By MELISSA NELSON and HOLBROOK MOHR,
Associated Press
June 5, 2010
PENSACOLA BEACH, Fla. – Driftwood and seashells glazed with rust-colored tar lined the surf along the Gulf Coast's once-pristine white sand beaches Saturday, the crude from a busted oil well deep underwater showing up in greater quantities and farther east.
A cap placed over the gusher was collecting only a fraction of the oil, which had stained beaches with a waxy mess of tar balls and created an unusual orange foam in the surf.
In Gulf Shores, Ala., wooden boardwalks leading to beachfront hotels were spotted with oil from beachgoers' feet, and some condominiums were providing solvents for guests smeared with the brown goo. At Pensacola Beach, the retreating high tide left an orange stain in its wake.
Erin Tamber moved to the beach area after surviving Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, where she had lived for 30 years.
"I feel like I've gone from owning a piece of paradise to owning a toxic waste dump," she said as she inspected the beach Saturday morning.
President Barack Obama pledged Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address to fight the spill with the people of the Gulf Coast. His words for oil giant BP PLC were stern: "We will make sure they pay every single dime owed to the people along the Gulf coast."
Six weeks after an April 20 oil rig explosion killed 11 workers, BP has failed to significantly stem the worst spill in U.S. history. The government's point man for the crisis, Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, said at a news briefing Saturday that the cap had collected about 252,000 gallons of oil in its first full 24 hours of use.
The goal is to gradually raise the amount being captured, Allen said. The device's daily capacity is 630,000 gallons. The well has leaked 22 million to 47 million gallons of oil since the crisis began, according to government estimates.
The widening scope of the disaster deepened the anger and despair just as Obama arrived for his third visit to the stricken Gulf Coast.
On Obama's trip to the Grand Isle on the Louisiana coast, his motorcade passed a building adorned with his portrait reminiscent of posters of him during his presidential campaign. Instead of "hope" or "change," the words "what now?" were on his forehead.
The oil has reached the shores of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. It has turned marshlands into death zones for wildlife and stained beaches rust and crimson. Some said it brought to mind the plagues and punishments of the Bible.
"In Revelations it says the water will turn to blood," said P.J. Hahn, director of coastal zone management for Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish. "That's what it looks like out here — like the Gulf is bleeding. This is going to choke the life out of everything."
He added: "It makes me want to cry."
The mayor of Grand Isle, David Camardelle, choked up as he told the president of staying up nights worrying.
"We don't know what's going to happen tomorrow," Camardelle said. "I'm trying to keep Grand Isle alive."
A device resembling an upside-down funnel was lowered over the blown-out well a mile beneath the sea to try to capture most of the oil and direct it to a ship on the surface. But crude continued to escape into the Gulf early Saturday through vents designed to prevent ice crystals from clogging the cap. Engineers hoped to close several vents.
As the operation went on at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the effect of the BP spill was increasingly evident.
Swimmers at Pensacola Beach rushed out of the water after wading into the mess, while other beachgoers inspected the clumps with fascination, some taking pictures.
Health officials said that people should stay away from the mess but that swallowing a little oil-tainted water or getting slimed by a tar ball is no reason for alarm.
On Saturday morning at a public beach in Gulf Shores, a long line of brown globs marked the high water line from overnight at the public beach.
"This is disgusting," said Macon Srygley, of McCalla, Ala. "I hate it for BP, but this has to be a lesson for anyone drilling in the ocean. We've got all this technology, but are we not smart enough to realize we can end ourselves with it?"
A total of 527 birds have been found dead from Texas to Florida since the start of the oil leak, according to a federal tally released Friday. The exact cause of death was not immediately known for all the birds, although more than three dozen were visibly oiled.
Authorities said 235 sea turtles and 30 mammals have also been found dead.
Alabama Gov. Bob Riley said he's frustrated with the Coast Guard's response on the state's coast and will consider closing the beaches if the oil becomes a public health threat.
Meanwhile, BP CEO Tony Hayward assured investors that the company had "considerable firepower" to cope with the severe costs. Hayward and other senior BP executives struck a penitent note in their first comprehensive update to shareholders since the explosion, promising to meet its obligations related to the spill.
Frank Basson has a comfortable monopoly along the main drag in Grand Isle. He owns a restaurant, souvenir shop and daiquiri spot. Business plummeted once oil washed up on the shores, but he isn't going anywhere.
He came back after Hurricane Katrina, and if he has to close his doors, he figures he'll find a new venture. But he worries about the greater community.
"BP has to take care of us," he said.
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Cap collects some Gulf oil; crude washes into Fla.
By GREG BLUESTEIN
Associated Press
Jun 4, 11:04 AM EDT
GRAND ISLE, La. (AP) -- Waves of gooey tar balls crashed into the white sands of the Florida Panhandle on Friday as BP engineers adjusted a sophisticated cap over the Gulf oil gusher, trying to collect the crude.
Even though the inverted funnel-like device was set over the leak late Thursday, crude continued to spew into the sea in the nation's worst oil spill. Engineers hoped to close several open vents on the cap throughout the day in the latest attempt to contain the oil.
The cap has different colored hoses loosely attached to it to help combat the near-freezing temperatures and icylike crystals that could clog it. The device started pumping oil and gas to a tanker on the surface overnight, but it wasn't clear how much.
"Progress is being made, but we need to caution against over-optimism," said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man for the disaster.
He said a very rough estimate of current collection would be about 42,000 gallons a day, though he stressed the information was anecdotal.
In Florida, spotters who had been seeing a few tar balls in recent days found a substantially larger number before dawn on the beaches of the Gulf Islands National Seashore and nearby areas, a county emergency official said. The park is a long string of connected barrier islands near Pensacola.
Just to the west at Gulf Shores, Ala., Wendi Butler watched glistening clumps of oil roll onto the white sand beach during a morning stroll. An oily smell was in the air.
"You don't smell the beach breeze at all," said Butler, 40.
Butler moved to Perdido Bay from Mobile days before the spill. Now, her two kids don't want to visit because of the oil and she can't find a job.
"Restaurants are cutting back to their winter staffs because of it. They're not hiring," she said.
President Barack Obama was set to visit the Louisiana coast Friday, his second trip in a week and the third since the disaster unfolded following an April 20 oil rig explosion. Eleven workers were killed.
Robots a mile beneath the Gulf were shooting chemical dispersants at the escaping oil - though it looked more like flares when illuminated a mile underwater.
To put the cap in place, BP had to slice off the main pipe with giant shears after a diamond-edged saw became stuck. By doing so, they risked increasing the flow by as much as 20 percent, though Allen said it was still too soon know whether that had happened.
"Once the containment cap is on and it's working, we hope the rate is significantly reduced," he said.
The jagged cut forced crews to use a looser fitting cap, but Allen did not rule out trying to again smooth out the cut with the diamond saw if officials aren't satisfied with the current cap.
The best chance to plug the leak is a pair of relief wells, which are at least two months away. The well has spit out between 22 million and 47 million gallons of oil, according to government estimates.
In oil-soaked Grand Isle, BP representative Jason French might as well have painted a bulls-eye on his back. His mission was to be BP's representative at a meeting for 50 or so residents who had gathered at a church to vent.
"We are all angry and frustrated," he said. "Feel free tonight to let me see that anger. Direct it at me, direct it at BP, but I want to assure you, the folks in this community, that we are working hard to remedy the situation."
Residents weren't buying it.
"Sorry doesn't pay the bills," said Susan Felio Price, who lives near Grand Isle.
"Through the negligence of BP we now find ourselves trying to roller-skate up a mountain," she said. "We're growing really weary. We're tired. We're sick and tired of being sick and tired. Someone's got to help us get to the top of that mountain."
Obama shared some of that anger ahead of his Gulf visit. He told CNN's Larry King that he was frustrated and used his strongest language in assailing BP.
"I am furious at this entire situation because this is an example where somebody didn't think through the consequences of their actions," Obama said. "This is imperiling an entire way of life and an entire region for potentially years."
Meanwhile, newly disclosed internal Coast Guard documents from the day after the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig indicated that U.S. officials were warning of a leak of 336,000 gallons per day of crude from the well in the event of a complete blowout.
The volume turned out to be much closer to that figure than the 42,000 gallons per day that BP first estimated. Weeks later it was revised to 210,000 gallons. Now, an estimated 500,000 to 1 million gallons of crude is believed to be leaking daily.
The Center for Public Integrity, which initially reported the Coast Guard logs, said it obtained them from Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The logs also showed early in the disaster that remote underwater robots were unable to activate the rig's blowout preventer, which was supposed to shut off the flow from the well in the event of such a catastrophic failure.
The damage to the environment was chilling on East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast, where workers found birds coated in thick, black goo. Images shot by an Associated Press photographer show Brown pelicans drenched in thick oil, struggling and flailing in the surf.
Officials say 60 birds, including 41 pelicans, were coated with oil when strong winds blew a heavy slick from the Gulf of Mexico spill to the rookery. The birds were being rescued and taken to a center for cleaning at Fort Jackson.
BP CEO Tony Hayward promised that the company would clean up every drop of oil and "restore the shoreline to its original state."
"BP will be here for a very long time. We realize this is just the beginning," he said.
Those on Grand Isle seemed less than convinced by BP's assurances.
"We want you to feel what we feel," said Leoda Bladsacker, a member of the town's council, as her voice trembled. "We're not going to be OK for a long, long time."
---
Associated Press
Jun 4, 11:04 AM EDT
GRAND ISLE, La. (AP) -- Waves of gooey tar balls crashed into the white sands of the Florida Panhandle on Friday as BP engineers adjusted a sophisticated cap over the Gulf oil gusher, trying to collect the crude.
Even though the inverted funnel-like device was set over the leak late Thursday, crude continued to spew into the sea in the nation's worst oil spill. Engineers hoped to close several open vents on the cap throughout the day in the latest attempt to contain the oil.
The cap has different colored hoses loosely attached to it to help combat the near-freezing temperatures and icylike crystals that could clog it. The device started pumping oil and gas to a tanker on the surface overnight, but it wasn't clear how much.
"Progress is being made, but we need to caution against over-optimism," said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man for the disaster.
He said a very rough estimate of current collection would be about 42,000 gallons a day, though he stressed the information was anecdotal.
In Florida, spotters who had been seeing a few tar balls in recent days found a substantially larger number before dawn on the beaches of the Gulf Islands National Seashore and nearby areas, a county emergency official said. The park is a long string of connected barrier islands near Pensacola.
Just to the west at Gulf Shores, Ala., Wendi Butler watched glistening clumps of oil roll onto the white sand beach during a morning stroll. An oily smell was in the air.
"You don't smell the beach breeze at all," said Butler, 40.
Butler moved to Perdido Bay from Mobile days before the spill. Now, her two kids don't want to visit because of the oil and she can't find a job.
"Restaurants are cutting back to their winter staffs because of it. They're not hiring," she said.
President Barack Obama was set to visit the Louisiana coast Friday, his second trip in a week and the third since the disaster unfolded following an April 20 oil rig explosion. Eleven workers were killed.
Robots a mile beneath the Gulf were shooting chemical dispersants at the escaping oil - though it looked more like flares when illuminated a mile underwater.
To put the cap in place, BP had to slice off the main pipe with giant shears after a diamond-edged saw became stuck. By doing so, they risked increasing the flow by as much as 20 percent, though Allen said it was still too soon know whether that had happened.
"Once the containment cap is on and it's working, we hope the rate is significantly reduced," he said.
The jagged cut forced crews to use a looser fitting cap, but Allen did not rule out trying to again smooth out the cut with the diamond saw if officials aren't satisfied with the current cap.
The best chance to plug the leak is a pair of relief wells, which are at least two months away. The well has spit out between 22 million and 47 million gallons of oil, according to government estimates.
In oil-soaked Grand Isle, BP representative Jason French might as well have painted a bulls-eye on his back. His mission was to be BP's representative at a meeting for 50 or so residents who had gathered at a church to vent.
"We are all angry and frustrated," he said. "Feel free tonight to let me see that anger. Direct it at me, direct it at BP, but I want to assure you, the folks in this community, that we are working hard to remedy the situation."
Residents weren't buying it.
"Sorry doesn't pay the bills," said Susan Felio Price, who lives near Grand Isle.
"Through the negligence of BP we now find ourselves trying to roller-skate up a mountain," she said. "We're growing really weary. We're tired. We're sick and tired of being sick and tired. Someone's got to help us get to the top of that mountain."
Obama shared some of that anger ahead of his Gulf visit. He told CNN's Larry King that he was frustrated and used his strongest language in assailing BP.
"I am furious at this entire situation because this is an example where somebody didn't think through the consequences of their actions," Obama said. "This is imperiling an entire way of life and an entire region for potentially years."
Meanwhile, newly disclosed internal Coast Guard documents from the day after the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig indicated that U.S. officials were warning of a leak of 336,000 gallons per day of crude from the well in the event of a complete blowout.
The volume turned out to be much closer to that figure than the 42,000 gallons per day that BP first estimated. Weeks later it was revised to 210,000 gallons. Now, an estimated 500,000 to 1 million gallons of crude is believed to be leaking daily.
The Center for Public Integrity, which initially reported the Coast Guard logs, said it obtained them from Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The logs also showed early in the disaster that remote underwater robots were unable to activate the rig's blowout preventer, which was supposed to shut off the flow from the well in the event of such a catastrophic failure.
The damage to the environment was chilling on East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast, where workers found birds coated in thick, black goo. Images shot by an Associated Press photographer show Brown pelicans drenched in thick oil, struggling and flailing in the surf.
Officials say 60 birds, including 41 pelicans, were coated with oil when strong winds blew a heavy slick from the Gulf of Mexico spill to the rookery. The birds were being rescued and taken to a center for cleaning at Fort Jackson.
BP CEO Tony Hayward promised that the company would clean up every drop of oil and "restore the shoreline to its original state."
"BP will be here for a very long time. We realize this is just the beginning," he said.
Those on Grand Isle seemed less than convinced by BP's assurances.
"We want you to feel what we feel," said Leoda Bladsacker, a member of the town's council, as her voice trembled. "We're not going to be OK for a long, long time."
---
UN Resolution 3379: "Zionism is Racism"
Editor's Comment:
While UN Resolution 3379 which was passed in 1975 was revoked in 1991, it appears that modern Israel has nevertheless managed to confirm that it is an Apartheid (Racist) state not a representative democracy. Zionism is not in the interest of the United States, Israel or the world. It is morally reprehensible that current US foreign policy--to a large extent controlled by the Zionist Lobby--supports modern Israel which can accurately be described as a radically Zionist state.
The American people must urgently recognize the necessity of disengaging from support of Israel until The Jewish state abandons it's overtly racist and dehumanizing policies in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel is engaged in a catastrophic degree of ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories--in full view of the world and without UN intervention largely based upon US cover of Israel's deeds when addressed before the UN Security Council. US policy in that regard is patently immoral and should outrage every decent American.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
The full text of UN Resolution 3379:
3379 (XXX). Elimination of all forms of racial discrimination
The General Assembly,
Recalling its resolution 1904 (XVIII) of 20 November 1963, proclaiming the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and in particular its affirmation that "any doctrine of racial differentiation or superiority is scientifically false, morally condemnable, socially unjust and dangerous" and its expression of alarm at "the manifestations of racial discrimination still in evidence in some areas in the world, some of which are imposed by certain Governments by means of legislative, administrative or other measures",
Recalling also that, in its resolution 3151 G (XXVIII) of 14 December 1973, the General Assembly condemned, inter alia, the unholy alliance between South African racism and zionism,
Taking note of the Declaration of Mexico on the Equality of Women and Their Contribution to Development and Peace 1975, proclaimed by the World Conference of the International Women's Year, held at Mexico City from 19 June to 2 July 1975, which promulgated the principle that "international co-operation and peace require the achievement of national liberation and independence, the elimination of colonialism and neo-colonialism, foreign occupation, Zionism, apartheid and racial discrimination in all its forms, as well as the recognition of the dignity of peoples and their right to self-determination",
Taking note also of resolution 77 (XII) adopted by the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the Organization of African Unity at its twelfth ordinary session, held at Kampala from 28 July to 1 August 1975, which considered "that the racist regime in occupied Palestine and the racist regime in Zimbabwe and South Africa have a common imperialist origin, forming a whole and having the same racist structure and being organically linked in their policy aimed at repression of the dignity and integrity of the human being",
Taking note also of the Political Declaration and Strategy to Strengthen International Peace and Security and to Intensify Solidarity and Mutual Assistance among Non-Aligned Countries, adopted at the Conference of Ministers for Foreign Affairs of Non-Aligned Countries held at Lima from 25 to 30 August 1975, which most severely condemned Zionism as a threat to world peace and security and called upon all countries to oppose this racist and imperialist ideology,
Determines that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination. (Editor's Emphasis)
While UN Resolution 3379 which was passed in 1975 was revoked in 1991, it appears that modern Israel has nevertheless managed to confirm that it is an Apartheid (Racist) state not a representative democracy. Zionism is not in the interest of the United States, Israel or the world. It is morally reprehensible that current US foreign policy--to a large extent controlled by the Zionist Lobby--supports modern Israel which can accurately be described as a radically Zionist state.
The American people must urgently recognize the necessity of disengaging from support of Israel until The Jewish state abandons it's overtly racist and dehumanizing policies in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel is engaged in a catastrophic degree of ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories--in full view of the world and without UN intervention largely based upon US cover of Israel's deeds when addressed before the UN Security Council. US policy in that regard is patently immoral and should outrage every decent American.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
The full text of UN Resolution 3379:
3379 (XXX). Elimination of all forms of racial discrimination
The General Assembly,
Recalling its resolution 1904 (XVIII) of 20 November 1963, proclaiming the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and in particular its affirmation that "any doctrine of racial differentiation or superiority is scientifically false, morally condemnable, socially unjust and dangerous" and its expression of alarm at "the manifestations of racial discrimination still in evidence in some areas in the world, some of which are imposed by certain Governments by means of legislative, administrative or other measures",
Recalling also that, in its resolution 3151 G (XXVIII) of 14 December 1973, the General Assembly condemned, inter alia, the unholy alliance between South African racism and zionism,
Taking note of the Declaration of Mexico on the Equality of Women and Their Contribution to Development and Peace 1975, proclaimed by the World Conference of the International Women's Year, held at Mexico City from 19 June to 2 July 1975, which promulgated the principle that "international co-operation and peace require the achievement of national liberation and independence, the elimination of colonialism and neo-colonialism, foreign occupation, Zionism, apartheid and racial discrimination in all its forms, as well as the recognition of the dignity of peoples and their right to self-determination",
Taking note also of resolution 77 (XII) adopted by the Assembly of Heads of State and Government of the Organization of African Unity at its twelfth ordinary session, held at Kampala from 28 July to 1 August 1975, which considered "that the racist regime in occupied Palestine and the racist regime in Zimbabwe and South Africa have a common imperialist origin, forming a whole and having the same racist structure and being organically linked in their policy aimed at repression of the dignity and integrity of the human being",
Taking note also of the Political Declaration and Strategy to Strengthen International Peace and Security and to Intensify Solidarity and Mutual Assistance among Non-Aligned Countries, adopted at the Conference of Ministers for Foreign Affairs of Non-Aligned Countries held at Lima from 25 to 30 August 1975, which most severely condemned Zionism as a threat to world peace and security and called upon all countries to oppose this racist and imperialist ideology,
Determines that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination. (Editor's Emphasis)
Israeli Warships Seize the ‘Rachel Corrie’ Everyone Arrested as Irish Aid Ship Captured
by Jason Ditz,
Antiwar.com
June 04, 2010
At approximately 10:50 PM eastern time, Israeli warships captured the MV Rachel Corrie, an Irish aid ship bound for the Gaza Strip. Israeli troops are said to have boarded the vessel and arrested everyone on board, which included a high ranking former UN official, Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday, and a Nobel laureate. No violence or injuries were reported so far.
Reports from the Rachel Corrie, named after a US-born peace activist who was slain by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip in 2003, were available right up to 10:35 PM, when they reported that their radar was being jammed. The ship had hoped to reach the Gaza Strip early Saturday morning.
Israel’s military launched a high profile attack on a Turkish aid ship earlier this week, killing at least nine aid workers and sparking international outcry. Ireland had warned Israel against a repeat performance against the Rachel Corrie.
Israel had demanded that the ship divert to Ashdod, but said it would forward the cargo to the Gaza Strip after it was searched. Crew on the Rachel Corrie suggested that Israel search the ship at sea but allow it to dock in Gaza, a proposal which Israel rejected. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised that never again will an aid ship reach the enclave.
The ship is said to be carrying upwards of 560 tons of cement as well as CAT scanners, wheelchairs and other aid, and around 20 activists. It was organized by the Free Gaza Movement, a privately funded aid group which has gotten a large donation from the Perdana Global Peace Organization in Malaysia.
Antiwar.com
June 04, 2010
At approximately 10:50 PM eastern time, Israeli warships captured the MV Rachel Corrie, an Irish aid ship bound for the Gaza Strip. Israeli troops are said to have boarded the vessel and arrested everyone on board, which included a high ranking former UN official, Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday, and a Nobel laureate. No violence or injuries were reported so far.
Reports from the Rachel Corrie, named after a US-born peace activist who was slain by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip in 2003, were available right up to 10:35 PM, when they reported that their radar was being jammed. The ship had hoped to reach the Gaza Strip early Saturday morning.
Israel’s military launched a high profile attack on a Turkish aid ship earlier this week, killing at least nine aid workers and sparking international outcry. Ireland had warned Israel against a repeat performance against the Rachel Corrie.
Israel had demanded that the ship divert to Ashdod, but said it would forward the cargo to the Gaza Strip after it was searched. Crew on the Rachel Corrie suggested that Israel search the ship at sea but allow it to dock in Gaza, a proposal which Israel rejected. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised that never again will an aid ship reach the enclave.
The ship is said to be carrying upwards of 560 tons of cement as well as CAT scanners, wheelchairs and other aid, and around 20 activists. It was organized by the Free Gaza Movement, a privately funded aid group which has gotten a large donation from the Perdana Global Peace Organization in Malaysia.
Doubts Grow Over Israel’s Value as US Ally
by Jim Lobe,
Antiwar.com
June 04, 2010
Israel’s disastrous raid in international waters Monday on a Turkish-flagged flotilla carrying humanitarian supplies to Gaza has resurrected a long-running debate over whether Washington’s close alliance with the Jewish state really serves U.S. strategic interests.
Ironically, one negative answer was provided in Jerusalem Tuesday by none other than the head of Israel’s vaunted foreign-intelligence agency, Mossad.
Noting, among other things, the disappearance of the Soviet and Western blocs with the end of the Cold War, Mossad chief Meir Dagan told members of the Israeli parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Tuesday that "Israel is gradually turning from an asset to the United States to a burden."
That view was emphatically re-asserted the following day by one of Washington’s most highly respected and centrist Middle East analysts in an essay entitled "Israel as a Strategic Liability?" that instantly became must-reading for regional specialists both in and outside the administration of President Barack Obama.
"At the best of times, an Israeli government that pursues the path to peace provides some intelligence, some minor advances in military technology, and a potential source of stabilizing military power that could help Arab states like Jordan," wrote Anthony Cordesman, a long-time fixture of the foreign policy establishment at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
"It is time Israel realized that it has obligations to the United States, as well as the United States to Israel, and that it (has to) become far more careful about the extent to which it test(s) the limits of U.S. patience and exploits the support of American Jews," he went on, noting the Israeli government "should be sensitive to the fact that its actions directly affect U.S. strategic interests in the Arab and Muslim worlds…"
"This does not mean taking a single action that undercuts Israeli security, but it does mean realizing that Israel should show enough discretion to reflect the fact that it is a tertiary U.S. strategic interest in a complex and demanding world," he wrote.
"Israel’s government should act on the understanding that the long-term nature of the U.S.-Israel strategic relationship will depend on Israel clearly and actively seeking peace with the Palestinians – the kind of peace that is in Israel’s own strategic interests," he added.
Cordesman’s observations were not new. Indeed, some variant of them have been expressed with increasing frequency by a growing number of mainstream analysts over the last four years, particularly since the tactically successful but strategically disastrous military campaigns conducted by Israel in Lebanon in 2006 and in Gaza 2008-9.
But the fact that Cordesman, a former national security adviser to the staunchly pro-Israel 2008 Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, felt moved to write so bluntly about the issue in the immediate aftermath of the lethal Israeli raid on Mavi Marmara suggests that the tide of elite opinion regarding the value of virtually unconditional support for Israel — especially for a government as aggressive as that of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu — is turning.
"Tony Cordesman’s authority derives as much from the fact that he is resolutely dispassionate and non-partisan as it does from his expertise, which is unmatched," said Amb. Charles Freeman, a top-ranked retired diplomat who renounced his appointment last year to chair the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in the face of intense opposition by the right-wing leadership of the so-called "Israel Lobby."
"When someone as balanced and centrist as Tony Cordesman begins to worry about the extent to which Israel is making itself into a strategic burden for the United States, Israel should pause for some self-reflection," Freeman told IPS.
Stephen Walt, a Harvard international-relations professor and co-author with University of Chicago Prof. John Mearsheimer of the controversial 2007 book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, agreed.
"The fact that Cordesman would say this publicly is a sign that attitudes and discourse are changing," he said. "Lots of people in the national security establishment — and especially the Pentagon and intelligence services — have understood that Israel wasn’t an asset, but nobody wanted to say so because they knew it might hurt their careers."
"It will be interesting to see how Cordesman is treated in the future, and whether more people will be inclined to say what they really think," he added.
The notion that Israel and its actions had since the Cold War increasingly become a "strategic liability" to U.S. interests in the region was a central thesis of Walt’s and Mearsheimer’s book, which came under immediate and sustained attack by the right-wing leadership of the Jewish and Christian Zionist communities.
The book itself was based on an article by the same name that the two men published in the London Review of Books in 2006 after a number of influential U.S. periodicals rejected it, apparently due to concerns that it was too controversial.
Yet, in the wake of the Lebanon and Gaza military offensives, the election of Netanyahu’s right-wing government and its resistance to the kind of two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict favored by successive U.S. administration, the question of Israel’s strategic value has become increasingly pertinent.
Already on the eve of Obama’s inauguration, the influential National Journal ran a symposium on the question: "Is Israel a Strategic Liability for the United States?" in which a surprising number of respected national security analysts answered in the affirmative.
When the Netanyahu government announced new Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden in March, the issue re-surfaced with a vengeance. Biden himself was reported by the Israeli press as telling Netanyahu that such provocations endangered the lives of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A few weeks later, the chief of the U.S. Central Command (CentCom), Gen. David Petraeus, warned lawmakers that "perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel …foments anti- American sentiment" throughout the region and had an 'enormous effect' on "the strategic context in which we operate." The beneficiaries, he said, include Iran, al-Qaeda, and other radical Islamist groups.
In his essay, Cordesman insisted that Washington’s commitment to Israel, which he identified as largely "moral and ethical" given their shared democratic values and the legacy of the Nazi Holocaust, "is not one that will be abandoned."
"At the same time," he went on, "the depth of America’s moral commitment does not …mean that the United States should extend support to an Israeli government when that government fails to credibly pursue peace with its neighbors."
"…It does not mean that the United States should be passive when Israel makes a series of major blunders — such as persisting in the strategic bombing of Lebanon during the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, escalating its attack on Gaza long after it had achieved its key objectives, embarrassing the U.S. president by announcing the expansion of Israeli building programs in East Jerusalem at a critical moment in U.S. efforts to put Israeli-Palestinian peace talks back on track, or sending commandos to seize a Turkish ship in a horribly mismanaged effort to halt the ‘peace flotilla’ going to Gaza," he wrote.
See also:
Israel’s Defenders Mobilize, Threaten
by Jim Lobe,
Antiwar.com
June 03, 2010
Faced with what the Wall Street Journal calls "one of Israel’s worst international relations disasters in years," the right-wing leadership of the so-called "Israel Lobby" has been pulling out all the stops to defend the Jewish state against global outrage over its deadly seizure of a Gaza-bound vessel in international waters carrying humanitarian supplies early Monday morning. MORE...
Antiwar.com
June 04, 2010
Israel’s disastrous raid in international waters Monday on a Turkish-flagged flotilla carrying humanitarian supplies to Gaza has resurrected a long-running debate over whether Washington’s close alliance with the Jewish state really serves U.S. strategic interests.
Ironically, one negative answer was provided in Jerusalem Tuesday by none other than the head of Israel’s vaunted foreign-intelligence agency, Mossad.
Noting, among other things, the disappearance of the Soviet and Western blocs with the end of the Cold War, Mossad chief Meir Dagan told members of the Israeli parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Tuesday that "Israel is gradually turning from an asset to the United States to a burden."
That view was emphatically re-asserted the following day by one of Washington’s most highly respected and centrist Middle East analysts in an essay entitled "Israel as a Strategic Liability?" that instantly became must-reading for regional specialists both in and outside the administration of President Barack Obama.
"At the best of times, an Israeli government that pursues the path to peace provides some intelligence, some minor advances in military technology, and a potential source of stabilizing military power that could help Arab states like Jordan," wrote Anthony Cordesman, a long-time fixture of the foreign policy establishment at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
"It is time Israel realized that it has obligations to the United States, as well as the United States to Israel, and that it (has to) become far more careful about the extent to which it test(s) the limits of U.S. patience and exploits the support of American Jews," he went on, noting the Israeli government "should be sensitive to the fact that its actions directly affect U.S. strategic interests in the Arab and Muslim worlds…"
"This does not mean taking a single action that undercuts Israeli security, but it does mean realizing that Israel should show enough discretion to reflect the fact that it is a tertiary U.S. strategic interest in a complex and demanding world," he wrote.
"Israel’s government should act on the understanding that the long-term nature of the U.S.-Israel strategic relationship will depend on Israel clearly and actively seeking peace with the Palestinians – the kind of peace that is in Israel’s own strategic interests," he added.
Cordesman’s observations were not new. Indeed, some variant of them have been expressed with increasing frequency by a growing number of mainstream analysts over the last four years, particularly since the tactically successful but strategically disastrous military campaigns conducted by Israel in Lebanon in 2006 and in Gaza 2008-9.
But the fact that Cordesman, a former national security adviser to the staunchly pro-Israel 2008 Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, felt moved to write so bluntly about the issue in the immediate aftermath of the lethal Israeli raid on Mavi Marmara suggests that the tide of elite opinion regarding the value of virtually unconditional support for Israel — especially for a government as aggressive as that of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu — is turning.
"Tony Cordesman’s authority derives as much from the fact that he is resolutely dispassionate and non-partisan as it does from his expertise, which is unmatched," said Amb. Charles Freeman, a top-ranked retired diplomat who renounced his appointment last year to chair the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in the face of intense opposition by the right-wing leadership of the so-called "Israel Lobby."
"When someone as balanced and centrist as Tony Cordesman begins to worry about the extent to which Israel is making itself into a strategic burden for the United States, Israel should pause for some self-reflection," Freeman told IPS.
Stephen Walt, a Harvard international-relations professor and co-author with University of Chicago Prof. John Mearsheimer of the controversial 2007 book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, agreed.
"The fact that Cordesman would say this publicly is a sign that attitudes and discourse are changing," he said. "Lots of people in the national security establishment — and especially the Pentagon and intelligence services — have understood that Israel wasn’t an asset, but nobody wanted to say so because they knew it might hurt their careers."
"It will be interesting to see how Cordesman is treated in the future, and whether more people will be inclined to say what they really think," he added.
The notion that Israel and its actions had since the Cold War increasingly become a "strategic liability" to U.S. interests in the region was a central thesis of Walt’s and Mearsheimer’s book, which came under immediate and sustained attack by the right-wing leadership of the Jewish and Christian Zionist communities.
The book itself was based on an article by the same name that the two men published in the London Review of Books in 2006 after a number of influential U.S. periodicals rejected it, apparently due to concerns that it was too controversial.
Yet, in the wake of the Lebanon and Gaza military offensives, the election of Netanyahu’s right-wing government and its resistance to the kind of two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict favored by successive U.S. administration, the question of Israel’s strategic value has become increasingly pertinent.
Already on the eve of Obama’s inauguration, the influential National Journal ran a symposium on the question: "Is Israel a Strategic Liability for the United States?" in which a surprising number of respected national security analysts answered in the affirmative.
When the Netanyahu government announced new Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden in March, the issue re-surfaced with a vengeance. Biden himself was reported by the Israeli press as telling Netanyahu that such provocations endangered the lives of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A few weeks later, the chief of the U.S. Central Command (CentCom), Gen. David Petraeus, warned lawmakers that "perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel …foments anti- American sentiment" throughout the region and had an 'enormous effect' on "the strategic context in which we operate." The beneficiaries, he said, include Iran, al-Qaeda, and other radical Islamist groups.
In his essay, Cordesman insisted that Washington’s commitment to Israel, which he identified as largely "moral and ethical" given their shared democratic values and the legacy of the Nazi Holocaust, "is not one that will be abandoned."
"At the same time," he went on, "the depth of America’s moral commitment does not …mean that the United States should extend support to an Israeli government when that government fails to credibly pursue peace with its neighbors."
"…It does not mean that the United States should be passive when Israel makes a series of major blunders — such as persisting in the strategic bombing of Lebanon during the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, escalating its attack on Gaza long after it had achieved its key objectives, embarrassing the U.S. president by announcing the expansion of Israeli building programs in East Jerusalem at a critical moment in U.S. efforts to put Israeli-Palestinian peace talks back on track, or sending commandos to seize a Turkish ship in a horribly mismanaged effort to halt the ‘peace flotilla’ going to Gaza," he wrote.
See also:
Israel’s Defenders Mobilize, Threaten
by Jim Lobe,
Antiwar.com
June 03, 2010
Faced with what the Wall Street Journal calls "one of Israel’s worst international relations disasters in years," the right-wing leadership of the so-called "Israel Lobby" has been pulling out all the stops to defend the Jewish state against global outrage over its deadly seizure of a Gaza-bound vessel in international waters carrying humanitarian supplies early Monday morning. MORE...
Friday, June 4, 2010
Once Again: President John F. Kennedy's American University "Peace Speech"
Editor's NOTE:
It is now clear that is, beyond reasonable doubt that President John F. Kennedy was murdered by his own National Security State. The American University "Peace Speech" was one of the last opportunities that he had to move the United States in the direction of peace rather than war. This speech was in a sense the last public utterance and the one which essentially signed his death warrant.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
It is now clear that is, beyond reasonable doubt that President John F. Kennedy was murdered by his own National Security State. The American University "Peace Speech" was one of the last opportunities that he had to move the United States in the direction of peace rather than war. This speech was in a sense the last public utterance and the one which essentially signed his death warrant.
--Dr. J. P. Hubert
More from the Military Industrial War Complex
Killer Drone Builder: General Atomics Builds Killer Electromagnetic Rail Cannon
By: Greg Grant
DefenseTech.org
One of the more intriguing new technologies spotted at this week’s Navy League Sea-Air-Space Expo was General Atomics’ electromagnetic rail cannon. The company has been working for a number of years with the Office of Naval Research on a 200 nautical mile gun system. In a parallel effort, they’ve been developing a smaller, pulse-power technology demonstrator, called the “Blitzer,” for ship defense against anti-ship cruise missiles and small boat swarms.
Two million amps launch a guided projectile at twice the speed of a conventional gun, but at much lower cost than the usual surface-to-air missile systems outfitting most naval ships. General Atomics is working on a cannon that can launch an airburst round at a rate of one per second. Each round dispenses sub-projectiles, so its equivalent to firing 14,000 rounds a minute, which is a higher rate of fire than the Phalanx close-in weapons system, says Tom Hurn, General Atomics director of advanced weapons systems.
By: Greg Grant
DefenseTech.org
One of the more intriguing new technologies spotted at this week’s Navy League Sea-Air-Space Expo was General Atomics’ electromagnetic rail cannon. The company has been working for a number of years with the Office of Naval Research on a 200 nautical mile gun system. In a parallel effort, they’ve been developing a smaller, pulse-power technology demonstrator, called the “Blitzer,” for ship defense against anti-ship cruise missiles and small boat swarms.
Two million amps launch a guided projectile at twice the speed of a conventional gun, but at much lower cost than the usual surface-to-air missile systems outfitting most naval ships. General Atomics is working on a cannon that can launch an airburst round at a rate of one per second. Each round dispenses sub-projectiles, so its equivalent to firing 14,000 rounds a minute, which is a higher rate of fire than the Phalanx close-in weapons system, says Tom Hurn, General Atomics director of advanced weapons systems.
Alan Hart and David Ray Griffen on: Controlled Demolition of WTC
Top Construction Firm: WTC Destroyed By Controlled Demolition
By: Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
May 27th, 2010
Respected Middle East expert and former BBC presenter Alan Hart has broken his silence on 9/11, by revealing that the world’s most prominent civil engineering company told him directly that the collapse of the twin towers was a controlled demolition.
Speaking on the Kevin Barrett show yesterday, Hart
said he thought the 9/11 attack probably started as a Muslim operation headed up by Osama Bin Laden but that the plot was subsequently hijacked and carried out by Mossad agents in collusion with elements of the CIA, adding that since its formation, Israel has penetrated every Arab government and terrorist organization.
“My guess is that at an early point they said to the bad guys in the CIA – hey this operation’s running what do we do, and the Zionists and the neo-cons said let’s use it,” said Hart, making reference to how top neo-cons like Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and their fellow Project For a New American Century authors had called for a “catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor,” the year before 9/11.
“The twin towers were brought down by a controlled ground explosion, not the planes,” said Hart, adding that this view was based on his close friendship with consultants who work with the world’s leading civil engineering and construction firm.
Hart asked the company to study the collapse of the twin towers, after which they told him directly, “There’s absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the towers were brought down by a controlled ground explosion.”
Hart then explained how the five dancing Israelis seen celebrating the attack on the World Trade Center in New Jersey as it unfolded, who turned out to be Mossad agents, proves at at a minimum Israel knew the attack was going to happen. Hart went further in speculating that the planes had been fitted with transponders and that the Israelis were guiding them in to the towers.
Host Barrett pointed out that to carry out the successful controlled demolition of three of the biggest buildings in history, the conspirators would have to ensure that they were hit, making the use of remote controlled airliners a distinct possibility. In addition, Barrett mentioned the fact that he had interviewed numerous pilots who dismissed the chances of accurately guiding a huge commercial airliner into a building while flying at sea level at around 600 miles per hour, especially considering the alleged 9/11 hijackers struggled to even fly basic Cessna light aircraft.
“Sounding a chilling note, Hart added that the U.S. is in grave danger of an Israeli-instigated false-flag nuclear attack, perhaps using an American nuclear weapon stolen from Minot Air Force Base during the “loose nukes” rogue operation of August, 2007. The motive would be to trigger a U.S. war with Iran, and perhaps to finish the ethnic cleansing of Palestine under cover of war–which Hart is convinced the Zionists are planning to do as soon as the opportunity presents itself,” writes host Barratt.
Given his biography and standing, Hart’s comments are not to be taken lightly. Hart is a former Middle East Chief Correspondent for ITN News and has also presented for BBC Panorama specializing in the Middle East. He was also a war reporter in Vietnam and the first journalist to reach Suez Canal with the Israeli army in 1967. Over the decades, Hart has developed close relationships with numerous high profile political figures, including the Shah of Iran, Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres.
Hart has been a successful author for years and has no reason to fabricate the fact that a top construction firm told him point blank that the towers were brought down in a controlled demolition.
In forwarding this information, Hart joins legions of other credible experts who to some extent or other have all publicly challenged the official 9/11 story, with many outright stating that the attacks were an inside job, people like 20-year decorated CIA veteran Robert Baer, who told a radio host that “the evidence points at” 9/11 having had aspects of being an inside job.
In addition, no less than 1198 architectural and engineering specialists have signed a petition demanding Congress re-open an official investigation into the 9/11 attack and the collapse of the twin towers. (Editor's bold emphasis throughout)
Listen to the full interview with Alan Hart below. The 9/11 discussion begins at around the 35 minute mark.
Building What? How SCADs Can Be Hidden in Plain Sight: The 9/11 "Official Story" and the Collapse of WTC Building Seven
by Prof David Ray Griffin
Global Research,
May 30, 2010
At 5:21 PM on 9/11, Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapsed, even though it had not been hit by a plane – a fact that is important because of the widespread acceptance of the idea, in spite of its scientific absurdity, that the Twin Towers collapsed because of the combined effect of the impact of the airliners plus the ensuing jet-fuel-fed fires. The collapse of World Trade Center 7 (WTC 7) thereby challenges the official account of the destruction of the World Trade Center, according to which it was accomplished by al-Qaeda hijackers, even if one accepts the government’s scientifically impossible account of the Twin Towers. This fact was recently emphasized in the title of a review article based on my 2009 book, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7,[1] by National Medal of Science-winner Lynn Margulis: “Two Hit, Three Down – The Biggest Lie.”[2]
1. Why the Collapse of WTC 7 Created an Extraordinary Problem
The collapse of WTC 7 created an extraordinary problem for the official account of 9/11 for several reasons.
An Unprecedented Occurrence
One reason is that, because of the collapse of WTC 7, the official account of 9/11 includes the dubious claim that, for the first time in the known universe, a steel-frame high-rise building was brought down by fire, and science looks askance at claims of unprecedented occurrences regarding physical phenomena. New York Times writer James Glanz, who himself has a Ph.D. in physics, wrote: “[E]xperts said no building like it, a modern, steel-reinforced high-rise, had ever collapsed because of an uncontrolled fire.” Glanz then quoted a structural engineer as saying: “[W]ithin the structural engineering community, [WTC 7] is considered to be much more important to understand [than the Twin Towers],” because engineers had no answer to the question, “why did 7 come down?”[3]
Visual Evidence of Implosion
Equally remarkable, besides the mere fact that this building came down, was the way it collapsed: straight down, in virtual free fall, making the destruction of this building appear to be an example of the type of controlled demolition known as “implosion,” in which explosives and/or incendiaries are used to slice the building’s steel support columns in such a way as to cause the building to collapse into its own footprint. CBS anchor Dan Rather, not one to let a remarkable fact go unremarked, said:
“[I]t’s reminiscent of those pictures we’ve all seen . . . on television . . . , where a building was deliberately destroyed by well-placed dynamite to knock it down.”[4]
Dan Rather, moreover, was not the only reporter to make such a comment. Al Jones, a reporter for WINS NYC News Radio, said: “I turned in time to see what looked like a skyscraper implosion – looked like it had been done by a demolition crew.”[5]
Moreover, whereas Jones and Rather, being laymen in these matters, merely said that the collapse of Building 7 looked like a controlled demolition, experts, upon seeing the video, could tell immediately that it actually was a controlled demolition. In 2006, for example, a Dutch filmmaker asked Danny Jowenko, the owner of a controlled demolition company in the Netherlands, to comment on a video of the collapse of WTC 7, without telling him what it was. (Jowenko had been unaware that a third building had collapsed on 9/11.) After viewing the video, Jowenko said: “They simply blew up columns, and the rest caved in afterwards. . . . This is controlled demolition.” When asked if he was certain, he replied: “Absolutely, it’s been imploded. This was a hired job. A team of experts did this.”[6]
Testimonies about Explosions
Besides the obviousness from the very appearance of the collapse of Building 7 that it was a product of controlled demotion, there were testimonies about explosions in this building.
One of these was provided by Michael Hess, New York City’s corporation counsel and a close friend of Mayor Rudy Giuliani. While on his way back to City Hall, Hess was stopped for an interview at 11:57 that morning, during which he said:
“I was up in the emergency management center on the twenty-third floor [of WTC 7], and when all the power went out in the building, another gentleman and I walked down to the eighth floor [sic] where there was an explosion and we were trapped on the eighth floor with smoke, thick smoke, all around us, for about an hour and a half. But the New York Fire Department . . . just came and got us out.”[7]
Hess thereby reported a mid-morning explosion in WTC 7.
The other gentleman, Barry Jennings of the New York City Housing Authority, reported the same thing during another on-the-street interview, reporting that he and “Mr. Hess” had been walking down the stairs when they became trapped by a “big explosion.”[8] Jennings, in fact, said that explosions continued going off while they were waiting to be rescued.[9]
There were also reports of explosions in the late afternoon, just as WTC 7 started coming down. Reporter Peter Demarco of the New York Daily News said:
“[T]here was a rumble. The building's top row of windows popped out. Then all the windows on the thirty-ninth floor popped out. Then the thirty-eighth floor. Pop! Pop! Pop! was all you heard until the building sunk into a rising cloud of gray.”[10]
NYPD officer Craig Bartmer gave the following report:
“I was real close to Building 7 when it fell down. . . . That didn't sound like just a building falling down to me . . . . There's a lot of eyewitness testimony down there of hearing explosions. . . . [A]ll of a sudden. . . I looked up, and . . . [t]he thing started pealing in on itself. . . . I started running . . . and the whole time you're hearing ‘boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.’”[11]
A New York University medical student, who had been serving as an emergency medical worker that day, gave this report:
“[W]e heard this sound that sounded like a clap of thunder. . . . [T]urned around – we were shocked. . . . [I]t looked like there was a shockwave ripping through the building and the windows all busted out. . . . [A]bout a second later the bottom floor caved out and the building followed after that.”[12]
Physical Evidence
In addition to the visual and testimonial evidence, there was clear physical evidence that explosives and incendiaries were used to bring down WTC 7.
Swiss-Cheese Steel: Within a few months of 9/11, three professors from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) had issued a report about a piece of steel from Building 7 that was described in a New York Times story by James Glanz and Eric Lipton as “[p]erhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation.”13 Part of the mystery was the fact that the steel was “extremely thin,” indicating that the steel had “melted away,” even though “no fire in any of the buildings was believed to be hot enough to melt steel outright.” Another part of the mystery was that atoms in the steel seemed to have combined with sulfur “to form compounds that melt at lower temperatures,” but as to the source of the sulfur, “no one knows.”[14]
Describing this mysterious piece of steel more fully, an article entitled “The ‘Deep Mystery’ of Melted Steel” in WPI’s magazine, said:
“[S]teel – which has a melting point of 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit – may weaken and bend, but does not melt during an ordinary office fire. Yet metallurgical studies . . . reveal that . . . a eutectic reaction . . . caus[ed] intergranular melting capable of turning a solid steel girder into Swiss cheese . . .. A one-inch column has been reduced to half-inch thickness. Its edges – which are curled like a paper scroll – have been thinned to almost razor sharpness. Gaping holes – some larger than a silver dollar – let light shine through a formerly solid steel flange. This Swiss cheese appearance shocked all of the fire-wise professors, who expected to see distortion and bending – but not holes. A eutectic compound is a mixture [involving sulfur]. . . . ‘The important questions,' says [one of the professors], ‘are how much sulfur do you need, and where did it come from?’”[15]
The thinning and the holes even suggested that the steel had vaporized. Explaining as early as November 2001 why fire could not account for this mysterious steel, Glanz paraphrased one of the three WPI professors, Jonathan Barnett, as saying that it “appear[ed] to have been partly evaporated in extraordinarily high temperatures.”[16]
Another New York Times story reported that the same phenomenon was described by Professor Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl of the University of California at Berkeley, who had received a National Science Foundation grant to spend two weeks at Ground Zero studying steel from the buildings. According to reporter Kenneth Change, Professor Astaneh-Asl, speaking of a horizontal I-beam from WTC 7, said: “Parts of the flat top of the I, once five-eighths of an inch thick, had vaporized.”[17]
These reports clearly showed that something other than fire had been making things happen in the buildings, because the fires could not possibly have been higher than 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, while the boiling point of steel is roughly the same as that of iron, which is 5182°F. But even if the steel had not evaporated but had simply melted, that by itself would have proved the point, because the melting point of steel is only a little less than that of iron, which is 2800°F. (An obvious source of both the melting and the sulfidation would be a well-known incendiary, thermate – a “mixture of thermite and sulfur . . . which lowers the melting point of iron it contacts when reacting by forming a eutectic system,” which is “useful in cutting through steel.”)[18]
Evidence in Plain Sight
Therefore, clear evidence against the official account of Building 7, according to which it was brought down by fire, existed in plain sight in the form of videos of its collapse, published testimonies about explosions in the building, and physical evidence reported in the New York Times. The reasonable inference to draw from this evidence – namely, that the official account is false – was reinforced by the first official report on this building’s collapse, which was issued in 2002 by FEMA. Besides including as an appendix the paper by the WPI professors containing the study of the Swiss-cheese piece of steel recovered from WTC 7 – a study that attributed the erosion to “oxidation and sulfidation” while adding: “No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified”[19] – the engineers who wrote the FEMA report admitted that their “best hypothesis” about why WTC 7 collapsed had “only a low probability of occurrence.”[20]
Failure to Become Well Known
In addition to all these facts, WTC 7 was a very big building, being 47 stories high and having a base about the size of a football field. Although it was dwarfed by the 110-story Twin Towers, it would have been the tallest building in half of the states in the nation. For all of these reasons, the collapse of this building should have become one of the best-known facts about 9/11. But it did not.
2. Widespread Ignorance about WTC 7
A Zogby poll in May 2006 found that 43 percent of the American people were unaware that WTC 7 had collapsed,[21] and that same year, as mentioned earlier, Danny Jowenko of the Netherlands still did not know about it, even though controlled demolition was his field.
A dramatic example of the fact that this building’s collapse has not been prominent in the public consciousness was provided in a New York City courtroom in September 2009. Judge Edward Lehner was hearing arguments about a petition sponsored by NYC CAN to allow residents to vote on whether New York City should have its own investigation of the World Trade Center attacks. After Judge Lehner had observed that the 9/11 Commission had carried out an investigation and issued a report, Dennis McMahon, a lawyer for NYC CAN, said that this report left many unanswered questions. “One of the biggest questions,” he added, “is why did Building 7 come down” – at which point Judge Lehner asked: “Building what?” McMahon replied: “World Trade Center Seven. There were three buildings that came down.” When the judge, continuing to illustrate his ignorance about this building, asked if it was owned by the Port Authority, McMahon replied that it was owned by Larry Silverstein.[22]
Judge Lehner, it should be emphasized, was not simply an ordinary American citizen. Besides being a judge presiding in New York City, he had been assigned to a case involving the 9/11 attacks in this city. So his ignorance about this building was surprising. And yet it was typical. With his query - “Building what?” – he expressed the ignorance manifested in 2006 by controlled demolition expert Danny Jowenko and almost half of the American people. How can we account for this ignorance?
Abnormal Circumstances
In a New York Times story in November 2001, James Glanz wrote that the collapse of WTC 7 was “a mystery that under normal circumstances would probably have captured the attention of the city and the world.”[23] Clearly these were not normal circumstances.
Part of the abnormality was the fact that Building 7, while huge, was overshadowed by the Twin Towers, which were over twice as tall. This fact by itself, however, would not account for the enormous ignorance of this third building’s collapse. Knowledgeable people had said right away, as Glanz pointed out, that there was a sense in which the collapse of Building 7 should have been the bigger story. Why was it not?
Deliberate Suppression
The answer seems to be that it was a deliberately suppressed story. This conclusion is supported by the following facts:
First, after 9/11 itself, our television networks played videos of the Twin Towers being hit by planes, then coming down, over and over, but the collapse of Building 7 was seldom if ever shown.
Second, when The 9/11 Commission Report was issued in 2004, it did not even mention that Building 7 came down.
Third, after NIST – the National Institute of Standards and Technology – took over from FEMA the task of explaining the destruction of the World Trade Center, it repeatedly delayed its report on WTC 7. In 2003, NIST said that this report would be issued along with its report on the Twin Towers, the draft of which was to appear in September 2004.[24] However, even though NIST’s report on the Twin Towers did not actually appear until 2005, the promised report on WTC 7 was not included: NIST said that it would appear in 2006. But when August of 2006 came, NIST said: “It is anticipated that a draft report [on WTC 7] will be released by early 2007.”[25] But it was not released in 2007 – either early or late. Instead, NIST in December 2007 “projected” that it would release draft reports on July 8, 2008, followed by final reports on August 8, 2008.[26] Instead, the draft report did not appear until August, and the final report not until November of that year – when the Bush-Cheney administration was about to leave office.
Moreover, when in 2008 NIST was accused of having deliberately delayed its report on WTC 7 (which the 9/11 Truth Movement had long considered the “Achilles Heel” or “Smoking Gun” of the official account of 9/11[27]), NIST lied, saying that it had worked on this report only since 2005 and hence for only three years – the same length of time it had worked on its Twin Towers report. Actually, however, NIST had filed progress reports on WTC 7 in December 2002 and May 2003;[28] in June 2004, it published an Interim Report on WTC 7;[29] and in April 2005, NIST released another preliminary report on WTC 7.[30]Then, after ceasing work on this building until after the report on the Twin Towers was issued in October 2005, NIST reported, “the investigation of the WTC 7 collapse resumed.”[31] In truth, therefore, NIST had worked on its report on WTC 7 for almost six years, not merely three. So there was good reason to suspect that this report had been deliberately delayed for as long as possible.
3. NIST’s Draft for Public Comment: Mystery Solved?
Be that as it may, when the Draft for Public Comment did finally appear in August 2008, it was announced at a press conference with much bravado. Shyam Sunder, NIST’s lead investigator for its World Trade Center projects, said:
“Our take-home message today is that the reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery. WTC 7 collapsed because of fires fueled by office furnishings. It did not collapse from explosives.”[32]
The mainstream media for the most part simply repeated Sunder’s claims. For example, an Associated Press story entitled “Report: Fire, Not Bombs, Leveled WTC 7 Building,” began by saying: “Federal investigators said Thursday they have solved a mystery of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: the collapse of World Trade Center building 7, a source of long-running conspiracy theories.” Then, after reinforcing this message by quoting Sunder’s assurance that “the reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery,” this story concluded by quoting his claim that the science behind NIST’s findings is "incredibly conclusive," so that “[t]he public should really recognize that science is really behind what we have said.”[33]
Reporters, however, could easily have discovered that this was not so. They could have seen, in fact, that NIST’s WTC 7 report repeatedly committed scientific fraud in the technical sense, as defined by the National Science Foundation.
4. NIST's Falsification of Evidence
One type of fraud is falsification, which includes “omitting data.”[34] While claiming that it “found no evidence of a . . . controlled demolition event,”[35] NIST simply omitted an enormous amount of evidence for that conclusion.
Omitting Testimonial Evidence
NIST failed, for one thing, to mention any of the testimonial evidence for explosions. Besides claiming that the event described as a mid-morning explosion by Michael Hess and Barry Jennings was simply the impact of debris from the collapse of the North Tower – which occurred at 10:28 and hence about an hour later than the explosion they had described – NIST failed to mention any of the reports of explosions just as the building started to come down.
Omitting Physical Evidence:
NIST’s report on this building also omitted various types of physical evidence.
The Swiss-Cheese Steel: One of these was the piece of Swiss-cheese steel reported by the three WPI professors in a paper that was, as mentioned earlier, included as an appendix to the 2002 FEMA report. After describing the erosion of this piece of steel, the professors had said: “A detailed study into the mechanisms of this phenomenon is needed.”[36] When NIST took over from FEMA the responsibility of issuing the official reports on the World Trade Center, NIST’s director promised that its reports would address “all major recommendations contained in the [FEMA] report.”[37] However, when NIST’s report on Building 7 appeared in 2008, it did not even mention this mysterious piece of steel, let alone explain how it had been produced. NIST even claimed that no recovered steel from WTC 7 had been identified, because the steel used in this building, unlike the steel used in the Twin Towers, “did not contain . . . identifying characteristics.”[38]
NIST made this claim, incidentally, even though it had previously published a document in which it had referred to steel recovered from WTC 7, including the piece discussed by the WPI professors in the appendix to the FEMA report. This claim about not identifying any steel was made by NIST (in August 2008), moreover, even though one of these professors, Dr. Jonathan Barnett, had during a BBC program on WTC 7 (in July 2008) discussed an “eroded and deformed” piece of steel that he and his colleagues had studied in 2001, explaining that they knew “its pedigree” because “this particular kind of steel” had been used only in WTC 7, not in the Twin Towers.[39]
Melted Iron: Deutsche Bank, which had a building close to the World Trade Center that had been contaminated with dust, hired the RJ Lee Group, a scientific research organization, to prove to its insurance company that the dust contaminating its building was not ordinary building dust, as its insurance company claimed, but had resulted from the destruction of the World Trade Center. Reports issued by the RJ Lee Group in 2003 and 2004 proved that the dust was indeed WTC dust, having its unique chemical signature. Part of this signature, the RJ Lee Group said in its final (2004) report, was “[s]pherical iron . . . particles,” and this meant, it had pointed out in its 2003 report, that iron had “melted during the WTC Event, producing spherical metallic particles.”[40]
The RJ Lee reports thereby provided additional evidence that temperatures had been reached that significantly exceeded those that could have been produced by fire. These reports, which were made known in an article published in January 2008 by a group of scientists led by physicist Steven Jones,[41] were simply ignored by NIST.
Melted Molybdenum: Another study was carried out by scientists at the US Geological Survey. Besides also finding the spherical iron particles, these scientists found that something had melted molybdenum[42] – which has an extremely high melting point: 4,753°F (2,623°C).[43] Although these USGS scientists failed to mention this discovery in the published version of their report, a group of scientists led by Steven Jones, having obtained the USGS team’s data through a FOIA request, reported evidence that this team had devoted serious study to “a molybdenum-rich spherule.”[44] NIST, however, failed to mention this discovery by the US Geological Survey, although it is another federal agency.
Nanothermite: A peer-reviewed report by University of Copenhagen chemist Niels Harrit and several co-authors, including physicist Steven Jones and chemist Kevin Ryan, showed that the WTC dust contained unreacted nanothermite. Unlike ordinary thermite, which is an incendiary, nanothermite is a high explosive.
This report by Harrit, Jones, Ryan, and their colleagues did not appear until 2009,45 so it could not have been mentioned in NIST’s final report, which came out at the end of November 2008. However, given the standard guidelines for the investigation of building fires, NIST should have tested the WTC dust for signs of incendiaries, such as ordinary thermite (including thermate), and explosives, such as nanothermite.[46]
When asked whether it had carried out such tests, NIST said it had not.[47] When a reporter asked NIST spokesman Michael Newman why not, he replied: “[B]ecause there was no evidence of that.” When the reporter asked the obvious follow-up question, “[H]ow can you know there’s no evidence if you don’t look for it first?” Newman replied: “If you’re looking for something that isn’t there, you’re wasting your time . . . and the taxpayers’ money.”[48]
5. NIST’s Fabrication of Evidence
Besides omitting and otherwise falsifying evidence, NIST also committed the type of scientific fraud called fabrication, which means simply “making up results.”[49]
No Girder Shear Studs
For example, in offering its explanation as to how fire caused Building 7 to collapse, NIST said that the culprit was thermal expansion, meaning that the fire heated up the steel, thereby causing it to expand. Expanding steel beams on the 13th floor, NIST claims, caused a steel girder connecting columns 44 and 79 to break loose. Having lost its support, column 79 failed, starting a chain reaction in which all the other columns failed.[50]
Leaving aside the question of whether this is even remotely possible, let us simply ask: Why did that girder fail? NIST’s answer was that it was not connected to the floor slab with sheer studs. NIST wrote: “In WTC 7, no studs were installed on the girders.”[51] In another passage, NIST said: “Floor beams . . . had shear studs, but the girders that supported the floor beams did not have shear studs.”[52]
However, NIST’s Interim Report on WTC 7, which it published in 2004 before it had developed its girder-failure theory, said shear studs were used to anchor “[m]ost of the beams and girders,” including the girder in question.[53]
A Raging 12th Floor Fire at 5:00
Although in its 2004 Interim Report on WTC 7, NIST said that by 4:45 PM, “the fire on Floor 12 was burned out,”[54] it claimed in its 2008 report that at 5:00, just 21 minutes before the building collapsed, the fire on this floor was still going strong.[55]
6. NIST’s Final Report: Affirming a Miracle
NIST’s final report on WTC 7, which appeared in November 2008, was for the most part identical with its draft report, which had appeared in August. But NIST did add a new element: the affirmation of a miracle, meaning a violation of a fundamental law of physics.
This issue is treated in a cartoon in which a professor has written a proof on a chalkboard. Most of the steps consist of mathematical equations, but one of them simply says: “Then a miracle happens.”[56] This is humorous because one thing scientists absolutely cannot do in their scientific work is appeal to miracles, even implicitly. And yet that is what NIST does. I will explain.
NIST’s August 2008 Denial of Free Fall
Members of the 9/11 Truth Movement had long been pointing out that Building 7 came down at the same rate as a free-falling object, or at least virtually so. But in NIST’s Draft for Public Comment, issued in August 2008, it denied this, saying that the time it took for the upper floors – the only floors that are visible on the videos - to come down “was approximately 40 percent longer than the computed free fall time and was consistent with physical principles.”[57]
As this statement implies, any assertion that the building did come down in free fall would not be consistent with physical principles – meaning the laws of physics. Explaining why not, during a “WTC 7 Technical Briefing” on August 26, 2008, Shyam Sunder said:
“[A] free fall time would be [the fall time of] an object that has no structural components below it. . . . [T]he . . . time that it took . . . for those 17 floors to disappear [was roughly 40 percent longer than free fall]. And that is not at all unusual, because there was structural resistance that was provided in this particular case. And you had a sequence of structural failures that had to take place. Everything was not instantaneous.”[58]
In saying this, Sunder was, of course, presupposing NIST’s rejection of controlled demolition – which could have produced a free-fall collapse by causing all 82 columns to fail simultaneously – in favor of NIST’s fire theory, which necessitated a theory of progressive collapse.
Chandler’s Challenge and NIST’s November Admission of Free Fall
In response, high-school physics teacher David Chandler, who was able to speak at this briefing, challenged Sunder’s denial of free fall, stating that Sunder’s “40 percent” claim contradicted “a publicly visible, easily measurable quantity.”[59] Chandler then placed a video on the Internet showing that, by measuring this publicly visible quantity, anyone knowing elementary physics could see that “for about two and a half seconds. . . , the acceleration of the building is indistinguishable from freefall.”[60]
Amazingly, in NIST’s final report, which came out in November 2008, it admitted free fall. Dividing the building’s descent into three stages, NIST described the second phase as “a freefall descent over approximately eight stories at gravitational acceleration for approximately 2.25 s[econds].”[61] So, after presenting over 600 pages of descriptions, photographs, testimonies, graphs, analyses, explanations, and mathematical formulae, NIST says, in effect: “Then a miracle happens.”
Why this would be a miracle was explained by Chandler, who said: “Free fall can only be achieved if there is zero resistance to the motion.”[62] In other words, the upper portion of Building 7 could have come down in free fall only if something had suddenly removed all the steel and concrete in the lower part of the building, which would have otherwise provided resistance. If everything had not been removed and the upper floors had come down in free fall anyway, even for only a second, a miracle – meaning a violation of laws of physics - would have happened.
That was what Sunder himself had explained the previous August, saying that a free-falling object would be one “that has no structural components below it” to offer resistance. But then in November, while still defending its fire theory of collapse, NIST agreed that, as an empirical fact, free fall happened. For a period of 2.25 seconds, NIST admitted, the descent of WTC 7 was characterized by “gravitational acceleration (free fall).”[63]
Knowing that it had thereby affirmed a miracle, NIST no longer claimed that its analysis was consistent with the laws of physics. In its August draft, in which it said that the collapse occurred 40 percent slower than free fall, NIST had repeatedly said that its analysis was “consistent with physical principles.” One encountered this phrase at least three times.[64] In the final report, however, every instance of this phrase had been removed. NIST thereby almost explicitly admitted that its report on WTC 7, by admitting free fall while continuing to deny that explosives and incendiaries were used, is not consistent with the principles of physics.
Implications
NIST thereby implicitly acknowledged that Building 7 was intentionally demolished. It also thereby implicitly admitted the same about the Twin Towers, because the collapses of these buildings manifested many of the same tell-tale signs of controlled demolition as did WTC 7, plus some additional ones, including the horizontal ejection of sections of steel columns, weighing many thousands of pounds, more than 500 feet from the towers. (These ejections occurred at the outset of the collapses, after which the Towers came straight down.).[65]
And with this implicit admission that the collapses were examples of controlled demolition, NIST undermined the al-Qaeda theory of 9/11. Why?
For one thing, the straight-down nature of the collapses of the Twin Towers and Building 7 means that the buildings were subjected to the type of controlled demolition known as “implosion,” which is, in the words of a controlled demolition website, “by far the trickiest type of explosive project,” which “only a handful of blasting companies in the world . . . possess enough experience . . . to perform.”[66] Al-Qaeda terrorists would not have had this kind of expertise.
Second, the only reason to go to the trouble of bringing a building straight down is to avoid damaging nearby buildings. Had the World Trade Center buildings toppled over sideways, they would have caused massive destruction in Lower Manhattan, crushing dozens of other buildings and killing tens of thousands of people. Does anyone believe that, even if al-Qaeda operatives had had the expertise to make the buildings come straight down, they would have had the courtesy?
A third problem is that foreign terrorists could not have obtained access to the buildings for all the hours it would have taken to plant incendiaries and explosives. Only insiders could have done this.[67]
7. Explaining the Ignorance about WTC 7
NIST’s admission that Building 7 came down in free fall for over two seconds should, therefore, have been front-page news. The same is true, moreover, of the various other things I have reported – NIST’s fabrications; NIST’s omission and distortion of testimonial evidence; NIST’s omissions of physical evidence, such as the Swiss-cheese steel and the particles showing that iron and molybdenum had been melted; and the later discovery of nanothermite particles in the WTC dust. Especially given the fact that the collapse of Building 7 had been declared a mystery from the outset, the world should have been waiting with bated breath for every new clue as to why this 47-story building had come down. Upon hearing Building 7 mentioned, nobody in the world with access to CNN should have asked, “Building what?” How do we explain the fact that five and even nine years after the mysterious collapse of this building, ignorance about it was still widespread?
To begin answering this question, let us return to James Glanz’s statement that the collapse of WTC 7 was “a mystery that under normal circumstances would probably have captured the attention of the city and the world.”[68] As I stated before, the abnormality seems to have been such that videos and even the very fact of this building’s collapse were deliberately suppressed. What was this abnormality?
SCADs
A symposium in the February 2010 issue of American Behavioral Scientist, one of our leading social science journals, argues that social scientists need to develop a scientific approach to studying an increasingly important type of criminality: State Crimes Against Democracy, abbreviated SCADs,[69] understood as “concerted actions . . . by government insiders intended to manipulate democratic processes and undermine popular sovereignty.” Having the “potential to subvert political institutions and entire governments . . . [SCADs] are high crimes that attack democracy itself.”[70]
Distinguishing between SCADs that have been officially proven, such as “the Watergate break-ins and cover-up . . . , the secret wars in Laos and Cambodia . . . , the illegal arms sales and covert operations in Iran-Contra . . . , and the effort to discredit Joseph Wilson by revealing his wife’s status as an intelligence agent,” on the one hand, and suspected SCADs for which there is good evidence, on the other, the symposium authors include in the latter category “the fabricated attacks on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 . . . , the “October Surprises” in the presidential elections of 1968 . . . and 1980 . . . , the assassinations of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy . . . , the election breakdowns in 2000 and 2004 . . . , the numerous defense failures on September 11, 2001 . . . , and the misrepresentation of intelligence to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq.”[71]
Besides regarding 9/11 as one of the suspected SCADs for which there is good evidence, this symposium treats it as its primary example. The abstract for the introductory essay begins by asserting: “The ellipses of due diligence riddling the official account of the 9/11 incidents continue being ignored by scholars of policy and public administration.”[72] The symposium’s final essay, criticizing the majority of the academic world for its “blithe dismissal of more than one law of thermodynamics” that is violated by the official theory of the World Trade Center collapses,[73] also criticizes the academy for its failure to protest when “Professor Steven Jones found himself forced out of a tenured position for merely reminding the world that physical laws, about which there is no dissent whatsoever, contradict the official theory of the World Trade Center Towers’ collapse.”[74]
The authors of this symposium point out, moreover, that the official theory of the destruction of the three World Trade Center towers has serious implications for science and engineering. If NIST’s explanation “provides the most robust account of the Towers’ collapse, based on known science,” then some previously accepted physical laws would need to be revised:
“[These laws] would have to succumb, at some point, to the theoretical claims purported to explain the Towers’ collapse: New laws determining when steel melts and the phases at which such material loses its tensile strength would have at some point to replace existing science-based presumptions.”[75]
This revision of physical laws would also have practical implications for building codes: “[T]he specifications of design for all skyscrapers ought, in the public interest, to be subjected to major review.” The acceptance of NIST’s account, therefore, creates an “obvious crisis,” which should be evoking scientific and practical responses.[76]
The practical crisis that should have been caused by NIST’s report on WTC 7 had previously been addressed by four of the “Jersey Girls,” who had been instrumental in getting the 9/11 Commission created. In a statement released in September 2008, they wrote:
“Over the past seven years, the Families of the 9/11 Victims have been repeatedly told by fire experts, engineers and architects that we should NOT FOCUS our efforts on advocating for building and fire code changes based on the collapse of the WTC 1 and 2 towers. We were continuously reminded that the crashing of airplanes into buildings was a unique event. Additionally, we were told that the design and construction of WTC Towers 1 and 2 was unique and that there were no other buildings of that particular height or design in the world. We were repeatedly told that the key was WTC 7 since this building was of conventional design and height, yet it too collapsed without the unique event of an airplane striking it. . . ."
“Dr. Shyam Sunder of NIST . . . stated that WTC 7 met all New York City codes. Yet, WTC 7 is the first steel high-rise building of traditional construction in the United States -- and the world, to completely collapse as a result of fire. According to . . . Dr. Sunder, "there were no flaws with the construction of the building."
“We don't how the rest of the country is feeling about this news, but we are very scared! These findings suggest that ANY EXISTING building is prone to a progressive collapse if a fire should start and the sprinkler system fails for whatever reason. . . ."
“The ultimate purpose of advocating for the $16 million to have NIST study this event was to determine how to make buildings safer in the future. If we are now to believe that any skyscraper is subject to total collapse from fire, why isn't NIST emphasizing the impact on EXISTING buildings? . . . NIST needs to . . . provide guidance for EXISTING buildings."
“NIST should put the most important conclusion in plain English and announce it to the entire country: UNCONTROLLED FIRES IN HIGH-RISE BUILDINGS CAN LEAD TO THEIR TOTAL COLLAPSE. . . . NIST must address this dangerous issue immediately. The future safety of the public and the fire services hangs in the balance.”[77]
Like the SCADs symposium, this brilliant piece of satire makes clear that NIST’s explanation of WTC 7’s collapse should have created a crisis in many fields, both theoretical and practical. The implications of NIST’s explanation should have been extensively discussed in technical journals of various types and then in newspapers and on television programs and radio talk shows. But no such discussion occurred. The worlds of physics, engineering, building codes, and public safety continued on as if the report had never been issued. How can we understand this?
Hiding the Most Obvious Evidence that 9/11 Was a SCAD
If the reason why the collapse of WTC 7 did not occur “under normal circumstances” is the fact that it was part of 9/11, which was a SCAD, then it would not be surprising that the collapse of this building, which “under normal circumstances would probably have captured the attention of the city and the world,” did not do so.
If 9/11 was a SCAD, the collapse of WTC 7 would not have been allowed to capture the world’s attention for the reasons mentioned earlier: Unlike the Twin Towers, it was not hit by a plane; because of this, there was no jet fuel to spread big fires to many floors; its collapse, unlike that of each of the Twin Towers, looked exactly like a classic implosion, in which the collapse begins from the bottom and the building folds in upon itself, ending up almost entirely in its own footprint; and the videos show that it came down, at least part of the way, in absolute free fall. The fact that Building 7 was brought down by controlled demolition was, therefore, more obvious.
This greater obviousness is illustrated not only by Danny Jowenko’s response, but also by the many engineers and scientists who joined the 9/11 Truth Movement only after seeing a video of this building’s collapse. For example, Daniel Hofnung, an engineer in Paris, wrote:
“In the years after the 9/11 events, I thought that all I read in professional reviews and French newspapers was true. The first time I understood that it was impossible was when I saw a film about the collapse of WTC 7.”[78]
Likewise, civil engineer Chester Gearhart wrote:
“I have watched the construction of many large buildings and also have personally witnessed 5 controlled demolitions in Kansas City. When I saw the towers fall on 9/11, I knew something was wrong and my first instinct was that it was impossible. When I saw building 7 fall, I knew it was a controlled demolition.”[79]
This video was also decisive for University of Copenhagen chemist Niels Harrit, who later became the first author of the nanothermite paper. When asked how he became involved with these issues, he replied:
“It all started when I saw the collapse of Building 7, the third skyscraper. It collapsed seven hours after the Twin Towers. And there were only two airplanes. When you see a 47-storey building, 186 meters tall, collapse in 6.5 seconds, and you are a scientist, you think “What?” I had to watch it again...and again. I hit the button ten times, and my jaw dropped lower and lower. Firstly, I had never heard of that building before. And there was no visible reason why it should collapse in that way, straight down, in 6.5 seconds. I have had no rest since that day.”[80]
Given these reactions, it is obvious why, if 9/11 was a State Crime Against Democracy, the fact of Building 7’s collapse, especially the video of this collapse, had to be suppressed as much as possible.
WTC 7 as a Dud?
Having made this point, I need to respond to an obvious objection: If those who were responsible for bringing down Building 7 were going to need to suppress the video of its collapse, why did they wait until late in the afternoon, when the air was clean and cameras would be trained on this building, with the consequence that we have perfectly clear videos of the collapse of this building from various angles, each one showing its straight-down free-fall descent? Why did they not bring it down in the morning, shortly after one of the Twin Towers had collapsed, when the resulting dust cloud would have made any images impossible? After the collapse of the North Tower at 10:28, for example, visibility did not return sufficiently for film crews to come back to the area, NIST reported, until 11:00.[81] Had Building 7 been imploded at, say, 10:45, its collapse would still have been a big mystery, but there would have been no videos showing that it had come straight down and, for over two seconds, in absolute free fall.
There are many reasons, as I showed in an appendix to The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7, to believe that this had indeed been the plan, but that this building was, as one researcher put it, “a dud”[82] – meaning that “the demolition system in WTC 7 simply did not respond as intended and the building defiantly remained intact.”[83] As a result, agents were perhaps sent into the building to set fires to provide the basis for a cover-story saying that fires had brought the building down. This hypothesis -- that fires were set in the building only after a controlled demolition system had failed to bring it down in the morning -- would explain why, although the fires in Building 7 were supposedly started by burning debris from the North Tower’s collapse at 10:28, no flames are visible in this building, as NIST admits, until after noon, and on some floors there is no photographic evidence of fire until 3:40 PM or even later.[84]
I have emphasized this likelihood – that the destruction of WTC 7 was a botched operation – because if true it provides the clearest possible illustration of the theme of this essay, namely, that SCADs can be hidden in plain sight. There are literally dozens of problems in the official account of 9/11 sufficiently serious to show the official story to be false. But the clearest proof is provided by the video of this enormous building coming straight down in absolute free fall. And yet even though this proof has existed in plain sight for all these years, the fact that 9/11 was an inside job, and hence a State Crime Against Democracy, has remained a hidden fact, at least in the sense that it is not part of the public conversation. If the destruction of WTC 7 was a botched operation, then the hiding of the fact that 9/11 was a SCAD is even more impressive. How has this hiding been achieved?
Hiding SCADs: The Role of the Mainstream Media
Peter Dale Scott, discussing the erosion of the US Constitution in recent times, suggests that “this erosion has been achieved in part through a series of important deep events in [post-World-War-II] American history – events aspects of which . . . will be ignored or suppressed in the mainstream media.”[85] Indeed, Scott adds:
“[T]he mainstream U.S. media . . . have become so implicated in past protective lies . . . that they, as well as the government, have now a demonstrated interest in preventing the truth about any of these events from coming out. This means that the current threat to constitutional rights does not derive from the deep state alone. . . . [T]he problem is a global dominance mindset that prevails not only inside the Washington Beltway but also in the mainstream media . . . , one which has come to accept recent inroads on constitutional liberties, and stigmatizes, or at least responds with silence to, those who are alarmed by them. . . . [A]cceptance of this mindset’s notions of decorum has increasingly become a condition for participation in mainstream public life.”[86]
Referring thereby to events such as the JFK assassination, the Tonkin Gulf hoax, and 9/11, Scott by “deep events” means the same types of events called SCADs by the authors of the symposium on that topic. Indeed, one of those authors explicitly cites Scott’s writings, treating his “deep events” as examples of SCADs and quoting his statements about the complicity of the mainstream media in covering up the truth about these events.[87]
These authors also make the same point themselves, remarking that “the U.S. government’s account of 9/11 [is] parroted by the mainstream media”[88] and commenting on “the profound disavowal of still burning, molten questions originating at 9/11 Ground Zero gone begging by the American media.”[89]
Besides parroting the government’s account of 9/11 and stigmatizing those who provide alternative accounts with the discrediting label “conspiracy theorists,” how has America’s mainstream media kept the truth about WTC 7 hidden from the majority of the American people? Through various means, including the following:
First, by never replaying the statements by Dan Rather and other reporters about how the collapse of WTC 7 looked just like a controlled demolition.
Second, by seldom if ever replaying the video of this building’s collapse.
Third, by never mentioning credible critiques of the official account. For example, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report about 9/11 is Unscientific and False, which has been endorsed by prestigious scientists and engineers, has never been reviewed in the mainstream media, even though my previous 9/11 book, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited, was a Publishers Weekly “Pick of the Week” in 2008.[90]
Fourth, by never mentioning, except for one story that apparently slipped through,[91] the existence of an organization called Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, which by now has some 1,200 professional architects and engineers calling for a new investigation of WTC 7 as well as the Twin Towers.[92]
Fifth, by never reporting scientific evidence contradicting the official account of these buildings’ destruction, such as the reported discovery of nanothermite in the WTC dust.
Sixth, by overlooking the fact that NIST’s report on WTC 7 omitted an enormous amount of evidence showing that explosives and/or incendiaries must have been used. For example, although the New York Times in 2002 called the piece of Swiss-cheese steel recovered from this building “the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation,” it did not issue a peep when NIST’s 2008 report on this building failed to mention this piece of steel and even claimed that no steel from this building had been identified: The Times clearly knew better but said nothing.
Seventh, by not mentioning the fact, even after it was reported in my 2009 book, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7, that NIST had used various types of fabricated evidence to support its theory of a fire-induced collapse.
Eighth, by reporting NIST’s August 2008 press briefing, in which Shyam Sunder announced, triumphantly, that the “the reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery” and that “science is really behind what we have said,” but then not reporting on NIST’s final report in November of that year, in which NIST almost explicitly admitted that science does not stand behind, but instead contradicts, its theory of this building’s collapse.
Ninth, by systematically ignoring the fact that the official account of WTC 7’s collapse has implications for many fields that, if taken seriously by leaders in those fields, would demand revolutionary changes in both theory and practice.[93]
Conclusion and Proposal
Through these and related means, the truth about the collapse of WTC 7 has been effectively hidden, even though it has existed in plain sight all these years. Even the bare fact of the collapse itself has been so effectively hidden that in 2006 over 40 percent of the American public did not know about it, and in 2009 a judge in New York City, upon hearing a reference to Building 7, asked: “Building what?”
I offer this essay as a case study in the power of the forces behind SCADs or deep events to hide things that exist in plain sight, because if they can hide the straight-down free-fall collapse of a 47-story building captured on video in broad daylight, they can hide almost anything.
I say this, however, not to instill despair, but to point to the seriousness of the problem, and also to pave the way for making a proposal. Recognizing the high correlation between those who know about the collapse of WTC 7 and those who believe that a new – or rather real – 9/11 investigation is needed, I propose that the international 9/11 Truth Movement initiate, starting this September, a world-wide, year-long “Building What?” campaign. Through this campaign, we would seek to make the fact of its collapse so widely known that the mention of Building 7 would never again evoke the question: “Building What?”[94]
David Ray Griffin is the author of 36 books on various topics, including philosophy, theology, philosophy of science, and 9/11. His 2008 book, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé, was named a “Pick of the Week” by Publishers Weekly. In September 2009, The New Statesman ranked him #41 among “The 50 People Who Matter Today.” His most recent book is The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report about 9/11 is Unscientific and False (2009). His next book will be Cognitive Infiltration: An Obama Appointee’s Plan to Undermine the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory (September 2010). He wishes to thank Tod Fletcher, Jim Hoffman, and Elizabeth Woodworth for help with this essay.
Notes
1 David Ray Griffin, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report about 9/11 Is Unscientific and False (Northampton: Olive Branch [Interlink Books], 2009).
2 Lynn Margulis, “Two Hit, Three Down – The Biggest Lie,” Rock Creek Free Press, January 24, 2010 (http://rockcreekfreepress.tumblr.com/post/353434420/two-hit-three-down-the-biggest-lie).
3 James Glanz, “Engineers Have a Culprit in the Strange Collapse of 7 World Trade Center: Diesel Fuel,” New York Times, November 29, 2001 (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/29/nyregion/nation-challenged-site-engineers-have-culprit-strange-collapse-7-world-trade.html).
4 Rather’s statement is available on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvx904dAw0o).
5 See the video 911 Eyewitness (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=65460757734339444) at 29:05.
6 See “Danny Jowenko on WTC 7 Controlled Demolition,” YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=877gr6xtQIc), or, for more of the interview, “Jowenko WTC 7 Demolition Interviews,” in three parts (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3DRhwRN06I&feature=related).
7 “Michael Hess, WTC7 Explosion Witness,” YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUfiLbXMa64). Hess should have said “down to the sixth floor.” As Barry Jennings later clarified, the explosion that blocked their descent occurred when they reached the sixth floor, after which they walked back up to the eighth floor, where they waited to be rescued; see “Barry Jennings-–9/11 WTC7 Full Uncut Interview,” Part 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxUj6UgPODo), at 5:08-5:33.
8 See “Barry Jennings – 9/11 Early Afternoon ABC 7 Interview” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LO5V2CJpzI).
9 This statement could previously be seen in “Barry Jennings-–9/11 WTC7 Full Uncut Interview,” Part 1, at 3:57-4:05. But at the time this essay was posted, this portion of the interview had been blocked from the Internet, because it is now in the film Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup.
10 Quoted in Chris Bull and Sam Erman, eds., At Ground Zero: Young Reporters Who Were There Tell Their Stories (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2002), 97.
11 Bartmer’s statement is quoted in Paul Joseph Watson, “NYPD Officer Heard Building 7 Bombs,” Prison Planet, February 10, 2007 (http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2007/100207heardbombs.htm).
12 This unnamed medical student can be seen making this statement in 911 Eyewitness (at 31:30).
13 James Glanz and Eric Lipton, “A Search for Clues in Towers’ Collapse,” New York Times, February 2, 2002 (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E0DE153DF931A35751C0A9649C8B63).
14 Ibid.
15 Joan Killough-Miller, “The ‘Deep Mystery’ of Melted Steel,” WPI Transformations, Spring 2002 (http://www.wpi.edu/News/Transformations/2002Spring/steel.html).
16 James Glanz, “Engineers Suspect Diesel Fuel in Collapse of 7 World Trade Center,” New York Times, November 29, 2001 (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/29/nyregion/29TOWE.html). I have here quoted Glanz’s paraphrase of Barnett’s statement.
17 See Kenneth Change, “Scarred Steel Holds Clues, And Remedies,” New York Times, October 2, 2001 (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B05E6DC123DF931A35753C1A9679C8B63).
18 For the melting point of iron, see “Iron,” WebElements: The Periodic Table on the Web (http://www.webelements.com/iron/physics.html). The description of thermate is from “Thermite,” Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite), as of May 25, 2010.
“Iron,” WebElements: The Periodic Table on the Web (http://www.webelements.com/iron/physics.html).
19 Jonathan Barnett, Ronald R. Biederman, and R. D. Sisson, Jr., “Limited Metallurgical Examination,” Appendix C of World Trade Center Building Performance Study, FEMA, 2002 (http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_apc.pdf); also available on Jim Hoffman’s website (http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/metallurgy/WTC_apndxC.htm); see “C.2: Sample 1 (from WTC 7),” pages 1-5.
20 See FEMA, World Trade Center Building Performance Study (http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_ch5.pdf), Chap. 5, Sect. 6.2, “Probable Collapse Sequence,” at page 31.
21 “A Word about Our Poll of American Thinking Toward the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks,” Zogby International, May 24, 2006 (http://www.zogby.com/features/features.dbm?ID=231).
22 In the ensuing exchange, Judge Lehner showed that he was not completely unaware of this building’s destruction, asking if it was “the one that has been rebuilt.” Shortly thereafter, however, the judge confused this building with the Twin Towers. See pages 16-19 of “Proceedings, Christopher Burke et al, Petitioners. vs. Michael McSweeney as City Clerk of New York and Clerk of the City Council of New York and the Board of Elections in the City of New York, before Honorable Edward H. Lehner, J. S. C., Supreme Court of the State of New York, September 29, 2009.”
23 Glanz, “Engineers Have a Culprit in the Strange Collapse of 7 World Trade Center.”
24 “National Construction Safety Team Advisory Committee 2003 Report to Congress” (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/NCSTAC2003ReporttoCongressFinal.pdf), 4.
25 NIST, “Answers to Frequently Asked Questions,” August 30, 2006 (http://911research.wtc7.net/reviews/nist/WTC_FAQ_reply.html), Question 14. This is the original version of the document, which contained what is stated in the text. But NIST, never a stickler for retaining past statements that later prove embarrassing, “updated” this document over two years later, on January 28, 2008 (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm). This “updated” version of this 2006 document gives the reader the impression that NIST in 2006 – instead of having said, “It is anticipated that a draft report will be released by early 2007” – actually said: “It is anticipated that a draft report will be released for public comment by July 2008 and that the final report will be released shortly thereafter.” The original document, as updated August 30, 2006, has been preserved in Jim Hoffman, “NIST’s World Trade Center FAQ” (http://911research.wtc7.net/reviews/nist/WTC_FAQ_reply.html).
26 NIST, “WTC Investigation Overview,” December 18, 2007 (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/NCSTAC_December18(Sunder).pdf). Like the NIST 2006 document discussed in the previous note, this one has also been revised, so that it now says merely July and August, 2008, respectively, without giving exact dates.
27 See “WTC 7: The Smoking Gun of 9/11” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwSc7NPn8Ok), and Paul Joseph Watson, “BBC’s 9/11 Yellow Journalism Backfires: Building 7 Becomes the Achilles Heel of the Official Conspiracy Theory,” Prison Planet, March 5, 2007 (http://infowars.wordpress.com/2007/03/05/bbcs-911-yellow-journalism-backfires).
28 “Progress Report on the NIST Building and Fire Investigation into the World Trade Center Disaster,” National Institute of Standards and Technology (henceforth NIST), December 9, 2002 (http://www.fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/build03/PDF/b03040.pdf); “Progress Report on the Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster,” NIST, May 2003 (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/MediaUpdate%20_FINAL_ProgressReport051303.pdf).
29 Interim Report on WTC 7, NIST, June 2004 (http://wtc.nist.gov/progress_report_june04/appendixl.pdf).
30 “WTC 7 Collapse,” NIST, April 5, 2005 (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/WTC%20Part%20IIC%20-%20WTC%207%20Collapse%20Final.pdf).
31 “Answers to Frequently Asked Questions,” NIST, August 30, 2006 ((http://911research.wtc7.net/reviews/nist/WTC_FAQ_reply.html), Question 14 (see note 25, above).
32 Shyam Sunder, “Opening Statement,” NIST Press Briefing, August 21, 2008 (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/opening_remarks_082108.html).
33 Associated Press, “Report: Fire, Not Bombs, Leveled WTC 7 Building,” USA Today, August 21, 2008 (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-08-21-wtc-nist_N.htm).
34 National Science Foundation, Office of Inspector General, “What is Research Misconduct?” in New Research Misconduct Policies, (http://www.nsf.gov/oig/session.pdf). This document is undated, but internal evidence suggests that it was published in 2001.
35 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Structural Fire Response and Probable Collapse Sequence of World Trade Center Building 7, November 2008, Vol. 1 (http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201-9%20Vol%201.pdf) : 324.
36 Jonathan Barnett, Ronald R. Biederman, and Richard D. Sisson, Jr., “Limited Metallurgical Examination,” FEMA, World Trade Center Building Performance Study, May 2002, Appendix C (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/AppendixC-fema403_apc.pdf): 13.
37 Dr. Arden L. Bement, Jr., testimony before the House Science Committee Hearing on “The Investigation of the World Trade Center Collapse,” May 1, 2002 (http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/wtc/official/nist/bement.htm). In the quoted statement, “FEMA” replaces “BPAT,” which is the abbreviation for “Building Performance Assessment Team,” the name of the ASCE team that prepared this report for FEMA.
38 “Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation,” August 21, 2008 (http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/nist/wtc_qa_082108.html). In response to the question, “Why didn't the investigators look at actual steel samples from WTC 7? ” NIST replied: “Steel samples were removed from the site before the NIST investigation began. In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, debris was removed rapidly from the site to aid in recovery efforts and facilitate emergency responders’ efforts to work around the site. Once it was removed from the scene, the steel from WTC 7 could not be clearly identified. Unlike the pieces of steel from WTC 1 and WTC 2, which were painted red and contained distinguishing markings, WTC 7 steel did not contain such identifying characteristics.” This document was originally available on NIST’s website (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wtc_qa_082108.html). However, like some other NIST reports, it has been removed. But is preserved at Jim Hoffman’s website (http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/nist/wtc_qa_082108.html). This statement was repeated in a version of this document that was updated April 21, 2009, which is also preserved at Hoffman’s site (http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/nist/wtc_qa_042109.html).
39 In NIST NCSTAR 1-3C, Damage and Failure Modes of Structural Steel Components, September 2005 (http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201-3C%20Damage%20and%20Failure%20Modes.pdf), the authors, Stephen W. Banovic and Timothy Foecke, referred to “the analysis of the steel from WTC 7 (Sample #1 from Appendix C, BPAT/FEMA study) where corrosion phases and morphologies were able to determine a possible temperature region” (233). The BBC program was The Conspiracy Files: 9/11 – The Third Tower, July 6, 2008 (available at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9072062020229593250# and http://www.911blogger.com/node/16541); the statement by Barnett is at 48:00. I am indebted to Chris Sarns for both of these discoveries.
40 RJ Lee Group, “WTC Dust Signature,” Expert Report, May 2004 (http://www.nyenvirolaw.org/WTC/130%20Liberty%20Street/Mike%20Davis%20LMDC%20130%20Liberty%20Documents/Signature%20of%20WTC%20dust/WTCDustSignature_ExpertReport.051304.1646.mp.pdf): 11; “WTC Dust Signature Study: Composition and Morphology,” December 2003 (http://www.nyenvirolaw.org/WTC/130%20Liberty%20Street/Mike%20Davis%20LMDC%20130%20Liberty%20Documents/Signature%20of%20WTC%20dust/WTC%20Dust%20Signature.Composition%20and%20Morphology.Final.pdf): 17. For discussion of the differences between these two versions of the RJ Lee report, see Griffin, The Mysterious Collapse, 40-42.
41 Steven E. Jones et al., "Extremely High Temperatures during the World Trade Center Destruction," Journal of 9/11 Studies, January 2008 (http://journalof911studies.com/articles/WTCHighTemp2.pdf): 8.
42 Ibid., 4-5.
43 “Molybdenum,” WebElements: The Periodic Table on the Web (http://www.webelements.com/molybdenum/physics.html).
44 For the published USGS report, see Heather A. Lowers and Gregory P. Meeker, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of the Interior, “Particle Atlas of World Trade Center Dust,” 2005 (http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1165/508OF05-1165.html). The USGS’s evidence for the molybdenum-rich spherule is reported in Steven Jones et al., “Extremely High Temperatures,” 4.
45 Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, et al., “Active Thermitic Material Observed in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe,” The Open Chemical Physics Journal 2 (2009): 7-31 (http://www.bentham.org/open/tocpj/openaccess2.htm).
46 According to the Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations, put out by the National Fire Protection Association, investigators should, in seeking to determine the cause of a fire, look for evidence of accelerants, which are any substances that could be used to ignite a fire or accelerate its progress (National Fire Protection Association’s 921 Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations, 1998 Edition, Section 12-2.4 (http://www.interfire.org/res_file/92112m.asp), and thermite mixtures are explicitly classified as accelerants (Section 19.2.4, “Exotic Accelerants” and “Thermite Mixtures”).
47 “Answers to Frequently Asked Questions,” NIST, August 30, 2006 (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm), Question 12 (NIST’s answer to this question has not been “updated” [see note 25, above]).
48 Jennifer Abel, “Theories of 9/11,” Hartford Advocate, January 29, 2008 (http://www.ae911truth.org/press/23).
49 National Science Foundation, “What is Research Misconduct?”
50 See Griffin, The Mysterious Collapse, 150-55.
51 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Vol. 1: 346.
52 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Vol. 2 (http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201-9%20Vol%202.pdf), 462.
53 See NIST, Interim Report on WTC 7 (http://wtc.nist.gov/progress_report_june04/appendixl.pdf): L-6-7, and Griffin, The Mysterious Collapse, 212-15.
54 Interim Report on WTC 7: L-26. This contradiction is pointed out in a video, “NIST Report on WTC7 Debunked and Exposed!” YouTube, December 28, 2008 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFpbZ-aLDLY), at 0:45 to 1:57.
55 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Vol. 2: 384, Figure 9-11.
56 This cartoon can be seen on the Internet (http://www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/pages/gallery.php).
57 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Draft for Public Comment, Vol. 2 (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/NIST_NCSTAR_1-9_vol2_for_public_comment.pdf), 595-96. In “Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation,” which was issued August 21, 2008 (simultaneously with NIST’s Draft for Public Comment), NIST repeated this denial, saying: “WTC 7 did not enter free fall.” As pointed out in note 38, above, NIST has removed this document from its website, but it has been preserved by Jim Hoffman (http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/nist/wtc_qa_082108.html).
58 “WTC 7 Technical Briefing,” NIST, August 26, 2008. NIST has removed this video and the accompanying transcript from the Internet. However, Nate Flach has made the video available at Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/11941571), and the transcript, entitled “NIST Technical Briefing on Its Final Draft Report on WTC 7 for Public Comment,” is available at David Chandler’s website (http://911speakout.org/NIST_Tech_Briefing_Transcript.pdf).
59 Ibid.
60 David Chandler, “WTC7 in Freefall - No Longer Controversial,” September 4, 2008 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVCDpL4Ax7I), at 2:45.
61 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Vol. 2: 607. The same point is stated in the brief version of NIST’s WTC 7 report, NIST NCSTAR 1A, which states: “In Stage 2, the north face descended at gravitational acceleration, as the buckled columns provided negligible support to the upper portion of the north face. This free fall drop continued for approximately 8 stories” (45).
62 Chandler, “WTC7 in Freefall – No Longer Controversial,” at 3:27.
63 “Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation,” NIST, updated April 21, 2009 (http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/nist/wtc_qa_042109.html). (This version was “updated” from the original, which was posted August 21, 2008: see notes 38 and 57, above.) This updated document, originally available at NIST’s website (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wtc_qa_082108.html), has been removed it. It is preserved, however, at Jim Hoffman’s website (http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/nist/wtc_qa_042109.html).
64 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Draft for Public Comment, Vol. 2: 595-96, 596, 610.
65 See my discussion in Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé (Northampton: Olive Branch, 2008), 30-31.
66 “The Myth of Implosion” (http://www.implosionworld.com/dyk2.html).
67 As to how domestic terrorists could have gotten access, an answer becomes possible if we are aware that Larry Silverstein, who owned Building 7 and had recently taken out a lease on the rest of the World Trade Center, stood to make several billion dollars if it was destroyed in a terrorist attack, and that a brother and a cousin of George W. Bush were principals of a company that handled security for the World Trade Center (Griffin, Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory [Northampton: Olive Branch, 2007], 111).
68 Glanz, “Engineers Have a Culprit in the Strange Collapse of 7 World Trade Center.”
69 Symposium on State Crimes Against Democracy, American Behavioral Scientist 53 (February 2010): 783-939 (http://abs.sagepub.com/content/vol53/issue6). Online access is expensive, but the entire issue can be purchased for $24 (journals@sagepub.com).
70 Lance deHaven-Smith, “Beyond Conspiracy Theory: Patterns of High Crime in American Government,” American Behavioral Scientist 53 (February 2010): 795-825 (http://abs.sagepub.com/content/vol53/issue6), at 796.
71 Ibid. 797.
72 Ibid., 783.
73 Matthew T. Witt, “Pretending Not to See or Hear, Refusing to Signify: The Farce and Tragedy of Geocentric Public Affairs Scholarship,” American Behavioral Scientist 53 (February 2010): 921-39 (http://abs.sagepub.com/content/vol53/issue6), at 934.
74 Ibid., 932 (emphasis in original).
75 Ibid., 932.
76 Ibid.
77 “Statement of September 11th Advocates Regarding the Release of the NIST Final Draft of Collapse of WTC7” (signed by Patty Casazza, Monica Gabrielle, Mindy Kleinberg, and Lorie Van Auken), September 26, 2008 (http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20080927030009489).
78 Daniel Hofnung, Patriots Question 9/11 (http://patriotsquestion911.com/engineers.html#Dhofnung).
79 Chester W. Gearhart, Patriots Question 9/11 (http://patriotsquestion911.com/engineers.html#Gearhart).
80 “Danish Scientist Niels Harrit, on Nanothermite in the WTC Dust (English subtitles),” YouTube, April 6, 2009 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_tf25lx_3o).
81 NIST NCSTAR 1A, Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 (brief report), November 2008 (http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201A.pdf): 51; NIST NCSTAR 1-9: 119.
82 Jeremy Baker, “Was WTC 7 a Dud?” Serendipity, 2005 (http://www.serendipity.li/wot/wtc7_dud.htm).
83 Jeremy Baker, “Last Building Standing,” Serendipity, 2007 (http://www.serendipity.li/wot/last_building_standing.pdf). This is a revised and updated version of Baker, “Was WTC 7 a Dud?”
84 NIST NCSTAR 1: 1-9: 194, 243, 244, 247.
85 Peter Dale Scott, “9/11, Deep State Violence, and the Hope of Internet Politics,” Global Research, June 11, 2008 (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9289).
86 Ibid. More recently, Scott has ceased speaking about a “deep state,” because it suggests an organized entity with a location, and speaks instead only of “deep events” brought about by “deep forces.” This revised language is reflected in his forthcoming book, American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), in which he refers to “deep events” as “events that are systematically ignored, suppressed, or falsified in public (and even internal) government, military, and intelligence documents as well as in the mainstream media and public consciousness,” and says that underlying these events “is frequently the involvement of deep forces linked either to the drug traffic or to agencies of surveillance (or to both together).” He then adds: “A clearly defined deep event will combine both internal features – evidence, such as a discernible cover-up, that aspects are being suppressed – and external features – an ongoing and perhaps irresoluble controversy as to what happened.”
87 Laurie A. Manwell, “In Denial of Democracy: Social Psychological Implications for Public Discourse on State Crimes Against Democracy Post-9/11,” American Behavioral Scientist 53 (February 2010): 848-84 (http://abs.sagepub.com/content/vol53/issue6), at 867-70.
88 Ibid., 863.
89 Matthew T. Witt and Alexander Kouzmin, “Sense Making Under ‘Holographic’ Conditions: Framing SCAD Research,” American Behavioral Scientist 53 (February 2010): 783-94 (http://abs.sagepub.com/content/vol53/issue6), at 789.
90 Publishers Weekly, November 24, 2008 (http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/1-legacy/15-web-exclusive-book-reviews/article/6017-web-exclusive-reviews-week-of-11-24-2008-.html).
91 Jennifer Harper, "Explosive News," Washington Times, February 22, 2010 (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/22/inside-the-beltway-70128635/?feat=home_columns).
92 Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (http://ae911truth.org).
93 On the failure of the press release about WTC 7 by the Jersey Girls (see note 77, above) to receive any press coverage: Email letter from Lorie Van Auken, May 23, 2010.
94 This essay is based on a lecture of the same title delivered at a conference, “Understanding Deep Politics,” held May 14-16, 2010, in Santa Cruz, California, which was organized by Gabriel Day, Cheryl Curtiss, Jason King, and Kevin Zenzie.
By: Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
May 27th, 2010
Respected Middle East expert and former BBC presenter Alan Hart has broken his silence on 9/11, by revealing that the world’s most prominent civil engineering company told him directly that the collapse of the twin towers was a controlled demolition.
Speaking on the Kevin Barrett show yesterday, Hart
said he thought the 9/11 attack probably started as a Muslim operation headed up by Osama Bin Laden but that the plot was subsequently hijacked and carried out by Mossad agents in collusion with elements of the CIA, adding that since its formation, Israel has penetrated every Arab government and terrorist organization.
“My guess is that at an early point they said to the bad guys in the CIA – hey this operation’s running what do we do, and the Zionists and the neo-cons said let’s use it,” said Hart, making reference to how top neo-cons like Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and their fellow Project For a New American Century authors had called for a “catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor,” the year before 9/11.
“The twin towers were brought down by a controlled ground explosion, not the planes,” said Hart, adding that this view was based on his close friendship with consultants who work with the world’s leading civil engineering and construction firm.
Hart asked the company to study the collapse of the twin towers, after which they told him directly, “There’s absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the towers were brought down by a controlled ground explosion.”
Hart then explained how the five dancing Israelis seen celebrating the attack on the World Trade Center in New Jersey as it unfolded, who turned out to be Mossad agents, proves at at a minimum Israel knew the attack was going to happen. Hart went further in speculating that the planes had been fitted with transponders and that the Israelis were guiding them in to the towers.
Host Barrett pointed out that to carry out the successful controlled demolition of three of the biggest buildings in history, the conspirators would have to ensure that they were hit, making the use of remote controlled airliners a distinct possibility. In addition, Barrett mentioned the fact that he had interviewed numerous pilots who dismissed the chances of accurately guiding a huge commercial airliner into a building while flying at sea level at around 600 miles per hour, especially considering the alleged 9/11 hijackers struggled to even fly basic Cessna light aircraft.
“Sounding a chilling note, Hart added that the U.S. is in grave danger of an Israeli-instigated false-flag nuclear attack, perhaps using an American nuclear weapon stolen from Minot Air Force Base during the “loose nukes” rogue operation of August, 2007. The motive would be to trigger a U.S. war with Iran, and perhaps to finish the ethnic cleansing of Palestine under cover of war–which Hart is convinced the Zionists are planning to do as soon as the opportunity presents itself,” writes host Barratt.
Given his biography and standing, Hart’s comments are not to be taken lightly. Hart is a former Middle East Chief Correspondent for ITN News and has also presented for BBC Panorama specializing in the Middle East. He was also a war reporter in Vietnam and the first journalist to reach Suez Canal with the Israeli army in 1967. Over the decades, Hart has developed close relationships with numerous high profile political figures, including the Shah of Iran, Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres.
Hart has been a successful author for years and has no reason to fabricate the fact that a top construction firm told him point blank that the towers were brought down in a controlled demolition.
In forwarding this information, Hart joins legions of other credible experts who to some extent or other have all publicly challenged the official 9/11 story, with many outright stating that the attacks were an inside job, people like 20-year decorated CIA veteran Robert Baer, who told a radio host that “the evidence points at” 9/11 having had aspects of being an inside job.
In addition, no less than 1198 architectural and engineering specialists have signed a petition demanding Congress re-open an official investigation into the 9/11 attack and the collapse of the twin towers. (Editor's bold emphasis throughout)
Listen to the full interview with Alan Hart below. The 9/11 discussion begins at around the 35 minute mark.
Building What? How SCADs Can Be Hidden in Plain Sight: The 9/11 "Official Story" and the Collapse of WTC Building Seven
by Prof David Ray Griffin
Global Research,
May 30, 2010
At 5:21 PM on 9/11, Building 7 of the World Trade Center collapsed, even though it had not been hit by a plane – a fact that is important because of the widespread acceptance of the idea, in spite of its scientific absurdity, that the Twin Towers collapsed because of the combined effect of the impact of the airliners plus the ensuing jet-fuel-fed fires. The collapse of World Trade Center 7 (WTC 7) thereby challenges the official account of the destruction of the World Trade Center, according to which it was accomplished by al-Qaeda hijackers, even if one accepts the government’s scientifically impossible account of the Twin Towers. This fact was recently emphasized in the title of a review article based on my 2009 book, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7,[1] by National Medal of Science-winner Lynn Margulis: “Two Hit, Three Down – The Biggest Lie.”[2]
1. Why the Collapse of WTC 7 Created an Extraordinary Problem
The collapse of WTC 7 created an extraordinary problem for the official account of 9/11 for several reasons.
An Unprecedented Occurrence
One reason is that, because of the collapse of WTC 7, the official account of 9/11 includes the dubious claim that, for the first time in the known universe, a steel-frame high-rise building was brought down by fire, and science looks askance at claims of unprecedented occurrences regarding physical phenomena. New York Times writer James Glanz, who himself has a Ph.D. in physics, wrote: “[E]xperts said no building like it, a modern, steel-reinforced high-rise, had ever collapsed because of an uncontrolled fire.” Glanz then quoted a structural engineer as saying: “[W]ithin the structural engineering community, [WTC 7] is considered to be much more important to understand [than the Twin Towers],” because engineers had no answer to the question, “why did 7 come down?”[3]
Visual Evidence of Implosion
Equally remarkable, besides the mere fact that this building came down, was the way it collapsed: straight down, in virtual free fall, making the destruction of this building appear to be an example of the type of controlled demolition known as “implosion,” in which explosives and/or incendiaries are used to slice the building’s steel support columns in such a way as to cause the building to collapse into its own footprint. CBS anchor Dan Rather, not one to let a remarkable fact go unremarked, said:
“[I]t’s reminiscent of those pictures we’ve all seen . . . on television . . . , where a building was deliberately destroyed by well-placed dynamite to knock it down.”[4]
Dan Rather, moreover, was not the only reporter to make such a comment. Al Jones, a reporter for WINS NYC News Radio, said: “I turned in time to see what looked like a skyscraper implosion – looked like it had been done by a demolition crew.”[5]
Moreover, whereas Jones and Rather, being laymen in these matters, merely said that the collapse of Building 7 looked like a controlled demolition, experts, upon seeing the video, could tell immediately that it actually was a controlled demolition. In 2006, for example, a Dutch filmmaker asked Danny Jowenko, the owner of a controlled demolition company in the Netherlands, to comment on a video of the collapse of WTC 7, without telling him what it was. (Jowenko had been unaware that a third building had collapsed on 9/11.) After viewing the video, Jowenko said: “They simply blew up columns, and the rest caved in afterwards. . . . This is controlled demolition.” When asked if he was certain, he replied: “Absolutely, it’s been imploded. This was a hired job. A team of experts did this.”[6]
Testimonies about Explosions
Besides the obviousness from the very appearance of the collapse of Building 7 that it was a product of controlled demotion, there were testimonies about explosions in this building.
One of these was provided by Michael Hess, New York City’s corporation counsel and a close friend of Mayor Rudy Giuliani. While on his way back to City Hall, Hess was stopped for an interview at 11:57 that morning, during which he said:
“I was up in the emergency management center on the twenty-third floor [of WTC 7], and when all the power went out in the building, another gentleman and I walked down to the eighth floor [sic] where there was an explosion and we were trapped on the eighth floor with smoke, thick smoke, all around us, for about an hour and a half. But the New York Fire Department . . . just came and got us out.”[7]
Hess thereby reported a mid-morning explosion in WTC 7.
The other gentleman, Barry Jennings of the New York City Housing Authority, reported the same thing during another on-the-street interview, reporting that he and “Mr. Hess” had been walking down the stairs when they became trapped by a “big explosion.”[8] Jennings, in fact, said that explosions continued going off while they were waiting to be rescued.[9]
There were also reports of explosions in the late afternoon, just as WTC 7 started coming down. Reporter Peter Demarco of the New York Daily News said:
“[T]here was a rumble. The building's top row of windows popped out. Then all the windows on the thirty-ninth floor popped out. Then the thirty-eighth floor. Pop! Pop! Pop! was all you heard until the building sunk into a rising cloud of gray.”[10]
NYPD officer Craig Bartmer gave the following report:
“I was real close to Building 7 when it fell down. . . . That didn't sound like just a building falling down to me . . . . There's a lot of eyewitness testimony down there of hearing explosions. . . . [A]ll of a sudden. . . I looked up, and . . . [t]he thing started pealing in on itself. . . . I started running . . . and the whole time you're hearing ‘boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.’”[11]
A New York University medical student, who had been serving as an emergency medical worker that day, gave this report:
“[W]e heard this sound that sounded like a clap of thunder. . . . [T]urned around – we were shocked. . . . [I]t looked like there was a shockwave ripping through the building and the windows all busted out. . . . [A]bout a second later the bottom floor caved out and the building followed after that.”[12]
Physical Evidence
In addition to the visual and testimonial evidence, there was clear physical evidence that explosives and incendiaries were used to bring down WTC 7.
Swiss-Cheese Steel: Within a few months of 9/11, three professors from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) had issued a report about a piece of steel from Building 7 that was described in a New York Times story by James Glanz and Eric Lipton as “[p]erhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation.”13 Part of the mystery was the fact that the steel was “extremely thin,” indicating that the steel had “melted away,” even though “no fire in any of the buildings was believed to be hot enough to melt steel outright.” Another part of the mystery was that atoms in the steel seemed to have combined with sulfur “to form compounds that melt at lower temperatures,” but as to the source of the sulfur, “no one knows.”[14]
Describing this mysterious piece of steel more fully, an article entitled “The ‘Deep Mystery’ of Melted Steel” in WPI’s magazine, said:
“[S]teel – which has a melting point of 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit – may weaken and bend, but does not melt during an ordinary office fire. Yet metallurgical studies . . . reveal that . . . a eutectic reaction . . . caus[ed] intergranular melting capable of turning a solid steel girder into Swiss cheese . . .. A one-inch column has been reduced to half-inch thickness. Its edges – which are curled like a paper scroll – have been thinned to almost razor sharpness. Gaping holes – some larger than a silver dollar – let light shine through a formerly solid steel flange. This Swiss cheese appearance shocked all of the fire-wise professors, who expected to see distortion and bending – but not holes. A eutectic compound is a mixture [involving sulfur]. . . . ‘The important questions,' says [one of the professors], ‘are how much sulfur do you need, and where did it come from?’”[15]
The thinning and the holes even suggested that the steel had vaporized. Explaining as early as November 2001 why fire could not account for this mysterious steel, Glanz paraphrased one of the three WPI professors, Jonathan Barnett, as saying that it “appear[ed] to have been partly evaporated in extraordinarily high temperatures.”[16]
Another New York Times story reported that the same phenomenon was described by Professor Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl of the University of California at Berkeley, who had received a National Science Foundation grant to spend two weeks at Ground Zero studying steel from the buildings. According to reporter Kenneth Change, Professor Astaneh-Asl, speaking of a horizontal I-beam from WTC 7, said: “Parts of the flat top of the I, once five-eighths of an inch thick, had vaporized.”[17]
These reports clearly showed that something other than fire had been making things happen in the buildings, because the fires could not possibly have been higher than 1800 degrees Fahrenheit, while the boiling point of steel is roughly the same as that of iron, which is 5182°F. But even if the steel had not evaporated but had simply melted, that by itself would have proved the point, because the melting point of steel is only a little less than that of iron, which is 2800°F. (An obvious source of both the melting and the sulfidation would be a well-known incendiary, thermate – a “mixture of thermite and sulfur . . . which lowers the melting point of iron it contacts when reacting by forming a eutectic system,” which is “useful in cutting through steel.”)[18]
Evidence in Plain Sight
Therefore, clear evidence against the official account of Building 7, according to which it was brought down by fire, existed in plain sight in the form of videos of its collapse, published testimonies about explosions in the building, and physical evidence reported in the New York Times. The reasonable inference to draw from this evidence – namely, that the official account is false – was reinforced by the first official report on this building’s collapse, which was issued in 2002 by FEMA. Besides including as an appendix the paper by the WPI professors containing the study of the Swiss-cheese piece of steel recovered from WTC 7 – a study that attributed the erosion to “oxidation and sulfidation” while adding: “No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified”[19] – the engineers who wrote the FEMA report admitted that their “best hypothesis” about why WTC 7 collapsed had “only a low probability of occurrence.”[20]
Failure to Become Well Known
In addition to all these facts, WTC 7 was a very big building, being 47 stories high and having a base about the size of a football field. Although it was dwarfed by the 110-story Twin Towers, it would have been the tallest building in half of the states in the nation. For all of these reasons, the collapse of this building should have become one of the best-known facts about 9/11. But it did not.
2. Widespread Ignorance about WTC 7
A Zogby poll in May 2006 found that 43 percent of the American people were unaware that WTC 7 had collapsed,[21] and that same year, as mentioned earlier, Danny Jowenko of the Netherlands still did not know about it, even though controlled demolition was his field.
A dramatic example of the fact that this building’s collapse has not been prominent in the public consciousness was provided in a New York City courtroom in September 2009. Judge Edward Lehner was hearing arguments about a petition sponsored by NYC CAN to allow residents to vote on whether New York City should have its own investigation of the World Trade Center attacks. After Judge Lehner had observed that the 9/11 Commission had carried out an investigation and issued a report, Dennis McMahon, a lawyer for NYC CAN, said that this report left many unanswered questions. “One of the biggest questions,” he added, “is why did Building 7 come down” – at which point Judge Lehner asked: “Building what?” McMahon replied: “World Trade Center Seven. There were three buildings that came down.” When the judge, continuing to illustrate his ignorance about this building, asked if it was owned by the Port Authority, McMahon replied that it was owned by Larry Silverstein.[22]
Judge Lehner, it should be emphasized, was not simply an ordinary American citizen. Besides being a judge presiding in New York City, he had been assigned to a case involving the 9/11 attacks in this city. So his ignorance about this building was surprising. And yet it was typical. With his query - “Building what?” – he expressed the ignorance manifested in 2006 by controlled demolition expert Danny Jowenko and almost half of the American people. How can we account for this ignorance?
Abnormal Circumstances
In a New York Times story in November 2001, James Glanz wrote that the collapse of WTC 7 was “a mystery that under normal circumstances would probably have captured the attention of the city and the world.”[23] Clearly these were not normal circumstances.
Part of the abnormality was the fact that Building 7, while huge, was overshadowed by the Twin Towers, which were over twice as tall. This fact by itself, however, would not account for the enormous ignorance of this third building’s collapse. Knowledgeable people had said right away, as Glanz pointed out, that there was a sense in which the collapse of Building 7 should have been the bigger story. Why was it not?
Deliberate Suppression
The answer seems to be that it was a deliberately suppressed story. This conclusion is supported by the following facts:
First, after 9/11 itself, our television networks played videos of the Twin Towers being hit by planes, then coming down, over and over, but the collapse of Building 7 was seldom if ever shown.
Second, when The 9/11 Commission Report was issued in 2004, it did not even mention that Building 7 came down.
Third, after NIST – the National Institute of Standards and Technology – took over from FEMA the task of explaining the destruction of the World Trade Center, it repeatedly delayed its report on WTC 7. In 2003, NIST said that this report would be issued along with its report on the Twin Towers, the draft of which was to appear in September 2004.[24] However, even though NIST’s report on the Twin Towers did not actually appear until 2005, the promised report on WTC 7 was not included: NIST said that it would appear in 2006. But when August of 2006 came, NIST said: “It is anticipated that a draft report [on WTC 7] will be released by early 2007.”[25] But it was not released in 2007 – either early or late. Instead, NIST in December 2007 “projected” that it would release draft reports on July 8, 2008, followed by final reports on August 8, 2008.[26] Instead, the draft report did not appear until August, and the final report not until November of that year – when the Bush-Cheney administration was about to leave office.
Moreover, when in 2008 NIST was accused of having deliberately delayed its report on WTC 7 (which the 9/11 Truth Movement had long considered the “Achilles Heel” or “Smoking Gun” of the official account of 9/11[27]), NIST lied, saying that it had worked on this report only since 2005 and hence for only three years – the same length of time it had worked on its Twin Towers report. Actually, however, NIST had filed progress reports on WTC 7 in December 2002 and May 2003;[28] in June 2004, it published an Interim Report on WTC 7;[29] and in April 2005, NIST released another preliminary report on WTC 7.[30]Then, after ceasing work on this building until after the report on the Twin Towers was issued in October 2005, NIST reported, “the investigation of the WTC 7 collapse resumed.”[31] In truth, therefore, NIST had worked on its report on WTC 7 for almost six years, not merely three. So there was good reason to suspect that this report had been deliberately delayed for as long as possible.
3. NIST’s Draft for Public Comment: Mystery Solved?
Be that as it may, when the Draft for Public Comment did finally appear in August 2008, it was announced at a press conference with much bravado. Shyam Sunder, NIST’s lead investigator for its World Trade Center projects, said:
“Our take-home message today is that the reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery. WTC 7 collapsed because of fires fueled by office furnishings. It did not collapse from explosives.”[32]
The mainstream media for the most part simply repeated Sunder’s claims. For example, an Associated Press story entitled “Report: Fire, Not Bombs, Leveled WTC 7 Building,” began by saying: “Federal investigators said Thursday they have solved a mystery of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks: the collapse of World Trade Center building 7, a source of long-running conspiracy theories.” Then, after reinforcing this message by quoting Sunder’s assurance that “the reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery,” this story concluded by quoting his claim that the science behind NIST’s findings is "incredibly conclusive," so that “[t]he public should really recognize that science is really behind what we have said.”[33]
Reporters, however, could easily have discovered that this was not so. They could have seen, in fact, that NIST’s WTC 7 report repeatedly committed scientific fraud in the technical sense, as defined by the National Science Foundation.
4. NIST's Falsification of Evidence
One type of fraud is falsification, which includes “omitting data.”[34] While claiming that it “found no evidence of a . . . controlled demolition event,”[35] NIST simply omitted an enormous amount of evidence for that conclusion.
Omitting Testimonial Evidence
NIST failed, for one thing, to mention any of the testimonial evidence for explosions. Besides claiming that the event described as a mid-morning explosion by Michael Hess and Barry Jennings was simply the impact of debris from the collapse of the North Tower – which occurred at 10:28 and hence about an hour later than the explosion they had described – NIST failed to mention any of the reports of explosions just as the building started to come down.
Omitting Physical Evidence:
NIST’s report on this building also omitted various types of physical evidence.
The Swiss-Cheese Steel: One of these was the piece of Swiss-cheese steel reported by the three WPI professors in a paper that was, as mentioned earlier, included as an appendix to the 2002 FEMA report. After describing the erosion of this piece of steel, the professors had said: “A detailed study into the mechanisms of this phenomenon is needed.”[36] When NIST took over from FEMA the responsibility of issuing the official reports on the World Trade Center, NIST’s director promised that its reports would address “all major recommendations contained in the [FEMA] report.”[37] However, when NIST’s report on Building 7 appeared in 2008, it did not even mention this mysterious piece of steel, let alone explain how it had been produced. NIST even claimed that no recovered steel from WTC 7 had been identified, because the steel used in this building, unlike the steel used in the Twin Towers, “did not contain . . . identifying characteristics.”[38]
NIST made this claim, incidentally, even though it had previously published a document in which it had referred to steel recovered from WTC 7, including the piece discussed by the WPI professors in the appendix to the FEMA report. This claim about not identifying any steel was made by NIST (in August 2008), moreover, even though one of these professors, Dr. Jonathan Barnett, had during a BBC program on WTC 7 (in July 2008) discussed an “eroded and deformed” piece of steel that he and his colleagues had studied in 2001, explaining that they knew “its pedigree” because “this particular kind of steel” had been used only in WTC 7, not in the Twin Towers.[39]
Melted Iron: Deutsche Bank, which had a building close to the World Trade Center that had been contaminated with dust, hired the RJ Lee Group, a scientific research organization, to prove to its insurance company that the dust contaminating its building was not ordinary building dust, as its insurance company claimed, but had resulted from the destruction of the World Trade Center. Reports issued by the RJ Lee Group in 2003 and 2004 proved that the dust was indeed WTC dust, having its unique chemical signature. Part of this signature, the RJ Lee Group said in its final (2004) report, was “[s]pherical iron . . . particles,” and this meant, it had pointed out in its 2003 report, that iron had “melted during the WTC Event, producing spherical metallic particles.”[40]
The RJ Lee reports thereby provided additional evidence that temperatures had been reached that significantly exceeded those that could have been produced by fire. These reports, which were made known in an article published in January 2008 by a group of scientists led by physicist Steven Jones,[41] were simply ignored by NIST.
Melted Molybdenum: Another study was carried out by scientists at the US Geological Survey. Besides also finding the spherical iron particles, these scientists found that something had melted molybdenum[42] – which has an extremely high melting point: 4,753°F (2,623°C).[43] Although these USGS scientists failed to mention this discovery in the published version of their report, a group of scientists led by Steven Jones, having obtained the USGS team’s data through a FOIA request, reported evidence that this team had devoted serious study to “a molybdenum-rich spherule.”[44] NIST, however, failed to mention this discovery by the US Geological Survey, although it is another federal agency.
Nanothermite: A peer-reviewed report by University of Copenhagen chemist Niels Harrit and several co-authors, including physicist Steven Jones and chemist Kevin Ryan, showed that the WTC dust contained unreacted nanothermite. Unlike ordinary thermite, which is an incendiary, nanothermite is a high explosive.
This report by Harrit, Jones, Ryan, and their colleagues did not appear until 2009,45 so it could not have been mentioned in NIST’s final report, which came out at the end of November 2008. However, given the standard guidelines for the investigation of building fires, NIST should have tested the WTC dust for signs of incendiaries, such as ordinary thermite (including thermate), and explosives, such as nanothermite.[46]
When asked whether it had carried out such tests, NIST said it had not.[47] When a reporter asked NIST spokesman Michael Newman why not, he replied: “[B]ecause there was no evidence of that.” When the reporter asked the obvious follow-up question, “[H]ow can you know there’s no evidence if you don’t look for it first?” Newman replied: “If you’re looking for something that isn’t there, you’re wasting your time . . . and the taxpayers’ money.”[48]
5. NIST’s Fabrication of Evidence
Besides omitting and otherwise falsifying evidence, NIST also committed the type of scientific fraud called fabrication, which means simply “making up results.”[49]
No Girder Shear Studs
For example, in offering its explanation as to how fire caused Building 7 to collapse, NIST said that the culprit was thermal expansion, meaning that the fire heated up the steel, thereby causing it to expand. Expanding steel beams on the 13th floor, NIST claims, caused a steel girder connecting columns 44 and 79 to break loose. Having lost its support, column 79 failed, starting a chain reaction in which all the other columns failed.[50]
Leaving aside the question of whether this is even remotely possible, let us simply ask: Why did that girder fail? NIST’s answer was that it was not connected to the floor slab with sheer studs. NIST wrote: “In WTC 7, no studs were installed on the girders.”[51] In another passage, NIST said: “Floor beams . . . had shear studs, but the girders that supported the floor beams did not have shear studs.”[52]
However, NIST’s Interim Report on WTC 7, which it published in 2004 before it had developed its girder-failure theory, said shear studs were used to anchor “[m]ost of the beams and girders,” including the girder in question.[53]
A Raging 12th Floor Fire at 5:00
Although in its 2004 Interim Report on WTC 7, NIST said that by 4:45 PM, “the fire on Floor 12 was burned out,”[54] it claimed in its 2008 report that at 5:00, just 21 minutes before the building collapsed, the fire on this floor was still going strong.[55]
6. NIST’s Final Report: Affirming a Miracle
NIST’s final report on WTC 7, which appeared in November 2008, was for the most part identical with its draft report, which had appeared in August. But NIST did add a new element: the affirmation of a miracle, meaning a violation of a fundamental law of physics.
This issue is treated in a cartoon in which a professor has written a proof on a chalkboard. Most of the steps consist of mathematical equations, but one of them simply says: “Then a miracle happens.”[56] This is humorous because one thing scientists absolutely cannot do in their scientific work is appeal to miracles, even implicitly. And yet that is what NIST does. I will explain.
NIST’s August 2008 Denial of Free Fall
Members of the 9/11 Truth Movement had long been pointing out that Building 7 came down at the same rate as a free-falling object, or at least virtually so. But in NIST’s Draft for Public Comment, issued in August 2008, it denied this, saying that the time it took for the upper floors – the only floors that are visible on the videos - to come down “was approximately 40 percent longer than the computed free fall time and was consistent with physical principles.”[57]
As this statement implies, any assertion that the building did come down in free fall would not be consistent with physical principles – meaning the laws of physics. Explaining why not, during a “WTC 7 Technical Briefing” on August 26, 2008, Shyam Sunder said:
“[A] free fall time would be [the fall time of] an object that has no structural components below it. . . . [T]he . . . time that it took . . . for those 17 floors to disappear [was roughly 40 percent longer than free fall]. And that is not at all unusual, because there was structural resistance that was provided in this particular case. And you had a sequence of structural failures that had to take place. Everything was not instantaneous.”[58]
In saying this, Sunder was, of course, presupposing NIST’s rejection of controlled demolition – which could have produced a free-fall collapse by causing all 82 columns to fail simultaneously – in favor of NIST’s fire theory, which necessitated a theory of progressive collapse.
Chandler’s Challenge and NIST’s November Admission of Free Fall
In response, high-school physics teacher David Chandler, who was able to speak at this briefing, challenged Sunder’s denial of free fall, stating that Sunder’s “40 percent” claim contradicted “a publicly visible, easily measurable quantity.”[59] Chandler then placed a video on the Internet showing that, by measuring this publicly visible quantity, anyone knowing elementary physics could see that “for about two and a half seconds. . . , the acceleration of the building is indistinguishable from freefall.”[60]
Amazingly, in NIST’s final report, which came out in November 2008, it admitted free fall. Dividing the building’s descent into three stages, NIST described the second phase as “a freefall descent over approximately eight stories at gravitational acceleration for approximately 2.25 s[econds].”[61] So, after presenting over 600 pages of descriptions, photographs, testimonies, graphs, analyses, explanations, and mathematical formulae, NIST says, in effect: “Then a miracle happens.”
Why this would be a miracle was explained by Chandler, who said: “Free fall can only be achieved if there is zero resistance to the motion.”[62] In other words, the upper portion of Building 7 could have come down in free fall only if something had suddenly removed all the steel and concrete in the lower part of the building, which would have otherwise provided resistance. If everything had not been removed and the upper floors had come down in free fall anyway, even for only a second, a miracle – meaning a violation of laws of physics - would have happened.
That was what Sunder himself had explained the previous August, saying that a free-falling object would be one “that has no structural components below it” to offer resistance. But then in November, while still defending its fire theory of collapse, NIST agreed that, as an empirical fact, free fall happened. For a period of 2.25 seconds, NIST admitted, the descent of WTC 7 was characterized by “gravitational acceleration (free fall).”[63]
Knowing that it had thereby affirmed a miracle, NIST no longer claimed that its analysis was consistent with the laws of physics. In its August draft, in which it said that the collapse occurred 40 percent slower than free fall, NIST had repeatedly said that its analysis was “consistent with physical principles.” One encountered this phrase at least three times.[64] In the final report, however, every instance of this phrase had been removed. NIST thereby almost explicitly admitted that its report on WTC 7, by admitting free fall while continuing to deny that explosives and incendiaries were used, is not consistent with the principles of physics.
Implications
NIST thereby implicitly acknowledged that Building 7 was intentionally demolished. It also thereby implicitly admitted the same about the Twin Towers, because the collapses of these buildings manifested many of the same tell-tale signs of controlled demolition as did WTC 7, plus some additional ones, including the horizontal ejection of sections of steel columns, weighing many thousands of pounds, more than 500 feet from the towers. (These ejections occurred at the outset of the collapses, after which the Towers came straight down.).[65]
And with this implicit admission that the collapses were examples of controlled demolition, NIST undermined the al-Qaeda theory of 9/11. Why?
For one thing, the straight-down nature of the collapses of the Twin Towers and Building 7 means that the buildings were subjected to the type of controlled demolition known as “implosion,” which is, in the words of a controlled demolition website, “by far the trickiest type of explosive project,” which “only a handful of blasting companies in the world . . . possess enough experience . . . to perform.”[66] Al-Qaeda terrorists would not have had this kind of expertise.
Second, the only reason to go to the trouble of bringing a building straight down is to avoid damaging nearby buildings. Had the World Trade Center buildings toppled over sideways, they would have caused massive destruction in Lower Manhattan, crushing dozens of other buildings and killing tens of thousands of people. Does anyone believe that, even if al-Qaeda operatives had had the expertise to make the buildings come straight down, they would have had the courtesy?
A third problem is that foreign terrorists could not have obtained access to the buildings for all the hours it would have taken to plant incendiaries and explosives. Only insiders could have done this.[67]
7. Explaining the Ignorance about WTC 7
NIST’s admission that Building 7 came down in free fall for over two seconds should, therefore, have been front-page news. The same is true, moreover, of the various other things I have reported – NIST’s fabrications; NIST’s omission and distortion of testimonial evidence; NIST’s omissions of physical evidence, such as the Swiss-cheese steel and the particles showing that iron and molybdenum had been melted; and the later discovery of nanothermite particles in the WTC dust. Especially given the fact that the collapse of Building 7 had been declared a mystery from the outset, the world should have been waiting with bated breath for every new clue as to why this 47-story building had come down. Upon hearing Building 7 mentioned, nobody in the world with access to CNN should have asked, “Building what?” How do we explain the fact that five and even nine years after the mysterious collapse of this building, ignorance about it was still widespread?
To begin answering this question, let us return to James Glanz’s statement that the collapse of WTC 7 was “a mystery that under normal circumstances would probably have captured the attention of the city and the world.”[68] As I stated before, the abnormality seems to have been such that videos and even the very fact of this building’s collapse were deliberately suppressed. What was this abnormality?
SCADs
A symposium in the February 2010 issue of American Behavioral Scientist, one of our leading social science journals, argues that social scientists need to develop a scientific approach to studying an increasingly important type of criminality: State Crimes Against Democracy, abbreviated SCADs,[69] understood as “concerted actions . . . by government insiders intended to manipulate democratic processes and undermine popular sovereignty.” Having the “potential to subvert political institutions and entire governments . . . [SCADs] are high crimes that attack democracy itself.”[70]
Distinguishing between SCADs that have been officially proven, such as “the Watergate break-ins and cover-up . . . , the secret wars in Laos and Cambodia . . . , the illegal arms sales and covert operations in Iran-Contra . . . , and the effort to discredit Joseph Wilson by revealing his wife’s status as an intelligence agent,” on the one hand, and suspected SCADs for which there is good evidence, on the other, the symposium authors include in the latter category “the fabricated attacks on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964 . . . , the “October Surprises” in the presidential elections of 1968 . . . and 1980 . . . , the assassinations of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy . . . , the election breakdowns in 2000 and 2004 . . . , the numerous defense failures on September 11, 2001 . . . , and the misrepresentation of intelligence to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq.”[71]
Besides regarding 9/11 as one of the suspected SCADs for which there is good evidence, this symposium treats it as its primary example. The abstract for the introductory essay begins by asserting: “The ellipses of due diligence riddling the official account of the 9/11 incidents continue being ignored by scholars of policy and public administration.”[72] The symposium’s final essay, criticizing the majority of the academic world for its “blithe dismissal of more than one law of thermodynamics” that is violated by the official theory of the World Trade Center collapses,[73] also criticizes the academy for its failure to protest when “Professor Steven Jones found himself forced out of a tenured position for merely reminding the world that physical laws, about which there is no dissent whatsoever, contradict the official theory of the World Trade Center Towers’ collapse.”[74]
The authors of this symposium point out, moreover, that the official theory of the destruction of the three World Trade Center towers has serious implications for science and engineering. If NIST’s explanation “provides the most robust account of the Towers’ collapse, based on known science,” then some previously accepted physical laws would need to be revised:
“[These laws] would have to succumb, at some point, to the theoretical claims purported to explain the Towers’ collapse: New laws determining when steel melts and the phases at which such material loses its tensile strength would have at some point to replace existing science-based presumptions.”[75]
This revision of physical laws would also have practical implications for building codes: “[T]he specifications of design for all skyscrapers ought, in the public interest, to be subjected to major review.” The acceptance of NIST’s account, therefore, creates an “obvious crisis,” which should be evoking scientific and practical responses.[76]
The practical crisis that should have been caused by NIST’s report on WTC 7 had previously been addressed by four of the “Jersey Girls,” who had been instrumental in getting the 9/11 Commission created. In a statement released in September 2008, they wrote:
“Over the past seven years, the Families of the 9/11 Victims have been repeatedly told by fire experts, engineers and architects that we should NOT FOCUS our efforts on advocating for building and fire code changes based on the collapse of the WTC 1 and 2 towers. We were continuously reminded that the crashing of airplanes into buildings was a unique event. Additionally, we were told that the design and construction of WTC Towers 1 and 2 was unique and that there were no other buildings of that particular height or design in the world. We were repeatedly told that the key was WTC 7 since this building was of conventional design and height, yet it too collapsed without the unique event of an airplane striking it. . . ."
“Dr. Shyam Sunder of NIST . . . stated that WTC 7 met all New York City codes. Yet, WTC 7 is the first steel high-rise building of traditional construction in the United States -- and the world, to completely collapse as a result of fire. According to . . . Dr. Sunder, "there were no flaws with the construction of the building."
“We don't how the rest of the country is feeling about this news, but we are very scared! These findings suggest that ANY EXISTING building is prone to a progressive collapse if a fire should start and the sprinkler system fails for whatever reason. . . ."
“The ultimate purpose of advocating for the $16 million to have NIST study this event was to determine how to make buildings safer in the future. If we are now to believe that any skyscraper is subject to total collapse from fire, why isn't NIST emphasizing the impact on EXISTING buildings? . . . NIST needs to . . . provide guidance for EXISTING buildings."
“NIST should put the most important conclusion in plain English and announce it to the entire country: UNCONTROLLED FIRES IN HIGH-RISE BUILDINGS CAN LEAD TO THEIR TOTAL COLLAPSE. . . . NIST must address this dangerous issue immediately. The future safety of the public and the fire services hangs in the balance.”[77]
Like the SCADs symposium, this brilliant piece of satire makes clear that NIST’s explanation of WTC 7’s collapse should have created a crisis in many fields, both theoretical and practical. The implications of NIST’s explanation should have been extensively discussed in technical journals of various types and then in newspapers and on television programs and radio talk shows. But no such discussion occurred. The worlds of physics, engineering, building codes, and public safety continued on as if the report had never been issued. How can we understand this?
Hiding the Most Obvious Evidence that 9/11 Was a SCAD
If the reason why the collapse of WTC 7 did not occur “under normal circumstances” is the fact that it was part of 9/11, which was a SCAD, then it would not be surprising that the collapse of this building, which “under normal circumstances would probably have captured the attention of the city and the world,” did not do so.
If 9/11 was a SCAD, the collapse of WTC 7 would not have been allowed to capture the world’s attention for the reasons mentioned earlier: Unlike the Twin Towers, it was not hit by a plane; because of this, there was no jet fuel to spread big fires to many floors; its collapse, unlike that of each of the Twin Towers, looked exactly like a classic implosion, in which the collapse begins from the bottom and the building folds in upon itself, ending up almost entirely in its own footprint; and the videos show that it came down, at least part of the way, in absolute free fall. The fact that Building 7 was brought down by controlled demolition was, therefore, more obvious.
This greater obviousness is illustrated not only by Danny Jowenko’s response, but also by the many engineers and scientists who joined the 9/11 Truth Movement only after seeing a video of this building’s collapse. For example, Daniel Hofnung, an engineer in Paris, wrote:
“In the years after the 9/11 events, I thought that all I read in professional reviews and French newspapers was true. The first time I understood that it was impossible was when I saw a film about the collapse of WTC 7.”[78]
Likewise, civil engineer Chester Gearhart wrote:
“I have watched the construction of many large buildings and also have personally witnessed 5 controlled demolitions in Kansas City. When I saw the towers fall on 9/11, I knew something was wrong and my first instinct was that it was impossible. When I saw building 7 fall, I knew it was a controlled demolition.”[79]
This video was also decisive for University of Copenhagen chemist Niels Harrit, who later became the first author of the nanothermite paper. When asked how he became involved with these issues, he replied:
“It all started when I saw the collapse of Building 7, the third skyscraper. It collapsed seven hours after the Twin Towers. And there were only two airplanes. When you see a 47-storey building, 186 meters tall, collapse in 6.5 seconds, and you are a scientist, you think “What?” I had to watch it again...and again. I hit the button ten times, and my jaw dropped lower and lower. Firstly, I had never heard of that building before. And there was no visible reason why it should collapse in that way, straight down, in 6.5 seconds. I have had no rest since that day.”[80]
Given these reactions, it is obvious why, if 9/11 was a State Crime Against Democracy, the fact of Building 7’s collapse, especially the video of this collapse, had to be suppressed as much as possible.
WTC 7 as a Dud?
Having made this point, I need to respond to an obvious objection: If those who were responsible for bringing down Building 7 were going to need to suppress the video of its collapse, why did they wait until late in the afternoon, when the air was clean and cameras would be trained on this building, with the consequence that we have perfectly clear videos of the collapse of this building from various angles, each one showing its straight-down free-fall descent? Why did they not bring it down in the morning, shortly after one of the Twin Towers had collapsed, when the resulting dust cloud would have made any images impossible? After the collapse of the North Tower at 10:28, for example, visibility did not return sufficiently for film crews to come back to the area, NIST reported, until 11:00.[81] Had Building 7 been imploded at, say, 10:45, its collapse would still have been a big mystery, but there would have been no videos showing that it had come straight down and, for over two seconds, in absolute free fall.
There are many reasons, as I showed in an appendix to The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7, to believe that this had indeed been the plan, but that this building was, as one researcher put it, “a dud”[82] – meaning that “the demolition system in WTC 7 simply did not respond as intended and the building defiantly remained intact.”[83] As a result, agents were perhaps sent into the building to set fires to provide the basis for a cover-story saying that fires had brought the building down. This hypothesis -- that fires were set in the building only after a controlled demolition system had failed to bring it down in the morning -- would explain why, although the fires in Building 7 were supposedly started by burning debris from the North Tower’s collapse at 10:28, no flames are visible in this building, as NIST admits, until after noon, and on some floors there is no photographic evidence of fire until 3:40 PM or even later.[84]
I have emphasized this likelihood – that the destruction of WTC 7 was a botched operation – because if true it provides the clearest possible illustration of the theme of this essay, namely, that SCADs can be hidden in plain sight. There are literally dozens of problems in the official account of 9/11 sufficiently serious to show the official story to be false. But the clearest proof is provided by the video of this enormous building coming straight down in absolute free fall. And yet even though this proof has existed in plain sight for all these years, the fact that 9/11 was an inside job, and hence a State Crime Against Democracy, has remained a hidden fact, at least in the sense that it is not part of the public conversation. If the destruction of WTC 7 was a botched operation, then the hiding of the fact that 9/11 was a SCAD is even more impressive. How has this hiding been achieved?
Hiding SCADs: The Role of the Mainstream Media
Peter Dale Scott, discussing the erosion of the US Constitution in recent times, suggests that “this erosion has been achieved in part through a series of important deep events in [post-World-War-II] American history – events aspects of which . . . will be ignored or suppressed in the mainstream media.”[85] Indeed, Scott adds:
“[T]he mainstream U.S. media . . . have become so implicated in past protective lies . . . that they, as well as the government, have now a demonstrated interest in preventing the truth about any of these events from coming out. This means that the current threat to constitutional rights does not derive from the deep state alone. . . . [T]he problem is a global dominance mindset that prevails not only inside the Washington Beltway but also in the mainstream media . . . , one which has come to accept recent inroads on constitutional liberties, and stigmatizes, or at least responds with silence to, those who are alarmed by them. . . . [A]cceptance of this mindset’s notions of decorum has increasingly become a condition for participation in mainstream public life.”[86]
Referring thereby to events such as the JFK assassination, the Tonkin Gulf hoax, and 9/11, Scott by “deep events” means the same types of events called SCADs by the authors of the symposium on that topic. Indeed, one of those authors explicitly cites Scott’s writings, treating his “deep events” as examples of SCADs and quoting his statements about the complicity of the mainstream media in covering up the truth about these events.[87]
These authors also make the same point themselves, remarking that “the U.S. government’s account of 9/11 [is] parroted by the mainstream media”[88] and commenting on “the profound disavowal of still burning, molten questions originating at 9/11 Ground Zero gone begging by the American media.”[89]
Besides parroting the government’s account of 9/11 and stigmatizing those who provide alternative accounts with the discrediting label “conspiracy theorists,” how has America’s mainstream media kept the truth about WTC 7 hidden from the majority of the American people? Through various means, including the following:
First, by never replaying the statements by Dan Rather and other reporters about how the collapse of WTC 7 looked just like a controlled demolition.
Second, by seldom if ever replaying the video of this building’s collapse.
Third, by never mentioning credible critiques of the official account. For example, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report about 9/11 is Unscientific and False, which has been endorsed by prestigious scientists and engineers, has never been reviewed in the mainstream media, even though my previous 9/11 book, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited, was a Publishers Weekly “Pick of the Week” in 2008.[90]
Fourth, by never mentioning, except for one story that apparently slipped through,[91] the existence of an organization called Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, which by now has some 1,200 professional architects and engineers calling for a new investigation of WTC 7 as well as the Twin Towers.[92]
Fifth, by never reporting scientific evidence contradicting the official account of these buildings’ destruction, such as the reported discovery of nanothermite in the WTC dust.
Sixth, by overlooking the fact that NIST’s report on WTC 7 omitted an enormous amount of evidence showing that explosives and/or incendiaries must have been used. For example, although the New York Times in 2002 called the piece of Swiss-cheese steel recovered from this building “the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation,” it did not issue a peep when NIST’s 2008 report on this building failed to mention this piece of steel and even claimed that no steel from this building had been identified: The Times clearly knew better but said nothing.
Seventh, by not mentioning the fact, even after it was reported in my 2009 book, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7, that NIST had used various types of fabricated evidence to support its theory of a fire-induced collapse.
Eighth, by reporting NIST’s August 2008 press briefing, in which Shyam Sunder announced, triumphantly, that the “the reason for the collapse of World Trade Center 7 is no longer a mystery” and that “science is really behind what we have said,” but then not reporting on NIST’s final report in November of that year, in which NIST almost explicitly admitted that science does not stand behind, but instead contradicts, its theory of this building’s collapse.
Ninth, by systematically ignoring the fact that the official account of WTC 7’s collapse has implications for many fields that, if taken seriously by leaders in those fields, would demand revolutionary changes in both theory and practice.[93]
Conclusion and Proposal
Through these and related means, the truth about the collapse of WTC 7 has been effectively hidden, even though it has existed in plain sight all these years. Even the bare fact of the collapse itself has been so effectively hidden that in 2006 over 40 percent of the American public did not know about it, and in 2009 a judge in New York City, upon hearing a reference to Building 7, asked: “Building what?”
I offer this essay as a case study in the power of the forces behind SCADs or deep events to hide things that exist in plain sight, because if they can hide the straight-down free-fall collapse of a 47-story building captured on video in broad daylight, they can hide almost anything.
I say this, however, not to instill despair, but to point to the seriousness of the problem, and also to pave the way for making a proposal. Recognizing the high correlation between those who know about the collapse of WTC 7 and those who believe that a new – or rather real – 9/11 investigation is needed, I propose that the international 9/11 Truth Movement initiate, starting this September, a world-wide, year-long “Building What?” campaign. Through this campaign, we would seek to make the fact of its collapse so widely known that the mention of Building 7 would never again evoke the question: “Building What?”[94]
David Ray Griffin is the author of 36 books on various topics, including philosophy, theology, philosophy of science, and 9/11. His 2008 book, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé, was named a “Pick of the Week” by Publishers Weekly. In September 2009, The New Statesman ranked him #41 among “The 50 People Who Matter Today.” His most recent book is The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report about 9/11 is Unscientific and False (2009). His next book will be Cognitive Infiltration: An Obama Appointee’s Plan to Undermine the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory (September 2010). He wishes to thank Tod Fletcher, Jim Hoffman, and Elizabeth Woodworth for help with this essay.
Notes
1 David Ray Griffin, The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report about 9/11 Is Unscientific and False (Northampton: Olive Branch [Interlink Books], 2009).
2 Lynn Margulis, “Two Hit, Three Down – The Biggest Lie,” Rock Creek Free Press, January 24, 2010 (http://rockcreekfreepress.tumblr.com/post/353434420/two-hit-three-down-the-biggest-lie).
3 James Glanz, “Engineers Have a Culprit in the Strange Collapse of 7 World Trade Center: Diesel Fuel,” New York Times, November 29, 2001 (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/29/nyregion/nation-challenged-site-engineers-have-culprit-strange-collapse-7-world-trade.html).
4 Rather’s statement is available on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvx904dAw0o).
5 See the video 911 Eyewitness (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=65460757734339444) at 29:05.
6 See “Danny Jowenko on WTC 7 Controlled Demolition,” YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=877gr6xtQIc), or, for more of the interview, “Jowenko WTC 7 Demolition Interviews,” in three parts (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3DRhwRN06I&feature=related).
7 “Michael Hess, WTC7 Explosion Witness,” YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUfiLbXMa64). Hess should have said “down to the sixth floor.” As Barry Jennings later clarified, the explosion that blocked their descent occurred when they reached the sixth floor, after which they walked back up to the eighth floor, where they waited to be rescued; see “Barry Jennings-–9/11 WTC7 Full Uncut Interview,” Part 2 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxUj6UgPODo), at 5:08-5:33.
8 See “Barry Jennings – 9/11 Early Afternoon ABC 7 Interview” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LO5V2CJpzI).
9 This statement could previously be seen in “Barry Jennings-–9/11 WTC7 Full Uncut Interview,” Part 1, at 3:57-4:05. But at the time this essay was posted, this portion of the interview had been blocked from the Internet, because it is now in the film Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup.
10 Quoted in Chris Bull and Sam Erman, eds., At Ground Zero: Young Reporters Who Were There Tell Their Stories (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2002), 97.
11 Bartmer’s statement is quoted in Paul Joseph Watson, “NYPD Officer Heard Building 7 Bombs,” Prison Planet, February 10, 2007 (http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/february2007/100207heardbombs.htm).
12 This unnamed medical student can be seen making this statement in 911 Eyewitness (at 31:30).
13 James Glanz and Eric Lipton, “A Search for Clues in Towers’ Collapse,” New York Times, February 2, 2002 (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E0DE153DF931A35751C0A9649C8B63).
14 Ibid.
15 Joan Killough-Miller, “The ‘Deep Mystery’ of Melted Steel,” WPI Transformations, Spring 2002 (http://www.wpi.edu/News/Transformations/2002Spring/steel.html).
16 James Glanz, “Engineers Suspect Diesel Fuel in Collapse of 7 World Trade Center,” New York Times, November 29, 2001 (http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/29/nyregion/29TOWE.html). I have here quoted Glanz’s paraphrase of Barnett’s statement.
17 See Kenneth Change, “Scarred Steel Holds Clues, And Remedies,” New York Times, October 2, 2001 (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B05E6DC123DF931A35753C1A9679C8B63).
18 For the melting point of iron, see “Iron,” WebElements: The Periodic Table on the Web (http://www.webelements.com/iron/physics.html). The description of thermate is from “Thermite,” Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite), as of May 25, 2010.
“Iron,” WebElements: The Periodic Table on the Web (http://www.webelements.com/iron/physics.html).
19 Jonathan Barnett, Ronald R. Biederman, and R. D. Sisson, Jr., “Limited Metallurgical Examination,” Appendix C of World Trade Center Building Performance Study, FEMA, 2002 (http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_apc.pdf); also available on Jim Hoffman’s website (http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/metallurgy/WTC_apndxC.htm); see “C.2: Sample 1 (from WTC 7),” pages 1-5.
20 See FEMA, World Trade Center Building Performance Study (http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_ch5.pdf), Chap. 5, Sect. 6.2, “Probable Collapse Sequence,” at page 31.
21 “A Word about Our Poll of American Thinking Toward the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks,” Zogby International, May 24, 2006 (http://www.zogby.com/features/features.dbm?ID=231).
22 In the ensuing exchange, Judge Lehner showed that he was not completely unaware of this building’s destruction, asking if it was “the one that has been rebuilt.” Shortly thereafter, however, the judge confused this building with the Twin Towers. See pages 16-19 of “Proceedings, Christopher Burke et al, Petitioners. vs. Michael McSweeney as City Clerk of New York and Clerk of the City Council of New York and the Board of Elections in the City of New York, before Honorable Edward H. Lehner, J. S. C., Supreme Court of the State of New York, September 29, 2009.”
23 Glanz, “Engineers Have a Culprit in the Strange Collapse of 7 World Trade Center.”
24 “National Construction Safety Team Advisory Committee 2003 Report to Congress” (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/NCSTAC2003ReporttoCongressFinal.pdf), 4.
25 NIST, “Answers to Frequently Asked Questions,” August 30, 2006 (http://911research.wtc7.net/reviews/nist/WTC_FAQ_reply.html), Question 14. This is the original version of the document, which contained what is stated in the text. But NIST, never a stickler for retaining past statements that later prove embarrassing, “updated” this document over two years later, on January 28, 2008 (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm). This “updated” version of this 2006 document gives the reader the impression that NIST in 2006 – instead of having said, “It is anticipated that a draft report will be released by early 2007” – actually said: “It is anticipated that a draft report will be released for public comment by July 2008 and that the final report will be released shortly thereafter.” The original document, as updated August 30, 2006, has been preserved in Jim Hoffman, “NIST’s World Trade Center FAQ” (http://911research.wtc7.net/reviews/nist/WTC_FAQ_reply.html).
26 NIST, “WTC Investigation Overview,” December 18, 2007 (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/NCSTAC_December18(Sunder).pdf). Like the NIST 2006 document discussed in the previous note, this one has also been revised, so that it now says merely July and August, 2008, respectively, without giving exact dates.
27 See “WTC 7: The Smoking Gun of 9/11” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwSc7NPn8Ok), and Paul Joseph Watson, “BBC’s 9/11 Yellow Journalism Backfires: Building 7 Becomes the Achilles Heel of the Official Conspiracy Theory,” Prison Planet, March 5, 2007 (http://infowars.wordpress.com/2007/03/05/bbcs-911-yellow-journalism-backfires).
28 “Progress Report on the NIST Building and Fire Investigation into the World Trade Center Disaster,” National Institute of Standards and Technology (henceforth NIST), December 9, 2002 (http://www.fire.nist.gov/bfrlpubs/build03/PDF/b03040.pdf); “Progress Report on the Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster,” NIST, May 2003 (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/MediaUpdate%20_FINAL_ProgressReport051303.pdf).
29 Interim Report on WTC 7, NIST, June 2004 (http://wtc.nist.gov/progress_report_june04/appendixl.pdf).
30 “WTC 7 Collapse,” NIST, April 5, 2005 (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/WTC%20Part%20IIC%20-%20WTC%207%20Collapse%20Final.pdf).
31 “Answers to Frequently Asked Questions,” NIST, August 30, 2006 ((http://911research.wtc7.net/reviews/nist/WTC_FAQ_reply.html), Question 14 (see note 25, above).
32 Shyam Sunder, “Opening Statement,” NIST Press Briefing, August 21, 2008 (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/opening_remarks_082108.html).
33 Associated Press, “Report: Fire, Not Bombs, Leveled WTC 7 Building,” USA Today, August 21, 2008 (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-08-21-wtc-nist_N.htm).
34 National Science Foundation, Office of Inspector General, “What is Research Misconduct?” in New Research Misconduct Policies, (http://www.nsf.gov/oig/session.pdf). This document is undated, but internal evidence suggests that it was published in 2001.
35 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Structural Fire Response and Probable Collapse Sequence of World Trade Center Building 7, November 2008, Vol. 1 (http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201-9%20Vol%201.pdf) : 324.
36 Jonathan Barnett, Ronald R. Biederman, and Richard D. Sisson, Jr., “Limited Metallurgical Examination,” FEMA, World Trade Center Building Performance Study, May 2002, Appendix C (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/AppendixC-fema403_apc.pdf): 13.
37 Dr. Arden L. Bement, Jr., testimony before the House Science Committee Hearing on “The Investigation of the World Trade Center Collapse,” May 1, 2002 (http://911research.wtc7.net/cache/wtc/official/nist/bement.htm). In the quoted statement, “FEMA” replaces “BPAT,” which is the abbreviation for “Building Performance Assessment Team,” the name of the ASCE team that prepared this report for FEMA.
38 “Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation,” August 21, 2008 (http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/nist/wtc_qa_082108.html). In response to the question, “Why didn't the investigators look at actual steel samples from WTC 7? ” NIST replied: “Steel samples were removed from the site before the NIST investigation began. In the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, debris was removed rapidly from the site to aid in recovery efforts and facilitate emergency responders’ efforts to work around the site. Once it was removed from the scene, the steel from WTC 7 could not be clearly identified. Unlike the pieces of steel from WTC 1 and WTC 2, which were painted red and contained distinguishing markings, WTC 7 steel did not contain such identifying characteristics.” This document was originally available on NIST’s website (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wtc_qa_082108.html). However, like some other NIST reports, it has been removed. But is preserved at Jim Hoffman’s website (http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/nist/wtc_qa_082108.html). This statement was repeated in a version of this document that was updated April 21, 2009, which is also preserved at Hoffman’s site (http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/nist/wtc_qa_042109.html).
39 In NIST NCSTAR 1-3C, Damage and Failure Modes of Structural Steel Components, September 2005 (http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201-3C%20Damage%20and%20Failure%20Modes.pdf), the authors, Stephen W. Banovic and Timothy Foecke, referred to “the analysis of the steel from WTC 7 (Sample #1 from Appendix C, BPAT/FEMA study) where corrosion phases and morphologies were able to determine a possible temperature region” (233). The BBC program was The Conspiracy Files: 9/11 – The Third Tower, July 6, 2008 (available at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9072062020229593250# and http://www.911blogger.com/node/16541); the statement by Barnett is at 48:00. I am indebted to Chris Sarns for both of these discoveries.
40 RJ Lee Group, “WTC Dust Signature,” Expert Report, May 2004 (http://www.nyenvirolaw.org/WTC/130%20Liberty%20Street/Mike%20Davis%20LMDC%20130%20Liberty%20Documents/Signature%20of%20WTC%20dust/WTCDustSignature_ExpertReport.051304.1646.mp.pdf): 11; “WTC Dust Signature Study: Composition and Morphology,” December 2003 (http://www.nyenvirolaw.org/WTC/130%20Liberty%20Street/Mike%20Davis%20LMDC%20130%20Liberty%20Documents/Signature%20of%20WTC%20dust/WTC%20Dust%20Signature.Composition%20and%20Morphology.Final.pdf): 17. For discussion of the differences between these two versions of the RJ Lee report, see Griffin, The Mysterious Collapse, 40-42.
41 Steven E. Jones et al., "Extremely High Temperatures during the World Trade Center Destruction," Journal of 9/11 Studies, January 2008 (http://journalof911studies.com/articles/WTCHighTemp2.pdf): 8.
42 Ibid., 4-5.
43 “Molybdenum,” WebElements: The Periodic Table on the Web (http://www.webelements.com/molybdenum/physics.html).
44 For the published USGS report, see Heather A. Lowers and Gregory P. Meeker, U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Department of the Interior, “Particle Atlas of World Trade Center Dust,” 2005 (http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2005/1165/508OF05-1165.html). The USGS’s evidence for the molybdenum-rich spherule is reported in Steven Jones et al., “Extremely High Temperatures,” 4.
45 Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, et al., “Active Thermitic Material Observed in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe,” The Open Chemical Physics Journal 2 (2009): 7-31 (http://www.bentham.org/open/tocpj/openaccess2.htm).
46 According to the Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations, put out by the National Fire Protection Association, investigators should, in seeking to determine the cause of a fire, look for evidence of accelerants, which are any substances that could be used to ignite a fire or accelerate its progress (National Fire Protection Association’s 921 Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations, 1998 Edition, Section 12-2.4 (http://www.interfire.org/res_file/92112m.asp), and thermite mixtures are explicitly classified as accelerants (Section 19.2.4, “Exotic Accelerants” and “Thermite Mixtures”).
47 “Answers to Frequently Asked Questions,” NIST, August 30, 2006 (http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm), Question 12 (NIST’s answer to this question has not been “updated” [see note 25, above]).
48 Jennifer Abel, “Theories of 9/11,” Hartford Advocate, January 29, 2008 (http://www.ae911truth.org/press/23).
49 National Science Foundation, “What is Research Misconduct?”
50 See Griffin, The Mysterious Collapse, 150-55.
51 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Vol. 1: 346.
52 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Vol. 2 (http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201-9%20Vol%202.pdf), 462.
53 See NIST, Interim Report on WTC 7 (http://wtc.nist.gov/progress_report_june04/appendixl.pdf): L-6-7, and Griffin, The Mysterious Collapse, 212-15.
54 Interim Report on WTC 7: L-26. This contradiction is pointed out in a video, “NIST Report on WTC7 Debunked and Exposed!” YouTube, December 28, 2008 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFpbZ-aLDLY), at 0:45 to 1:57.
55 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Vol. 2: 384, Figure 9-11.
56 This cartoon can be seen on the Internet (http://www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/pages/gallery.php).
57 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Draft for Public Comment, Vol. 2 (http://wtc.nist.gov/media/NIST_NCSTAR_1-9_vol2_for_public_comment.pdf), 595-96. In “Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation,” which was issued August 21, 2008 (simultaneously with NIST’s Draft for Public Comment), NIST repeated this denial, saying: “WTC 7 did not enter free fall.” As pointed out in note 38, above, NIST has removed this document from its website, but it has been preserved by Jim Hoffman (http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/nist/wtc_qa_082108.html).
58 “WTC 7 Technical Briefing,” NIST, August 26, 2008. NIST has removed this video and the accompanying transcript from the Internet. However, Nate Flach has made the video available at Vimeo (http://vimeo.com/11941571), and the transcript, entitled “NIST Technical Briefing on Its Final Draft Report on WTC 7 for Public Comment,” is available at David Chandler’s website (http://911speakout.org/NIST_Tech_Briefing_Transcript.pdf).
59 Ibid.
60 David Chandler, “WTC7 in Freefall - No Longer Controversial,” September 4, 2008 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVCDpL4Ax7I), at 2:45.
61 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Vol. 2: 607. The same point is stated in the brief version of NIST’s WTC 7 report, NIST NCSTAR 1A, which states: “In Stage 2, the north face descended at gravitational acceleration, as the buckled columns provided negligible support to the upper portion of the north face. This free fall drop continued for approximately 8 stories” (45).
62 Chandler, “WTC7 in Freefall – No Longer Controversial,” at 3:27.
63 “Questions and Answers about the NIST WTC 7 Investigation,” NIST, updated April 21, 2009 (http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/nist/wtc_qa_042109.html). (This version was “updated” from the original, which was posted August 21, 2008: see notes 38 and 57, above.) This updated document, originally available at NIST’s website (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/factsheet/wtc_qa_082108.html), has been removed it. It is preserved, however, at Jim Hoffman’s website (http://911research.wtc7.net/mirrors/nist/wtc_qa_042109.html).
64 NIST NCSTAR 1-9, Draft for Public Comment, Vol. 2: 595-96, 596, 610.
65 See my discussion in Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the Cover-Up, and the Exposé (Northampton: Olive Branch, 2008), 30-31.
66 “The Myth of Implosion” (http://www.implosionworld.com/dyk2.html).
67 As to how domestic terrorists could have gotten access, an answer becomes possible if we are aware that Larry Silverstein, who owned Building 7 and had recently taken out a lease on the rest of the World Trade Center, stood to make several billion dollars if it was destroyed in a terrorist attack, and that a brother and a cousin of George W. Bush were principals of a company that handled security for the World Trade Center (Griffin, Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory [Northampton: Olive Branch, 2007], 111).
68 Glanz, “Engineers Have a Culprit in the Strange Collapse of 7 World Trade Center.”
69 Symposium on State Crimes Against Democracy, American Behavioral Scientist 53 (February 2010): 783-939 (http://abs.sagepub.com/content/vol53/issue6). Online access is expensive, but the entire issue can be purchased for $24 (journals@sagepub.com).
70 Lance deHaven-Smith, “Beyond Conspiracy Theory: Patterns of High Crime in American Government,” American Behavioral Scientist 53 (February 2010): 795-825 (http://abs.sagepub.com/content/vol53/issue6), at 796.
71 Ibid. 797.
72 Ibid., 783.
73 Matthew T. Witt, “Pretending Not to See or Hear, Refusing to Signify: The Farce and Tragedy of Geocentric Public Affairs Scholarship,” American Behavioral Scientist 53 (February 2010): 921-39 (http://abs.sagepub.com/content/vol53/issue6), at 934.
74 Ibid., 932 (emphasis in original).
75 Ibid., 932.
76 Ibid.
77 “Statement of September 11th Advocates Regarding the Release of the NIST Final Draft of Collapse of WTC7” (signed by Patty Casazza, Monica Gabrielle, Mindy Kleinberg, and Lorie Van Auken), September 26, 2008 (http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20080927030009489).
78 Daniel Hofnung, Patriots Question 9/11 (http://patriotsquestion911.com/engineers.html#Dhofnung).
79 Chester W. Gearhart, Patriots Question 9/11 (http://patriotsquestion911.com/engineers.html#Gearhart).
80 “Danish Scientist Niels Harrit, on Nanothermite in the WTC Dust (English subtitles),” YouTube, April 6, 2009 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_tf25lx_3o).
81 NIST NCSTAR 1A, Final Report on the Collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 (brief report), November 2008 (http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/PDF/NCSTAR%201A.pdf): 51; NIST NCSTAR 1-9: 119.
82 Jeremy Baker, “Was WTC 7 a Dud?” Serendipity, 2005 (http://www.serendipity.li/wot/wtc7_dud.htm).
83 Jeremy Baker, “Last Building Standing,” Serendipity, 2007 (http://www.serendipity.li/wot/last_building_standing.pdf). This is a revised and updated version of Baker, “Was WTC 7 a Dud?”
84 NIST NCSTAR 1: 1-9: 194, 243, 244, 247.
85 Peter Dale Scott, “9/11, Deep State Violence, and the Hope of Internet Politics,” Global Research, June 11, 2008 (http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9289).
86 Ibid. More recently, Scott has ceased speaking about a “deep state,” because it suggests an organized entity with a location, and speaks instead only of “deep events” brought about by “deep forces.” This revised language is reflected in his forthcoming book, American War Machine: Deep Politics, the CIA Global Drug Connection, and the Road to Afghanistan (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010), in which he refers to “deep events” as “events that are systematically ignored, suppressed, or falsified in public (and even internal) government, military, and intelligence documents as well as in the mainstream media and public consciousness,” and says that underlying these events “is frequently the involvement of deep forces linked either to the drug traffic or to agencies of surveillance (or to both together).” He then adds: “A clearly defined deep event will combine both internal features – evidence, such as a discernible cover-up, that aspects are being suppressed – and external features – an ongoing and perhaps irresoluble controversy as to what happened.”
87 Laurie A. Manwell, “In Denial of Democracy: Social Psychological Implications for Public Discourse on State Crimes Against Democracy Post-9/11,” American Behavioral Scientist 53 (February 2010): 848-84 (http://abs.sagepub.com/content/vol53/issue6), at 867-70.
88 Ibid., 863.
89 Matthew T. Witt and Alexander Kouzmin, “Sense Making Under ‘Holographic’ Conditions: Framing SCAD Research,” American Behavioral Scientist 53 (February 2010): 783-94 (http://abs.sagepub.com/content/vol53/issue6), at 789.
90 Publishers Weekly, November 24, 2008 (http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/1-legacy/15-web-exclusive-book-reviews/article/6017-web-exclusive-reviews-week-of-11-24-2008-.html).
91 Jennifer Harper, "Explosive News," Washington Times, February 22, 2010 (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/feb/22/inside-the-beltway-70128635/?feat=home_columns).
92 Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth (http://ae911truth.org).
93 On the failure of the press release about WTC 7 by the Jersey Girls (see note 77, above) to receive any press coverage: Email letter from Lorie Van Auken, May 23, 2010.
94 This essay is based on a lecture of the same title delivered at a conference, “Understanding Deep Politics,” held May 14-16, 2010, in Santa Cruz, California, which was organized by Gabriel Day, Cheryl Curtiss, Jason King, and Kevin Zenzie.
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