-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 9/11: Debunking The Myths
Date: Sun, 6 Mar 2005 14:36:25 -0800
From: Darren [AvIntel & InfoEdge Groups] avintel@netzero.com
I guess, according to Art Bell, this Popular Mechanics article has
caused enormous controversy. Mr. Bell (black ops/exclusive
society/government asset?) interviewed Research Editor of Popular
Mechanics, Ben Chertoff, last night. I find it interesting that
Chertoff is the cousin of the newly appointed homeland security czar
Michael Chertoff. Hmmmm.
Since I have some people who have said I don't provide the "other side"
of the story (more specific to the IRAQ INCORPORATED) when I am
presenting possible corruption and conspiracies, I've decided to give
the Popular Mechanics article some 'air time' and let you the reader be
the judge. I invite dissent and/or rebuttal to the Popular Mechanics
article, and will send it to this group.
If you want to view any photos, click on the URL SOURCE link I've
provided below. The first photo showing one WTC tower burning, and the
B767 about to strike the second tower, is an amazing photo I've never
seen.
I want to thank Allyson Smith for alerting me that Art Bell was going to
interview the editor of Popular Mechanics.
Sincerely,
/s/: Darren
______________________________________________
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html
Popular Mechanics
9/11: Debunking The Myths
PM examines the evidence and consults the experts to refute the
most persistent conspiracy theories of September 11.
FALSE WITNESS: Conspiracy theorists claim this photo "proves" the 9/11
attacks were a U.S. military operation. PHOTOGRAPH BY ROB HOWARD
For background on this investigative feature, please click here.
FROM THE MOMENT the first airplane crashed into the World Trade Center
on the morning of September 11, 2001, the world has asked one simple and
compelling question: How could it happen?
Three and a half years later, not everyone is convinced we know the
truth. Go to Google.com, type in the search phrase "World Trade Center
conspiracy" and you'll get links to an estimated 628,000 Web sites. More
than 3000 books on 9/11 have been published; many of them reject the
official consensus that hijackers associated with Osama bin Laden and Al
Qaeda flew passenger planes into U.S. landmarks.
Healthy skepticism, it seems, has curdled into paranoia. Wild conspiracy
tales are peddled daily on the Internet, talk radio and in other media.
Blurry photos, quotes taken out of context and sketchy eyewitness
accounts have inspired a slew of elaborate theories: The Pentagon was
struck by a missile; the World Trade Center was razed by
demolition-style bombs; Flight 93 was shot down by a mysterious white
jet. As outlandish as these claims may sound, they are increasingly
accepted abroad and among extremists here in the United States.
To investigate 16 of the most prevalent claims made by conspiracy
theorists, POPULAR MECHANICS assembled a team of nine researchers and
reporters who, together with PM editors, consulted more than 70
professionals in fields that form the core content of this magazine,
including aviation, engineering and the military.
In the end, we were able to debunk each of these assertions with hard
evidence and a healthy dose of common sense. We learned that a few
theories are based on something as innocent as a reporting error on that
chaotic day. Others are the byproducts of cynical imaginations that aim
to inject suspicion and animosity into public debate. Only by
confronting such poisonous claims with irrefutable facts can we
understand what really happened on a day that is forever seared into
world history.--THE EDITORS
THE PLANES
The widely accepted account that hijackers commandeered and crashed the
four 9/11 planes is supported by reams of evidence, from cockpit
recordings to forensics to the fact that crews and passengers never
returned home. Nonetheless, conspiracy theorists seize on a handful of
"facts" to argue a very different scenario: The jets that struck New
York and Washington, D.C., weren't commercial planes, they say, but
something else, perhaps refueling tankers or guided missiles. And the
lack of military intervention? Theorists claim it proves the U.S.
government instigated the assault or allowed it to occur in order to
advance oil interests or a war agenda.
Where's The Pod?
CLAIM:Photographs and video footage shot just before United Airlines
Flight 175 hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center (WTC) show an
object underneath the fuselage at the base of the right wing. The film
"911 In Plane Site" and the Web site LetsRoll911.org claim that no such
object is found on a stock Boeing 767. They speculate that this
"military pod" is a missile, a bomb or a piece of equipment on an
air-refueling tanker. LetsRoll911.org points to this as evidence that
the attacks were an "inside job" sanctioned by "President George Bush,
who planned and engineered 9/11."
FACT: One of the clearest, most widely seen pictures of the doomed jet's
undercarriage was taken by photographer Rob Howard and published in New
York magazine and elsewhere (opening page). PM sent a digital scan of
the original photo to Ronald Greeley, director of the Space Photography
Laboratory at Arizona State University. Greeley is an expert at
analyzing images to determine the shape and features of geological
formations based on shadow and light effects. After studying the
high-resolution image and comparing it to photos of a Boeing 767-200ER's
undercarriage, Greeley dismissed the notion that the Howard photo
reveals a "pod." In fact, the photo reveals only the Boeing's right
fairing, a pronounced bulge that contains the landing gear. He concludes
that sunlight glinting off the fairing gave it an exaggerated look.
"Such a glint causes a blossoming (enlargement) on film," he writes in
an e-mail to PM, "which tends to be amplified in digital versions of
images--the pixels are saturated and tend to 'spill over' to adjacent
pixels." When asked about pods attached to civilian aircraft, Fred E.
Culick, professor of aeronautics at the California Institute of
Technology, gave a blunter response: "That's bull. They're really
stretching."
No Stand-Down Order
CLAIM: No fighter jets were scrambled from any of the 28 Air Force bases
within close range of the four hijacked flights. "On 11 September
Andrews had two squadrons of fighter jets with the job of protecting the
skies over Washington D.C.," says the Web site emperors-clothes.com.
"They failed to do their job." "There is only one explanation for this,"
writes Mark R. Elsis of StandDown.net. "Our Air Force was ordered to
Stand Down on 9/11."
FACT: On 9/11 there were only 14 fighter jets on alert in the contiguous
48 states. No computer network or alarm automatically alerted the North
American Air Defense Command (NORAD) of missing planes. "They [civilian
Air Traffic Control, or ATC] had to pick up the phone and literally dial
us," says Maj. Douglas Martin, public affairs officer for NORAD. Boston
Center, one of 22 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regional ATC
facilities, called NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) three
times: at 8:37 am EST to inform NEADS that Flight 11 was hijacked; at
9:21 am to inform the agency, mistakenly, that Flight 11 was headed for
Washington (the plane had hit the North Tower 35 minutes earlier); and
at 9:41 am to (erroneously) identify Delta Air Lines Flight 1989 from
Boston as a possible hijacking. The New York ATC called NEADS at 9:03 am
to report that United Flight 175 had been hijacked--the same time the
plane slammed into the South Tower. Within minutes of that first call
from Boston Center, NEADS scrambled two F-15s from Otis Air Force Base
in Falmouth, Mass., and three F-16s from Langley Air National Guard Base
in Hampton, Va. None of the fighters got anywhere near the pirated
planes.
Why couldn't ATC find the hijacked flights? When the hijackers turned
off the planes' transponders, which broadcast identifying signals, ATC
had to search 4500 identical radar blips crisscrossing some of the
country's busiest air corridors. And NORAD's sophisticated radar? It
ringed the continent, looking outward for threats, not inward. "It was
like a doughnut," Martin says. "There was no coverage in the middle."
Pre-9/11, flights originating in the States were not seen as threats and
NORAD wasn't prepared to track them.
Flight 175's Windows
CLAIM:On Sept. 11, FOX News broadcast a live phone interview with FOX
employee Marc Birnbach. 911inplanesite.com states that "Bernback" saw
the plane "crash into the South Tower." "It definitely did not look like
a commercial plane," Birnbach said on air. "I didn't see any windows on
the sides."
Coupled with photographs and videos of Flight 175 that lack the
resolution to show windows, Birnbach's statement has fueled one of the
most widely referenced 9/11 conspiracy theories--specifically, that the
South Tower was struck by a military cargo plane or a fuel tanker.
FACT: Birnbach, who was a freelance videographer with FOX News at the
time, tells PM that he was more than 2 miles southeast of the WTC, in
Brooklyn, when he briefly saw a plane fly over. He says that, in fact,
he did not see the plane strike the South Tower; he says he only heard
the explosion.
While heading a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) probe into
the collapse of the towers, W. Gene Corley studied the airplane
wreckage. A licensed structural engineer with Construction Technology
Laboratories, a consulting firm based in Skokie, Ill., Corley and his
team photographed aircraft debris on the roof of WTC 5, including a
chunk of fuselage that clearly had passenger windows. "It's ... from the
United Airlines plane that hit Tower 2," Corley states flatly. In
reviewing crash footage taken by an ABC news crew, Corley was able to
track the trajectory of the fragments he studied--including a section of
the landing gear and part of an engine--as they tore through the South
Tower, exited from the building's north side and fell from the sky.
PLAIN VIEW: Passenger windows on a piece of Flight 175's fuselage.
PHOTOGRPAH BY WILLIAM F. BAKER/FEMA
Intercepts Not Routine
CLAIM:"It has been standard operating procedures for decades to
immediately intercept off-course planes that do not respond to
communications from air traffic controllers," says the Web site
oilempire.us. "When the Air Force 'scrambles' a fighter plane to
intercept, they usually reach the plane in question in minutes."
FACT: In the decade before 9/11, NORAD intercepted only one civilian
plane over North America: golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet, in October
1999. With passengers and crew unconscious from cabin decompression, the
plane lost radio contact but remained in transponder contact until it
crashed. Even so, it took an F-16 1 hour and 22 minutes to reach the
stricken jet. Rules in effect back then, and on 9/11, prohibited
supersonic flight on intercepts. Prior to 9/11, all other NORAD
interceptions were limited to offshore Air Defense Identification Zones
(ADIZ). "Until 9/11 there was no domestic ADIZ," FAA spokesman Bill
Schumann tells PM. After 9/11, NORAD and the FAA increased cooperation,
setting up hotlines between ATCs and NORAD command centers, according to
officials from both agencies. NORAD has also increased its fighter
coverage and has installed radar to monitor airspace over the continent.
THE WORLD TRADE CENTER
The collapse of both World Trade Center towers--and the smaller WTC 7 a
few hours later--initially surprised even some experts. But subsequent
studies have shown that the WTC's structural integrity was destroyed by
intense fire as well as the severe damage inflicted by the planes. That
explanation hasn't swayed conspiracy theorists, who contend that all
three buildings were wired with explosives in advance and razed in a
series of controlled demolitions.
Widespread Damage
CLAIM:The first hijacked plane crashed through the 94th to the 98th
floors of the World Trade Center's 110-story North Tower; the second jet
slammed into the 78th to the 84th floors of the 110-story South Tower.
The impact and ensuing fires disrupted elevator service in both
buildings. Plus, the lobbies of both buildings were visibly damaged
before the towers collapsed. "There is NO WAY the impact of the jet
caused such widespread damage 80 stories below," claims a posting on the
San Diego Independent Media Center Web site (sandiego.indymedia.org).
"It is OBVIOUS and irrefutable that OTHER EXPLOSIVES (... such as
concussion bombs) HAD ALREADY BEEN DETONATED in the lower levels of
tower one at the same time as the plane crash."
FACT: Following up on a May 2002 preliminary report by the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a major study will be released in
spring 2005 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST), a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce. NIST shared its
initial findings with PM and made its lead researcher available to our
team of reporters.
The NIST investigation revealed that plane debris sliced through the
utility shafts at the North Tower's core, creating a conduit for burning
jet fuel--and fiery destruction throughout the building. "It's very hard
to document where the fuel went," says Forman Williams, a NIST adviser
and a combustion expert, "but if it's atomized and combustible and gets
to an ignition source, it'll go off."
Burning fuel traveling down the elevator shafts would have disrupted the
elevator systems and caused extensive damage to the lobbies. NIST heard
first-person testimony that "some elevators slammed right down" to the
ground floor. "The doors cracked open on the lobby floor and flames came
out and people died," says James Quintiere, an engineering professor at
the University of Maryland and a NIST adviser. A similar observation was
made in the French documentary "9/11," by Jules and Gedeon Naudet. As
Jules Naudet entered the North Tower lobby, minutes after the first
aircraft struck, he saw victims on fire, a scene he found too horrific
to film.
"Melted" Steel
CLAIM: "We have been lied to," announces the Web site
AttackOnAmerica.net. "The first lie was that the load of fuel from the
aircraft was the cause of structural failure. No kerosene fire can burn
hot enough to melt steel." The posting is entitled "Proof Of Controlled
Demolition At The WTC."
FACT: Jet fuel burns at 800° to 1500°F, not hot enough to melt steel
(2750°F). However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their
steel frames didn't need to melt, they just had to lose some of their
structural strength--and that required exposure to much less heat. "I
have never seen melted steel in a building fire," says retired New York
deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn, author of The Collapse Of Burning
Buildings: A Guide To Fireground Safety. "But I've seen a lot of
twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel. What happens is that the steel
tries to expand at both ends, but when it can no longer expand, it sags
and the surrounding concrete cracks."
"Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100°F," notes senior
engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel
Construction. "And at 1800° it is probably at less than 10 percent."
NIST also believes that a great deal of the spray-on fireproofing
insulation was likely knocked off the steel beams that were in the path
of the crashing jets, leaving the metal more vulnerable to the heat.
But jet fuel wasn't the only thing burning, notes Forman Williams, a
professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and
one of seven structural engineers and fire experts that PM consulted. He
says that while the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires, the
resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the
buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture a
Subject: 9/11: Debunking The Myths
Date: Sun, 6 Mar 2005 14:36:25 -0800
From: Darren [AvIntel & InfoEdge Groups] avintel@netzero.com
I guess, according to Art Bell, this Popular Mechanics article has
caused enormous controversy. Mr. Bell (black ops/exclusive
society/government asset?) interviewed Research Editor of Popular
Mechanics, Ben Chertoff, last night. I find it interesting that
Chertoff is the cousin of the newly appointed homeland security czar
Michael Chertoff. Hmmmm.
Since I have some people who have said I don't provide the "other side"
of the story (more specific to the IRAQ INCORPORATED) when I am
presenting possible corruption and conspiracies, I've decided to give
the Popular Mechanics article some 'air time' and let you the reader be
the judge. I invite dissent and/or rebuttal to the Popular Mechanics
article, and will send it to this group.
If you want to view any photos, click on the URL SOURCE link I've
provided below. The first photo showing one WTC tower burning, and the
B767 about to strike the second tower, is an amazing photo I've never
seen.
I want to thank Allyson Smith for alerting me that Art Bell was going to
interview the editor of Popular Mechanics.
Sincerely,
/s/: Darren
______________________________________________
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html
Popular Mechanics
9/11: Debunking The Myths
PM examines the evidence and consults the experts to refute the
most persistent conspiracy theories of September 11.
FALSE WITNESS: Conspiracy theorists claim this photo "proves" the 9/11
attacks were a U.S. military operation. PHOTOGRAPH BY ROB HOWARD
For background on this investigative feature, please click here.
FROM THE MOMENT the first airplane crashed into the World Trade Center
on the morning of September 11, 2001, the world has asked one simple and
compelling question: How could it happen?
Three and a half years later, not everyone is convinced we know the
truth. Go to Google.com, type in the search phrase "World Trade Center
conspiracy" and you'll get links to an estimated 628,000 Web sites. More
than 3000 books on 9/11 have been published; many of them reject the
official consensus that hijackers associated with Osama bin Laden and Al
Qaeda flew passenger planes into U.S. landmarks.
Healthy skepticism, it seems, has curdled into paranoia. Wild conspiracy
tales are peddled daily on the Internet, talk radio and in other media.
Blurry photos, quotes taken out of context and sketchy eyewitness
accounts have inspired a slew of elaborate theories: The Pentagon was
struck by a missile; the World Trade Center was razed by
demolition-style bombs; Flight 93 was shot down by a mysterious white
jet. As outlandish as these claims may sound, they are increasingly
accepted abroad and among extremists here in the United States.
To investigate 16 of the most prevalent claims made by conspiracy
theorists, POPULAR MECHANICS assembled a team of nine researchers and
reporters who, together with PM editors, consulted more than 70
professionals in fields that form the core content of this magazine,
including aviation, engineering and the military.
In the end, we were able to debunk each of these assertions with hard
evidence and a healthy dose of common sense. We learned that a few
theories are based on something as innocent as a reporting error on that
chaotic day. Others are the byproducts of cynical imaginations that aim
to inject suspicion and animosity into public debate. Only by
confronting such poisonous claims with irrefutable facts can we
understand what really happened on a day that is forever seared into
world history.--THE EDITORS
THE PLANES
The widely accepted account that hijackers commandeered and crashed the
four 9/11 planes is supported by reams of evidence, from cockpit
recordings to forensics to the fact that crews and passengers never
returned home. Nonetheless, conspiracy theorists seize on a handful of
"facts" to argue a very different scenario: The jets that struck New
York and Washington, D.C., weren't commercial planes, they say, but
something else, perhaps refueling tankers or guided missiles. And the
lack of military intervention? Theorists claim it proves the U.S.
government instigated the assault or allowed it to occur in order to
advance oil interests or a war agenda.
Where's The Pod?
CLAIM:Photographs and video footage shot just before United Airlines
Flight 175 hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center (WTC) show an
object underneath the fuselage at the base of the right wing. The film
"911 In Plane Site" and the Web site LetsRoll911.org claim that no such
object is found on a stock Boeing 767. They speculate that this
"military pod" is a missile, a bomb or a piece of equipment on an
air-refueling tanker. LetsRoll911.org points to this as evidence that
the attacks were an "inside job" sanctioned by "President George Bush,
who planned and engineered 9/11."
FACT: One of the clearest, most widely seen pictures of the doomed jet's
undercarriage was taken by photographer Rob Howard and published in New
York magazine and elsewhere (opening page). PM sent a digital scan of
the original photo to Ronald Greeley, director of the Space Photography
Laboratory at Arizona State University. Greeley is an expert at
analyzing images to determine the shape and features of geological
formations based on shadow and light effects. After studying the
high-resolution image and comparing it to photos of a Boeing 767-200ER's
undercarriage, Greeley dismissed the notion that the Howard photo
reveals a "pod." In fact, the photo reveals only the Boeing's right
fairing, a pronounced bulge that contains the landing gear. He concludes
that sunlight glinting off the fairing gave it an exaggerated look.
"Such a glint causes a blossoming (enlargement) on film," he writes in
an e-mail to PM, "which tends to be amplified in digital versions of
images--the pixels are saturated and tend to 'spill over' to adjacent
pixels." When asked about pods attached to civilian aircraft, Fred E.
Culick, professor of aeronautics at the California Institute of
Technology, gave a blunter response: "That's bull. They're really
stretching."
No Stand-Down Order
CLAIM: No fighter jets were scrambled from any of the 28 Air Force bases
within close range of the four hijacked flights. "On 11 September
Andrews had two squadrons of fighter jets with the job of protecting the
skies over Washington D.C.," says the Web site emperors-clothes.com.
"They failed to do their job." "There is only one explanation for this,"
writes Mark R. Elsis of StandDown.net. "Our Air Force was ordered to
Stand Down on 9/11."
FACT: On 9/11 there were only 14 fighter jets on alert in the contiguous
48 states. No computer network or alarm automatically alerted the North
American Air Defense Command (NORAD) of missing planes. "They [civilian
Air Traffic Control, or ATC] had to pick up the phone and literally dial
us," says Maj. Douglas Martin, public affairs officer for NORAD. Boston
Center, one of 22 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regional ATC
facilities, called NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) three
times: at 8:37 am EST to inform NEADS that Flight 11 was hijacked; at
9:21 am to inform the agency, mistakenly, that Flight 11 was headed for
Washington (the plane had hit the North Tower 35 minutes earlier); and
at 9:41 am to (erroneously) identify Delta Air Lines Flight 1989 from
Boston as a possible hijacking. The New York ATC called NEADS at 9:03 am
to report that United Flight 175 had been hijacked--the same time the
plane slammed into the South Tower. Within minutes of that first call
from Boston Center, NEADS scrambled two F-15s from Otis Air Force Base
in Falmouth, Mass., and three F-16s from Langley Air National Guard Base
in Hampton, Va. None of the fighters got anywhere near the pirated
planes.
Why couldn't ATC find the hijacked flights? When the hijackers turned
off the planes' transponders, which broadcast identifying signals, ATC
had to search 4500 identical radar blips crisscrossing some of the
country's busiest air corridors. And NORAD's sophisticated radar? It
ringed the continent, looking outward for threats, not inward. "It was
like a doughnut," Martin says. "There was no coverage in the middle."
Pre-9/11, flights originating in the States were not seen as threats and
NORAD wasn't prepared to track them.
Flight 175's Windows
CLAIM:On Sept. 11, FOX News broadcast a live phone interview with FOX
employee Marc Birnbach. 911inplanesite.com states that "Bernback" saw
the plane "crash into the South Tower." "It definitely did not look like
a commercial plane," Birnbach said on air. "I didn't see any windows on
the sides."
Coupled with photographs and videos of Flight 175 that lack the
resolution to show windows, Birnbach's statement has fueled one of the
most widely referenced 9/11 conspiracy theories--specifically, that the
South Tower was struck by a military cargo plane or a fuel tanker.
FACT: Birnbach, who was a freelance videographer with FOX News at the
time, tells PM that he was more than 2 miles southeast of the WTC, in
Brooklyn, when he briefly saw a plane fly over. He says that, in fact,
he did not see the plane strike the South Tower; he says he only heard
the explosion.
While heading a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) probe into
the collapse of the towers, W. Gene Corley studied the airplane
wreckage. A licensed structural engineer with Construction Technology
Laboratories, a consulting firm based in Skokie, Ill., Corley and his
team photographed aircraft debris on the roof of WTC 5, including a
chunk of fuselage that clearly had passenger windows. "It's ... from the
United Airlines plane that hit Tower 2," Corley states flatly. In
reviewing crash footage taken by an ABC news crew, Corley was able to
track the trajectory of the fragments he studied--including a section of
the landing gear and part of an engine--as they tore through the South
Tower, exited from the building's north side and fell from the sky.
PLAIN VIEW: Passenger windows on a piece of Flight 175's fuselage.
PHOTOGRPAH BY WILLIAM F. BAKER/FEMA
Intercepts Not Routine
CLAIM:"It has been standard operating procedures for decades to
immediately intercept off-course planes that do not respond to
communications from air traffic controllers," says the Web site
oilempire.us. "When the Air Force 'scrambles' a fighter plane to
intercept, they usually reach the plane in question in minutes."
FACT: In the decade before 9/11, NORAD intercepted only one civilian
plane over North America: golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet, in October
1999. With passengers and crew unconscious from cabin decompression, the
plane lost radio contact but remained in transponder contact until it
crashed. Even so, it took an F-16 1 hour and 22 minutes to reach the
stricken jet. Rules in effect back then, and on 9/11, prohibited
supersonic flight on intercepts. Prior to 9/11, all other NORAD
interceptions were limited to offshore Air Defense Identification Zones
(ADIZ). "Until 9/11 there was no domestic ADIZ," FAA spokesman Bill
Schumann tells PM. After 9/11, NORAD and the FAA increased cooperation,
setting up hotlines between ATCs and NORAD command centers, according to
officials from both agencies. NORAD has also increased its fighter
coverage and has installed radar to monitor airspace over the continent.
THE WORLD TRADE CENTER
The collapse of both World Trade Center towers--and the smaller WTC 7 a
few hours later--initially surprised even some experts. But subsequent
studies have shown that the WTC's structural integrity was destroyed by
intense fire as well as the severe damage inflicted by the planes. That
explanation hasn't swayed conspiracy theorists, who contend that all
three buildings were wired with explosives in advance and razed in a
series of controlled demolitions.
Widespread Damage
CLAIM:The first hijacked plane crashed through the 94th to the 98th
floors of the World Trade Center's 110-story North Tower; the second jet
slammed into the 78th to the 84th floors of the 110-story South Tower.
The impact and ensuing fires disrupted elevator service in both
buildings. Plus, the lobbies of both buildings were visibly damaged
before the towers collapsed. "There is NO WAY the impact of the jet
caused such widespread damage 80 stories below," claims a posting on the
San Diego Independent Media Center Web site (sandiego.indymedia.org).
"It is OBVIOUS and irrefutable that OTHER EXPLOSIVES (... such as
concussion bombs) HAD ALREADY BEEN DETONATED in the lower levels of
tower one at the same time as the plane crash."
FACT: Following up on a May 2002 preliminary report by the Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a major study will be released in
spring 2005 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST), a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce. NIST shared its
initial findings with PM and made its lead researcher available to our
team of reporters.
The NIST investigation revealed that plane debris sliced through the
utility shafts at the North Tower's core, creating a conduit for burning
jet fuel--and fiery destruction throughout the building. "It's very hard
to document where the fuel went," says Forman Williams, a NIST adviser
and a combustion expert, "but if it's atomized and combustible and gets
to an ignition source, it'll go off."
Burning fuel traveling down the elevator shafts would have disrupted the
elevator systems and caused extensive damage to the lobbies. NIST heard
first-person testimony that "some elevators slammed right down" to the
ground floor. "The doors cracked open on the lobby floor and flames came
out and people died," says James Quintiere, an engineering professor at
the University of Maryland and a NIST adviser. A similar observation was
made in the French documentary "9/11," by Jules and Gedeon Naudet. As
Jules Naudet entered the North Tower lobby, minutes after the first
aircraft struck, he saw victims on fire, a scene he found too horrific
to film.
"Melted" Steel
CLAIM: "We have been lied to," announces the Web site
AttackOnAmerica.net. "The first lie was that the load of fuel from the
aircraft was the cause of structural failure. No kerosene fire can burn
hot enough to melt steel." The posting is entitled "Proof Of Controlled
Demolition At The WTC."
FACT: Jet fuel burns at 800° to 1500°F, not hot enough to melt steel
(2750°F). However, experts agree that for the towers to collapse, their
steel frames didn't need to melt, they just had to lose some of their
structural strength--and that required exposure to much less heat. "I
have never seen melted steel in a building fire," says retired New York
deputy fire chief Vincent Dunn, author of The Collapse Of Burning
Buildings: A Guide To Fireground Safety. "But I've seen a lot of
twisted, warped, bent and sagging steel. What happens is that the steel
tries to expand at both ends, but when it can no longer expand, it sags
and the surrounding concrete cracks."
"Steel loses about 50 percent of its strength at 1100°F," notes senior
engineer Farid Alfawak-hiri of the American Institute of Steel
Construction. "And at 1800° it is probably at less than 10 percent."
NIST also believes that a great deal of the spray-on fireproofing
insulation was likely knocked off the steel beams that were in the path
of the crashing jets, leaving the metal more vulnerable to the heat.
But jet fuel wasn't the only thing burning, notes Forman Williams, a
professor of engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and
one of seven structural engineers and fire experts that PM consulted. He
says that while the jet fuel was the catalyst for the WTC fires, the
resulting inferno was intensified by the combustible material inside the
buildings, including rugs, curtains, furniture a
Message Board by American Patriot Friends Network [APFN]
