Windows would be shattered in buildings “all the way around” if explosives had
been used. Also detonation chord would have been an obvious give away after the event.
Dr Gene Corley of FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) said he had
checked for evidence of controlled demolition and then ruled it out.
The film then turned its attention to Prof. Steve Jones. It introduced him as “his theory
is so controversial he left his job as a Prof. of Physics, because of it”.
[The reality is that he was constructively dismissed after his college had been
subjected to outside pressure.]
It said he “thinks he’s found evidence of an unconventional explosion, in the dust from
the WTC”. This was an explosion using a form of thermite, a substance that when
ignited can melt steel. He explained how the dust residue left after the collapse of
the three towers contained traces, such as characteristic tiny iron spheres which he
believed could only be the result of thermite explosions in the buildings.
Then the film reported on how a NASA plane flew over the scene “5 days” after the
collapse. It measured the ground temperatures at ground zero below. The highest
temperature was in the “tower 7 footprint”, which was 720 C. These temperatures,
the programme admitted were “extraordinarily high”.
Then the programme admitted that Loizeau, the expert supporting the official
explanation of the events, could be biased because he was and is in receipt of generous Government contracts.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Then the documentary launched into its final section where it attempts to debunk the
conspiracy allegations.]
It was announced that “new evidence” had emerged that supports the official theory
that fire brought WTC7 down.
Gage, the “9/11 Truth” architect was then shown claiming there was little in the way
of fire going on in tower 7 on that fateful day.
A photographer/video maker who was there and took pictures claimed heavy fires had
taken hold of the building. Some of his video film was shown. [However, it failed to
show a wide view of the fires burning in tower 7, preferring to opt for close-up images.
Thus, the unevenness of the fires over the whole building was de-emphasised.]
Then a fire fighter who said he was there claimed there were large scale fires in the
building. So, the fire fighters pulled back. Then the building fell. He said he heard no
explosive charges going off.
BBC personnel, including Jane Stanley discussed the reporting of the collapse 26
minutes early. It was down to a mistaken report from Reuters. [It did not occur
to them to inquire of Reuters how they get it so wrong. Again the lack of curiosity which
haunted the film was evident.]
The losing of the tape with the anticipatory report of the collapse of tower 7 was
explained as a mistake. It had been filed mistakenly with 2002 material, they said.
[How strange this matter was so deluged with screw-ups.]
Barry Jennings appeared again and said he did not believe in the conspiracy theories
and then appeared to contradict a statement he had made on other occasions about
walking over dead bodies as he made his way out of the building. Dylan Avery, director
of Loose Change made a good job of exposing contradictions in his evidence by playing
a snippet of a a previous interview he gave on a handheld device. [Remember,
the programme had previously introduced this man as “the key witness”.]
Then what was claimed to be a steel remnant from WTC7 was produced. It had been
mentioned earlier in the programme. It was claimed to had been found “in a salvage
yard”. It was made of the same formulation of steel as WTC7.
It had undergone analysis in a laboratory by a Prof. Jonathan Barnett.
The outcome of the analysis was commented on by Prof. Sisson of Worcester
Polytechnic Institute.
“It was attacked by a liquid slag” he said. He stated “Hot fires in the debris cooked
the debris over weeks”.
[The idea is that it was eroded in the fires that lasted at ground
zero for weeks. Thus this was not the result of an explosion using thermite.
Most tellingly, in the exposition concerning the piece of deformed steel the “Truthers”
do not get to make the merest contribution. What is their position on this piece of
steel? We do not learn it. We were left in the dark.
Nowhere in the film do the conspiracy proponents refer to or make any claims for this
piece of deformed metal. So, technical debunking related to it in effect qualifies
as a “straw man” argument.
How can we be fully sure this piece of steel really came from ground zero? That is
another vital question that was not answered.]
A Dr Sunder, apparently from India, the leading investigator of the current Bldg7
investigation said as they had no steel to study they had developed four models to
study what had happened. He explained the swift and even collapse by stating “it
turns out that when you have connections that essentially don’t have strength, ah,
for the loads they are being subjected to, ah, and you have this massive failure of
a column, you..it does not take time, the structure has lost all integrity at that point
in time.”
[The idea that “the massive failure of a column” should cause a structure to “lose
all integrity”, virtually instantaneously, conflicts with everything we must assume to
be true regarding professionally constructed high-rise buildings. Such a structure
may not display the characteristics of a “house of cards”, as this statement implies.
Dr Sundar was not shown providing any further justification for his claim.]
The programme said what had happened with tower 7 was unique; there had been a
lack of water to fight the fire, there were many fires, it was built over an electricity
substation which undermined it structurally.
Prof Barnett now began to assume the role of expert on behalf of the official position.
He displayed evidence by way of film of Bldg 5 soon after the events where steel
beams had been broken and there had been a partial collapse. He had been there
at the scene himself, he said.
[However, evidence from the same site is not convincing, when one thinks about
it. One could credibly theorize the same explosive materials which had brought down
the other towers contributed to the partial collapse within tower 5.]
The experienced politician Richard Clarke, who had been counter terrorism adviser to
President Bush at the time opined that governments are not competent enough to
carry out such conspiracies. Also they can not keep secrets. All the state secrets he
has been privy to, he said, eventually came out in the New York Times or the
Washington Post. [What Clarke has to say about the eagerness of these two
newspapers to uncover the truth, tells you all you need to know about the
reliability of his statement.]
Finally, the film cut to the fire fighter who did not believe in conspiracies and then to
Chief Negro, who basically says “conspiracy theories” are fiction.
[However, the argument based on the examination of the piece of steel allegedly from
WTC7 does not convince for reasons described above. Similarly the argument based
on the condition of WTC5 post-attack is very weak, as discussed just above.
Tower 7, being built partially over an electricity sub-station should not cause it to
collapse evenly into its own footprint as it did. In fact, due to the uneven distribution of
weight over the superstructure such a situation would cause, the collapse ought to
have been yet more uneven.
The extent of the fires and the lack of water to combat them ought not to have
provoked a collapse. The programme admitted such a structural collapse had never
happened before that day in history anywhere in the world. Yet, more aggressive and
consuming fires had occurred on high-rise buildings before without initiating a
catastrophic collapse.
Dr Sunder, who leads the current WTC7 investigation merely provided a description
of what was officially claimed to have happened.
There were distractions and straw men aplenty as well as half truths and outright
falsehoods. The “new evidence”, on closer examination, turned out to be limp.
The profound question the “911 Truthers” posed; how could a high rise building
simulate the appearance and effects of a controlled demolition without actually
undergoing one itself remained unanswered.]
Timgos
Comments
Hide the following 4 comments
Slow shifting of the debate... but is it getting anywhere?
29.07.2008 14:37
"One of the comments above suggested that there might be dissent from construction professions; well I read the ICE magazine, the RIBA and RIAI journals, Building Magazine, Building Design. There has been not one word of dissent to the accepted structural collapse theory in any of these over the last 4 years. Not one. No serious academic papers. Nothing."
Then in 2006 there was a feature article on the Sheffield Indymedia site that looked at the structural failure of WTC7:
"The key piece of evidence cited to support the conclusion of a controlled demolition consists of an analysis of the physics of the collapse -- the building dropped with an acceleration very close to that of gravity... The only way to achieve a collapse of this nature -- one which involves the whole building coming down at close to free fall speed, is for all the structural columns to fail simultaneously. This is not something that could be expected to be caused by fires, especially ones which hadn't even spread across a whole floor, the most plausible explanation does appear to be that it was a controlled demolition."
Then in 2007 it came out that the BBC had announced the collapse of WTC7 prior to it happening and this does, as a minimum, imply someone had foreknowledge:
Now arguments about the professionals questioning the official story are no longer raised because there are dozens of construction professionals questioning the official story, see for example the AE911Truth Petition:
"TO THE MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND OF THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Please Take Notice That:
On Behalf of the People of the United States of America, the undersigned Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth and affiliates hereby petition for, and demand, a truly independent investigation with subpoena power in order to uncover the full truth surrounding the events of 9/11/01 - specifically the collapses of the World Trade Center Towers and Building 7. We believe there is sufficient doubt about the official story and therefore the 9/11 investigation must be re-opened and must include a full inquiry into the possible use of explosives that might have been the actual cause of the destruction of the World Trade Center Twin Towers and Building 7.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned"
However things still haven't moved forwards significantly and what Emanuel Sferios said two years ago seems more valid than ever:
"The World Trade Center Collapse: A Necessary Illusion
In my two years of 9/11 truth activism, I never emphasized the physical evidence. I always knew it was a dead end that would suck the movement's energy and accomplish nothing. But let me be straight up for a moment, if a bit speculative, because thinking about these things is helpful. They demolished the World Trade Center towers with explosives. I have no doubt about this, just as I have no doubt that the planes were flown by remote control. I also believe that hijackers did, in fact, board the planes (despite the articles claiming some of those named are still alive). I think the hijackers were trained US operatives (patsies), and that they likely did not know they were going to die. I also think the most probable explanation for the shoot-down of flight 93 is that the passengers did, in fact, storm the cockpit, only to discover that the plane was being flown by remote control. And so in order to prevent any of them from calling their loved ones and blabbing (yes, phones can work on planes), they had to shoot it down. Or perhaps the hijackers themselves learned their real fate and allowed the passengers into the cockpit to try to regain control of the aircraft. We'll never really know, and this is the idea. "Anything can be believed," and so it is equally plausible, as others have speculated, that the shoot-down of Flight 93 was planned from the beginning.
But the World Trade Center demolition is obvious, which leads to an important question: why did they do it? Wouldn't simply crashing the planes into the buildings have been enough? Why bring them down completely? The typical responses here apply: They needed their "New Pearl Harbor," a mass casualty event to shock the public into supporting a retaliatory war. They also needed a spectacle that wouldn't be easily forgotten. These explanations are true enough. Another often cited and plausible one is that they needed to make the lie obvious enough that the people who mattered (government, corporate, and military leaders, for example) would know that they--the secret government within the government--did this and got away with it. This sends a powerful message of invincibility to anyone who might be thinking of opposing them. And the fact that they demolished building 7 later that evening in a classic-style demolition sure seems to support that argument. It's as if they were saying, "just in case you didn't get it the first time, we'll show you one even more obvious."
But there is another reason they demolished the World Trade Center towers, in my opinion the most important reason, which is that they needed the lie to be incredible. As Hitler and Goebbels understood, the bigger and more incredible the lie, the more people will believe it, because they will have to make a bigger psychological leap in order to disbelieve it. Mass manipulation of this kind plays on the natural desire many people have to conform, and it is much more difficult, psychologically, for the conforming individual to disbelieve a popularly-held incredible lie than a mundane one, for to do so would set one widely apart from the herd. To put this another way, imagine if they had merely crashed four planes into the ocean. How much easier it would be then for people to speculate that the government may have done this as a pretext for war. To do so would not require a really incredible contradiction of the official story, marginalizing oneself from the mainstream. It would not be so easy to dismiss such claims as "outrageous conspiracy theory," and ridicule would be less effective. What is important to remember here is that propaganda of this sort is not designed to fool critical thinkers, but to provide conforming individuals with a reason not to start thinking critically. Thus the total destruction of the World Trade Center in such a dramatic yet obvious way was, in my opinion, an essential, psychological component of the operation."
Chris
Also......
29.07.2008 19:42
The engineer who gave the building 5 hours before it collapsed was using seismic measuring equipment. I would be interested to know what seismic readings a building on fire makes. I'd also be interested to know what benchmark he used to compare this building to, in order to predict the collapse (given that no steel framed building (bar WTC1&2) has ever totally collapsed due to fire damage before).
Is it standard operating procedure to take seismic readings of buildings on fire? I have never heard of this before. I have, however, heard of seismic engineers being employed by controlled demolition companies in order to prove that demolitions occur within certain tolerances so as to avoid legal claims for damage to other buildings.
Who did the seismic engineer work for, where was he based, who requested his presence, when did he get there? It brings up more questions than it answers unless you are the BBC! All in all it was another loaded hit piece by Auntie Beeb, such bias makes you wonder whether the rumours of MI6 infiltration in the UK media is true.
Ashley
Think about it!
30.07.2008 01:57
Given what is known, accepted fact - debris from the towers hit WTC 7, the building caught fire and no water was available to put the fires out - what else was supposed to happen?
Don't give me that 'no steel framed building ever collapsed before' twaddle - no 47 story skyscraper had been build over a power substation before or had the underpinnings taken out by a localised earthquake. The only way to burn a steel framed building to the ground is to destroy the fire prevention measures first - thereafter it is sure to go. End of story.
As for the collapse looking like controlled demolition, heat travels differently in steel to other building materials. It conducts and very well. Simultaneous weakening of the entire structure is the way it happens - if all the steel is connected up - and collapse inevitable if the heat gets too high, i.e. when the surrounding material is toasting away, as was evident in that building on selected floors that day.
Although hailed as a smoking gun, WTC 7 is actually anything but. Analysis only serves as distraction from other problem areas of the day's woeful tale. For instance the hijacker backstories don't stack up in the slightest. I would not be surprised if the 'truth movement' moves on to the plane that was diverted over Alaska as the next 'smoking gun' - it makes as much sense as the pathetic focus on WTC 7.
As for that Mormon idiot who used to be into cold fusion before getting into 'thermite' b.s. why is he taken the least bit seriously? Does he make a living out of peddling the pathetic piffle? Or has the CIA set him up to lead y'all astray?
Tim Ossman
"no water", uh-hu...
30.07.2008 08:15
NYC Fire Boat on 9/11
You said there was "no water to put the fire out", then repeated, "no water was available to put the fires out", so, how come there are photos of water being used on adjacent buildings? The photo here has water in it, there clearly *was* water:
Also there were fire boats on hand with pumping equipment and and a very large supply of water close by, the Atlantic... "One of the boats, the John J. Harvey, could reportedly "pump 16,000 to 20,000 gallons of water a minute. 'That's the equivalent of 15 [fire] engines drafting water,' explained 65-year-old FDNY retiree Bob Lenney, who spent 25 years piloting Harvey."
And an early NIST report: "According to the FDNY first-person interviews, water was never an issue at WTC 7 since firefighting was never started in the building."
Yes steel is a good conductor of heat, this means that the chance of the isolated office fires actually heating any part of the steel frame up to the extent that it failed structurally are small and as for these fires causing *all* the steel columns to fail at once, well this is simply absurd.
If it wasn't for the incredible contribution of "Journalist":
You might have been in the running for a prize...
Chris