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"There were explosions going off everywhere.
I was convinced that there were bombs planted all over the place
and someone was sitting at a control panel punching detonator buttons.
There was another explosion.
...
And another.
...
I didn't know where to run."
-Teresa Veliz, working on the 47th floor of the North Tower
when Flight 11 hit.
It's possible that Veliz heard bombs in the Tower triggered by
the plane crash.
It's also possible that she heard secondary explosions,
such as from pockets of fuel vapor igniting.
00:30:39
9:59. New York City, New York.
The South Tower of the World Trade Center collapses
to the ground in approximately 10 seconds.
29 minutes later the North Tower follows suit,
collapsing in approximately 10 seconds.
The destruction of each of the Twin Towers was
rapid
and systematic, but these events lasted significantly longer than 10 seconds.
The destruction of the North Tower took approximately 17 seconds
from start to finish, as shown by this
frame analysis of the CNN broadcast video.
At ten seconds into its destruction (pictured to the right)
the North Tower was still more than 700 feet tall.
The use of the word "collapse" to describe what happened to the
Twin Towers is not accurate, since, in reality,
the Towers exploded -- catapulting debris as much as 400 feet
in all directions.
00:31:00
Later that evening at 5:20, World Trace Center 7,
a 47 story office building 300 feet away from the North Tower,
suddenly collapses.
The building's tenants included the CIA, Department of Defense,
IRS, Secret Service, and Rudy Giuliani's emergency bunker.
And the S.E.C. was using it to store 3 to 4 thousand files
related to numerous Wall Street investigations.
Although every single building surrounding Building 7 stood intact,
it fell straight down, into a convenient little pile, in 6 seconds.
Loose Change
passes quickly over the collapse of Building 7,
noting the swiftness of the collapse,
but failing to note that it showed all of the
features of a controlled demolition.
00:31:34
Official explanation?
Falling debris from the Twin Towers created an internal fire,
which ignited several fuel tanks inside the building.
As we still await NIST's final report on Building 7,
FEMA's report did suggest that the fuel tanks themselves were ignited,
but that fuel pumped from the tanks burned.
00:31:44
If this is true, then it would be the third building in history
to collapse because of a fire.
The first two would be the Twin Towers.
No, it would be the umteen-thousandth time in history.
It would be the first time in history that steel-framed high-rise
buildings totally collapsed
with fire blamed as the primary cause.
This is one of several examples of Loose Change
ruining a good point with a sloppy overstatement.
00:31:54
On July 28th, 1945, a B-52 [B-25] bomber lost in the fog
crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building.
14 people dead, 1 million dollars in damage.
But, the building stands intact to this day.
This incident isn't even remotely comparable of the
crashes of the 767s into the Twin Towers.
A 767 is about eight times the weight of a B-25,
and has about fifty times the fuel capacity.
The 767s crashed into the Towers at about three times
the speed of the B-25.
The construction of the Empire State Building and the Twin Towers
is completely different.
It's surprising that the creators
of Loose Change,
having served in the military,
made the mistake of substituting 'B-52' --
the 8-engine jet that was the backbone of the USAF's
strategic bomber force for 50 years --
for 'B-25' -- the World-War-II-era 2-engine propeller plane.
00:32:10
On February 14th, 1975, a three alarm fire broke out
between the 9th and 14th floors in the North Tower.
According to the New York Times,
the fire leads to intense scrutiny of the towers,
and eventually to a decision to install sprinklers.
The
1975 fire
in the North Tower
was not nearly as severe as the 2001 fire.
00:32:26
On May 4th, 1988, a 62 story skyscraper in Los Angeles
burned for 3 hours and spread over 4 floors.
It did not collapse.
On February 23rd, 1991, a 38 story skyscraper in Philadelphia,
built in 1973, burned for more than 19 hours and spread over 8 floors.
It did not collapse.
On October 17th, 2004, a 56 story skyscraper in Venezuela,
built in 1976, burned for over 17 hours and spread over 26 floors,
eventually reaching the roof.
Guess what? It did not collapse.
In contrast to the 2001 fires in the WTC Towers, the
Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Caracas fires
were all more severe and long-lasting.
Apparently none of these buildings suffered serious structural damage
from the fires, and all were rehabilitated.
00:33:05
On February 12th, 2005,
the Windsor Building in Madrid, a 32 story tower
framed in steel reinforced concrete, burned for almost 24 hours,
completely eradicating the upper 10 stories of the building.
Although the top 10 floors of the building fell,
the building itself did not collapse.
The
Windsor Building fire
is of limited comparative value to WTC 1, 2, and 7 fires,
because of its different construction.
Whereas the WTC buildings were framed entirely in steel,
the Windsor Building was framed primarily in steel-reinforced concrete.
00:33:25
And yet on September 11th, 2001, two 110 story skyscrapers,
completed in 1973, burned for 56 minutes and 103 minutes respectively,
over 4 floors,
Before collapsing completely to the ground.
One might argue, that this was due to the construction
of the World Trade Center.
Let's look at what was inside those buildings.
The Twin Towers were composed of 200,000 tons of steel,
425,000 cubic yards of concrete, 103 elevators, 43,600 windows,
60,000 tons of cooling equipment, and a 360-foot television antenna.
The core of each tower was 87 by 133 feet, comprised of 47
box columns 36 by 16 inches thick.
The North Tower was completed in 1970 standing at 1368 feet tall
and the South Tower was completed in 1973 clocking in at 1362 feet tall,
making them the tallest buildings in the world until the Sears Tower
was completed in 1974.
[pan up the Empire State Building]
And to think, the government would have us believe
that these massive structures were destroyed by 10,000 gallons of jet fuel.
However, eyewitnesses, video footage, and a little common sense
quickly refutes that claim.
This is a fairly accurate description of the Twin Towers
contains some errors, suggesting that the
core box columns
were solid, and failing to note that some had cross-sections larger than
36 by 16 inches: 54 by 22 inches.
By stating that the government blames the destruction
on 10,000 gallons of jet fuel, Loose Change
misrepresents their explanation.
Both the FEMA and NIST Reports:
Blame office contents, not the jet fuel, for sustaining the fires.
The jet fuel's role was primarily one of ignition.
Blame the gravitational potential energy of the tops of the Towers,
not the fires, for obliterating the Towers.
The fires supposedly precipitated the 'collapses.'
Thus it could be said that the towers burned down, essentially,
or were destroyed by fire, and that any steel of any building
would have degraded in the same way.
00:34:54
The second plane hits the South Tower between the 78th and 82nd floors
at 9:03 AM, barely hitting the southeast corner,
the majority of the jet fuel exploding outside in a massive fireball.
Yet, this Tower collapses first,
even though the North Tower was hit straight on,
and had already been burning for 18 minutes longer.
Although Loose Change exaggerates the fact of
Flight 175's off-centered impact as "barely hitting" the building,
the trajectory of the plane through the building
does show that it mostly missed the South Tower's structural core,
in contrast to Flight 11's centered impact with the North Tower.
00:35:28
Galileo's Law of Falling Bodies calculates the time in which an object
will travel a certain distance in complete freefall.
Distance, D, equals 16.08 times Time in seconds squared.
DISTANCE = 16.08 X SECONDS SQUARED
The South Tower was 1362 feet tall.
1362 equals 16.08 times 84.7. Or, 9.2 seconds.
[footage of South Tower's destruction with timer overlay]
The Twin Towers came down in nearly freefall speed.
The figure of 9.2 seconds is correct for the gravitational free-fall
time for the height of the Towers' roofs.
However Loose Change just gave us a blatantly erroneous
figure for the total collapse times of the Towers: 10 seconds.
This sloppiness obscures the existence of truly
compelling arguments
that the Towers' rates of fall indicate demolition.
00:36:05
200,000 tons of steel shatters into sections no longer than a couple feet long.
Loose Change ruins a good point --
that the Towers were thoroughly shredded --
by making an extreme exaggeration.
Aerial photographs of Ground Zero show that many pieces were about
50 feet long.
00:36:13
425,000 cubic yards of concrete is pulverized into dust.
This is demonstrated by examining the
many available photographs of Ground Zero.
One will be hard-pressed to find any evidence of chunks of non-metallic
materials except in photographs showing the site extensively excavated.
Thus it appears that the 4-inch-thick concrete above the street level
were thoroughly pulverized into fine dust.
00:36:16
Thousands of lives are extinguished instantly.
We will never know exactly how many people were killed rapidly
in the progressive explosion of each Tower,
but the number could be well more than half of the
2,749 officially listed as dead.
Many people -- perhaps more than 1000,
were trapped above the crash zone in the
North Tower
and historians think that most of them were dead
by the time of the "collapse."
The number of jumpers is evidence that
all of these victims who survived the plane crashes
faced horrible deaths by smoke inhalation,
and as many as 200 chose to jump to their deaths.
So what brought down the World Trade Center?
Let's ask the experts.
Van Romero,
Vice President for Research at New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology.
My opinion is, based on the videotapes, after the airplanes
hit the World Trade Center, there were some explosive devices inside
that caused the towers to collapse. The collapses were too methodical
to be a chance result of airplanes colliding with the structures.
Ten days later:
Certainly the fire is what caused the building to fail.
Hyman Brown. Civil Engineering Professor and the
World Trade Center's construction manager.
It was over-designed to withstand almost anything including hurricanes,
high winds, bombings and an airplane hitting it ... although the buildings
were designed to withstand a 150-year storm and the impact of a Boeing 707,
jet fuel burning at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit weakened the steel.
Loose Change
fails to correct a common misconception that Boeing 767s are "jumbo jets" --
far larger than Boeing 707s.
In fact the two aircraft are
roughly the same size.
00:37:11
Kevin Ryan. Underwriters Laboratories,
the company that certified the steel that was used in the World Trade Center,
In a letter to Frank Gayle of the National Institute
of Standards and Technology:
We know that the steel components were certified to ASTM E119.
The time temperature curves for this standard require the samples
to be exposed to temperatures around 2000F for several hours.
And as we all agree, the steel applied met those specifications.
Additionally, I think we can all agree that even un-fireproofed steel
will not melt until reaching red-hot temperatures of nearly 3000F.
Why Dr. Brown would imply that 2000F would melt the high-grade steel
used in those buildings makes no sense at all.
This story just does not add up.
If steel from those buildings did soften or melt,
I'm sure we can all agree that this was certainly not due to jet fuel fires
of any kind, let alone the briefly burning fires in those towers.
Ryan's statements directly contradict statements from so-called "experts",
which claim that 2000 degree heat inside the WTC caused the towers to collapse.
Days after writing this letter, Kevin Ryan was fired from his position.
Loose Change
includes the passage from
Kevin Ryan's
letter
in which he mentions the theory that fire melted the steel.
Debunkers have taken this out of context to suggest that Kevin Ryan
was attacking a straw man argument:
that the official story required the fires to melt steel.
However, Ryan was merely addressing comments of Hyman Brown that
"steel melts, and 24,000 gallons (91,000 liters) of aviation fluid
melted the steel".
Also, it is clear from the following excerpt of the same letter
that Ryan was directly addressing the NIST study,
not merely some early comments from Hyman Brown:
The results of your recently published metallurgical tests seem to clear things
up (3), and support your team's August 2003 update as detailed by the
Associated Press (4), in which you were ready to "rule out weak steel as a
contributing factor in the collapse". The evaluation of paint deformation and
spheroidization seem very straightforward, and you noted that the samples
available were adequate for the investigation. Your comments suggest that the
steel was probably exposed to temperatures of only about 500F (250C), which is
what one might expect from a thermodynamic analysis of the situation.
However the summary of the new NIST report seems to ignore your findings, as it
suggests that these low temperatures caused exposed bits of the building's
steel core to "soften and buckle"(5). Additionally this summary states that the
perimeter columns softened, yet your findings make clear that "most perimeter
panels (157 of 160) saw no temperature above 250C". To soften steel for the
purposes of forging, normally temperatures need to be above 1100C (6). However,
this new summary report suggests that much lower temperatures were able to
not only soften the steel in a matter of minutes, but lead to rapid structural
collapse.
00:38:18
Not even the experts agree with each other.
So what else could have caused the Twin Towers and Building 7 to collapse?
[Peter Jennings]:
10 o'clock Eastern time this morning just collapsing on itself.
[Reporter]: The second building that was hit by the plane
has just completely collapsed.
[Peter Jennings]: We have no idea what caused this.
[CNN anchor]: Almost looks like one of those planned implosions.
[Chanell 8 Voiceover]:
As if a demolition team set off,
when you see the whole demolitions of whole buildings.
It folded down on itself and it was not there anymore.
[Peter Jennings]:
If you wish to bring anybody who's ever watched a building being demolished
on purpose knows, that if you're going to do this, you have to get at the
under infrastructure of a building and bring it down.
[Female witness]:
We heard another explosion and I'm assuming that's the one that
came from the lower level. Since there were two...
They were 18 minutes apart.
Well... this is, no the first, the first explosion
and there was the second explosion in the same building.
There were 2 explosions.
[WCBS 2 Voiceover]:
Federal Agencies that were down there do believe
that there was some sort of explosive device,
somewhere else besides the planes hitting.
In this
more complete transcript
of Peter Jennings' comments,
we see his co-anchor, Don Dahler,
jumping in to correct him.
00:39:21
NBC's Pat Dawson is close to the scene of that attack, Pat?
[Pat Dawson]: Just moments ago I spoke to the Chief of Safety for
the New York City Fire Department, the chief
Albert Turi, he received word of the possibility of a secondary device,
that is another bomb going off,
he tried to get his men out as quickly as he could,
but he said that there was another explosion which took place and then,
an hour after the first hit here, the first crash that took place,
he said there was another explosion that took place in one of the Towers here.
He thinks that there were actually devices that were planted in the building,
The second device, he thinks, he speculates,
was probably planted in the building.
[Unnamed reporter]:
There were two or three similar huge explosions and the building
literally shook, it literally shook at the base of this building.
[NBC reporter]:
First one and then the other, some say after secondary explosions.
[Male witness]:
A big explosion happened,
all of a sudden the elevator blew up,
smoke, I dragged the guy out, his skin was hanging off,
and I dragged him out and I helped him to the ambulance.
[Male witness]:
We started coming down the stairs from the eighth floor.
Big Explosion. Blew us back into the eighth floor.
[Male witness]:
Just came out of the tunnel, and it blew.
The subway tunnel?
Yeah.
[Reporter]:
So, tell us what's happening out there.
We just witnessed some kind of secondary,
follow up explosion on the World Trade Center number 2.
Secondary.
We understand now there has been a secondary explosion on Tower 2.
[Harold Dow]:
There was another major explosion.
The building itself, literally the top of it came down
sending smoke and debris everywhere.
[FOX News reporter]:
We are five blocks from the World Trade Center.
And, and we were standing here, when,
when there was some sort of collapse, or explosion.
Do you know if it was an explosion, or if it was a building collapse?
[Police officer]:
To me it sounded like, to me it sounded like an explosion...
[Male witness]:
at the moment we heard a big explosion coming down.
Everything it went black.
Everything came down, glass started popping, people got hurt,
stuff went on top of them,
and there was a big explosion, and everything got dark. Real dark like smoke.
[FOX News reporter]:
The FBI is here as you can see, they had roped this area off,
they were taking photographs and securing this area,
just prior to that huge explosion that we all heard and felt.
[Female police officer]:
Get out of the area. The second Tower is coming down.
Did they tell you the second Tower is coming down?
Yes, it's about to collapse.
[Female reporter]:
At 10:30 I tried to leave the building.
As soon as I got outside I heard a second explosion.
And another rumble, and more smoke, and more dust.
I ran inside the building, the chandelier shook and again black smoke
filled the air. Within another 5 minutes we were covered again
with more silt and more dust.
And then a Fire Marshall came in and said we had to leave,
because if there was a third explosion this building might not last.
[FOX NEWS reporter]:
We just saw that as well, the second Tower, the only one that was standing,
Tower number one just ah we saw some kind of explosion
a lot of smoke come out of the top of the Tower,
and then it collapsed down onto the streets below.
[Reporter]:
David Lee, what can you tell us?
John, just seconds ago there was a huge explosion
and it appears right now the second World Trade Tower has just collapsed.
One eyewitness was standing among a crowd of people on Church Street,
two and a half blocks from the South Tower,
when he saw a number of brief light sources being emitted
from inside the building between floors 10 and 15.
He saw about six of these flashes,
accompanied by a crackling sound before the Tower collapsed.
Ginny Carr was attending a business meeting on the 36th floor
of One Liberty Plaza, across the street from the World Trade Center,
and caught the entire first attack on tape.
A second explosion can be heard nine seconds after the crash.
[Soundwave display]
...sounded like some crash..
This hodge-podge of accounts may contain some valuable evidence
pertaining to demolition, but most of the accounts
are easily explained as simply perceptions related either to
the plane crashes or the 'collapses.'
00:43:29
So, what happened in the North Tower? Ask Willie Rodriguez.
Willie, a janitor who worked in the World Trade Center for 20 years,
was in sub-level 1 when the North Tower was hit.
And all of a sudden we heard boom!!
And I thought it was a generator that blew up in the basement.
And I said to myself:
Oh my God, I think that's the generator.
And I was going to verbalize it,
and when I finished saying that in my mind, I hear boom!
Right on the top. Pretty far away.
So, it was a difference between coming from the basement
and coming from the top.
And thats ... everybody started screaming.
And a person comes running into the office saying: Explosion, explosion,
explosion! He had his hands extended.
And all the skin was falling from under his arm.
All the way to the top of the fingertips,
and it was hanging from both arms. Hanging and hanging.
And then I looked at his face and he was missing parts of his face.
And I said: What happened? What happened? And he said: The elevators,
the elevators. And then...
When I..., there were many explosions,
and when I actually talked about those explosions, they said that:
Well, there were so many kitchens in the building.
They have probably those gas canisters. And I say:
I don't believe that, because the building was a class A building.
They have very strict guidelines of what you can put in a kitchen.
And I really doubt it was gas. So, there was a lot of misconceptions
of what happened on that day in terms of the explosions.
Up to today, I haven't received an actual explanation about
the different explosions that I heard on the upper floors.
And on the way to the top.
The Rodriguez account is easily dismissed by noting that there
are many possible sources of explosions low in the building
that could be triggered by the plane crash far above,
such as electrical short-circuits,
and explosions of vaporized fuel that had descended the elevator shafts
(see next reply).
00:45:13
The windows in the lobby of the North Tower were blown out,
and marble panels were blown off of the walls.
This was brushed off as damage from a raging fireball
that went barreling down the elevator shafts.
However, the World Trade Center's core and elevator shafts
were hermetically sealed, AKA, air-tight.
The fire could not possibly have had enough oxygen to travel 1,300 feet down,
retaining enough energy to destroy the bottom 8 floors of the building.
The explanation that a fireball caused the damage in the North Tower
is in the
9/11 Commission Report:
A battalion chief and two ladder and two engine companies
arrived at the North Tower at approximately 8:52.As they entered the lobby,
they encountered badly burned civilians who had been caught
in the path of the fireball.
Floor-to-ceiling windows in the northwest corner of the West
Street level of the lobby had been blown out;
some large marble tiles had been dislodged from the walls;
one entire elevator bank was destroyed by the fireball.
Loose Change
drastically exaggerates the damage as
"destroy[ing] the bottom 8 floors of the building,"
and dismisses the explanation that the fireball
was due to the plane crashes by saying the elevator shafts were
"hermetically sealed" -- an apparent reference to fire suppression dampers --
and that fire from the plane crash could
not have descended from the crash zone.
However, fire would not have had to descend to produce a huge fireball
in the lobby.
Given the quantities of jet fuel involved (10,000 gallons)
it is reasonable to expect that large quantities of it,
even if vaporized, would not be instantly ignited by the crash
because it would be above the mixture's upper explosive limit
(ie: too rich to burn).
Thus fuel could have spilled down elevator shafts,
and ignited only once it had mixed with enough air
and encountered a source of ignition at ground level.
00:45:45
On 9-11, New York City lost 343 firefighters at the World Trade Center.
Since they were the ones inside the Towers before and as they collapsed,
I'd say they've got a pretty good grasp on what happened.
So, what does the FDNY think?
First, we have this interview from the Naudet brothers' documentary.
... What do we do? We made it outside, we made it about a block?
We made it at least 2 blocks and we started running ... Boom-boom-boom-boom.
Floor by floor it started popping out.
It was like, as if they had detonated ...
Yeah, detonated. Take out the building. Boom-boom-boom-boom.
... all the way down, I was watching it and running.
And then you just saw this cloud of s___ chasing you down.
Couldn't outrun it.
This excerpt from the Naudet film has been available
here
since late 2003.
00:46:29
In these interviews,
numerous members of Engine 7 describe explosions preceding the collapses,
not to mention the damage to the lobby of the North Tower.
I heard a loud boom. And my first ... I was, I was right at the desk
there on the lefthand side when you come into Tower one.
And I walked out,
you know I didn't go out I walked to where all the doorway,
where the glass was broken, and I looked out and I seen in the building
across the street. I seen the shadow coming like the,
I seen the shadow on a building across the street coming down.
I wasn't expecting to see the damage that I saw in the lobby.
And, and the people, the bodies, the burnt people, the injured people,
I really wasn't prepared for that.
The lobby was about six stories high
and the lobby looked as though a bomb had exploded there.
It's a ... all the glass was taken out, there were 10 foot by 10 foot,
a marble panels that were once walls that were loose from the wall
of the Trade Center.
I went around by the freight elevator and I could see it was just blown.
30th floor. We hear another ... explosion.
And at that time we heard a huge explosion.
As noted above, the explanation that unignited jet fuel fell down
elevator shafts and then ignited in the lobby is entirely plausible.
Igniting a fuel-air mixture that is between the
lower and upper explosive limits can produce large overpressures
and great destruction.
Indeed, bombs known as thermobaric devices exploit that fact,
so comments by firefighters noting the appearance of bomb damage
are not surprising.
00:47:50
Firefighter Louie Cacchioli told People Weekly:
I was taking firefighters up in the elevator to the 24th floor
to get in position to evacuate workers.
On the last trip up a bomb went off.
We think there were bombs set in the building.
00:48:03
For more than a year, the Port Authority blocked the release of a tape
of firefighters' transmissions from the World Trade Center on 9-11.
In November 2002, the tape was finally released to the New York Times
and other news outlets.
Why did it take so long to get the tape released?
I got, uh,
an eyewitness who said there was an explosion on floors 7 and 8, 7, 8.
Battalion 3 to Dispatch, we've just had another explosion.
... Warren Street, because of the secondary explosion.
We've got numerous people covered with dust from the secondary explosion.
We got another explosion on the Tower, 10-13, 10-13.
Tower 2 has had a major explosion and what appears to
be a complete collapse surrounding the entire area.
I was involved in the secondary, uh, explosion at Tower 1, Kay...
Chief Palmer had reached the fire on the 78th floor of the South Tower
and devised a plan to put it out.
9:52 a.m., 13 minutes before collapse.
... Ladder 15, we've got two isolated pockets of fire.
We should be able to knock it down with two lines.
Radio that, 78th floor numerous 10-45 Code Ones.
If the 78th floor was a raging inferno
like the government would have us believe,
then Palmer wouldn't have gotten as far as he did
and certainly wouldn't be able to put it out.
Chief Palmer was in the 78th floor 'skylobby'
at the bottom of the crash zone,
which extended from the 78th to the 84th floors.
Palmer's account of "two pockets of fire" presumably
only describes conditions on the 78th floor.
Were there larger fires on the floors above?
Photographs of the South Tower
shortly before its explosion suggest there were not.
Whereas broadcast video taken within the first 20 minutes of the crash
show flames lapping from the northeast corner of the Tower,
there are apparently no photographs or videos of the Tower
shortly before 9:59 that show any visible fires.
00:49:26
On August 12th, 2005 an additional 15 hours of radio transmissions
and transcripts of interviews with firefighters
was finally released to the public.
Firefighters describe two events consistent with the controlled demolition:
bright flashes from inside the building ...
"I saw low-level flashes. [Lieutenant Evangelista]
asked me if I saw low-level flashes in front of the building,
and I agreed with him because I saw a flash flash flash
and then it looked like the building came down."
"You know like when they demolish a building,
how when they blow up a building, when it falls down?
That's what I thought I saw."
--Stephen Gregory, Commissioner of the Bureau of Communications
[footage of controlled demolitions]
And a number of crackling sounds before the buildings collapsed ...
"Somewhere around the middle of the WTC there was this
orange and red flash ... initially it was just one then [it]
just kept popping all the way around the building and [it]
started to explode."
"As far as I could see, these popping sounds and the explosions
were getting bigger, going both up and down and then all around the building."
--Captain Karin deShore, Batallion 46
[footage of the Kingdome demolition]
Loose Change gives short shrift to one of the
most valuable bodies of evidence to emerge in regard
to the destruction of the Towers.
This body of 'oral histories', consisting of more than 12,000
pages of interviews with FDNY and EMS personnel,
contains
detailed accounts of the sights and sounds of explosions
at the onsets of each of the Tower's 'collapse.'
The accounts describe more than just bright flashes and crackling sounds.
David Ray Griffin describes
the following features described by these witnesses.
Explosions
Collapse Beginning below the Strike Zone and Fire
Flashes and Demolition Rings
Horizontal Ejections
Synchronized Explosions
00:50:20
What does science have to say about the collapses?
The collapse of the World Trade Center was picked up
by Columbia University's observatory in Palisades, New York.
The South Tower registers at 2.1 earthquake.
The North Tower registers at 2.3 earthquake.
Won-Young Kim told Chris Bollyn that their seismographs
pick up underground explosions from a quarry 20 miles away.
These blasts are caused by 80,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate
and cause local earthquakes between magnitude one and two.
The 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center did not even register,
because it was not coupled to the ground.
During the collapse, most of the energy of the falling debris
was absorbed by the Towers and the neighboring structures
converting them into rubble and dust or causing other damage
but not causing significant ground shaking.
Science could have a great deal to say about the 'collapses'
but you wouldn't know that from Loose Change,
which, instead of providing any scientific analysis,
trots out the
long-ago-debunked claim
by Christopher Bollyn
that the seismic records of the events prove underground explosions.
The claim is based on an easily demonstrated
misinterpretation of the graphs
from the Lamont-Doherty station in Palisades, NY.
00:51:08
Mark Loizeaux, the president of Controlled Demolition, Inc.
told the American Free Press that in the basements of the WTC
where 47 central support columns connected to the bedrock,
hot spots of "literally molten steel"
were discovered more than a month after September 11th.
These incredibly hot areas were found at the bottoms of the elevator shafts
down 7 basement levels. The molten steel was found
"three, four, and five weeks later, when the rubble was being removed."
He said that molten steel was also found at World Trade Center 7.
The highest temperature was in the east corner of the South Tower,
where a temperature of 1377 degrees Fahrenheit was recorded.
The molten steel in the basement was more than double that temperature.
Do you still think that jet fuel brought down the World Trade Center?
Loose Change
cites only the American Free Press article,
which quotes presidents of two of the companies involved in
the cleanup of Ground Zero,
as a source for the story that there was molten steel in the rubble.
This makes it easy to dismiss the story as the
product of a publication with
neo-Nazi ties
using as sources
participants
in the arguably criminal destruction of evidence.
One has to look elsewhere to find
more credible reports
of molten steel.
00:51:56
In all the videos of the collapses, explosions can be seen
bursting from the buildings 20 to 30 stories below the demolition wave.
Here.
[music]
Here. Here. Here. Here. And here.
Loose Change
provides some excellent footage of the so-called squibs
(high-velocity dust ejections)
emerging from the Towers' facades below the descending zones
of total destruction,
but does not provide any analysis of why these indicate demolition,
or attempt to answer arguments that the ejections were merely
due to floors falling inside the Towers.
However,
straightforward analysis
shows that these events could not have been the results
of gravity collapses.
00:52:56
Etienne Sauret was filming her documentary, World Trade Center:
The First 24 Hours, and caught both collapses on tape. Watch carefully.
The tripod shakes 12 seconds before the North Tower begins collapsing.
And something is knocked off the right hand side of the building.
Perhaps the camera shook when someone walked by.
And there were lots of objects, including people,
falling from the North Tower because of the fires.
In any case,
seismic records
rule out the possibility that there were significant seismic events
preceding each Tower's explosion.
00:53:31
You're probably asking,
if there were bombs in the building,
how would they get in there without anyone noticing?
Ben Fountain, a financial analyst who worked in the World Trade Center,
told People Magazine that in the weeks before 9-11,
There were a number of unannounced and unusual drills where sections
of both the Twin Towers and building 7 were evacuated for 'security reasons'.
Daria Coard, a guard in the North Tower, told Newsday that security detail
was working 12 hour shifts for two weeks before 9-11, but on Thursday the 6th,
bomb sniffing dogs were abruptly removed from the building.
The Ben Fountain story is notable for its lack of corroboration.
The story about the
pulling of bomb-sniffing dogs
is interesting, but does not provide a satisfying answer
to how the buildings could have been rigged for demolition.
Such questions can only be answered with speculation,
but there are
plausible scenarios
that describe how the buildings could have been prepared
without detection.
00:54:05
So who authorized all this?
President Bush's brother, Marvin,
was Board of Directors at Securacom from 1993 until fiscal year 2000.
Securacom, now known as Stratesec, is an electronic security company
backed by Kuwait-American Corporation, which provided security
for United Airlines, Dulles International Airport, and from the early 1990s
up to the day of 9-11, the World Trade Center.
Marvin is also the former director of HCC Insurance Holdings
which insured parts of the World Trade Center on 9/11.
More information on this was supposed to be disclosed and never was.
To date the SEC has not revealed what they have learned.
Loose Change
displays
this page
to document the point about Bush and Securacom.
The story by Margie Burns cited
here
may have predated that.
00:54:26
If only we could examine the debris from the World Trade Center
and figure out what happened.
Unfortunately, Mayor Giuliani began shipping the remains off
to recycling yards overseas before investigators could even examine it.
Although it took until May of 2002 for the cleanup of Ground Zero
to be completed,
much of the steel had been removed
before FEMA's volunteer team of investigators had started its work.
The
plan to recycle the steel,
submitted by Controlled Demolition Inc.,
was accepted by the city just 11 days after the attack,
and the destruction of the steel proceeded over the objections
of victims' families and fire safety experts.
00:54:56
Not even FEMA was allowed into Ground Zero.
Essentially, they blocked off a crime scene and destroyed all the evidence.
More accurately, the team assembled by FEMA to study the 'collapses' --
the Building Performance Assessment Team --
lacked the authority and resources
normally given to investigators,
such as access to the crime scene, subpoena power, and adequate funding.
00:55:01
Guess who was allowed into the site? Controlled Demolition,
who was also responsible for cleaning up
after the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995.
It gets better than that. On July 15th, 2001.
Controlled Demolition destroyed two 400-foot-tall fuel reserve tanks
from the World War II era.
The demolition was conducted for no apparent reason,
and drew numerous complains from the neighborhood.
The site remains vacant to this day and a reason for the demolition
has never been disclosed.
The demolition of the tanks was contracted by their owner Keyspan Energy.
By suggesting that the demolition of the tanks was suspicious
Loose Change
glosses over a fact that is suspicious:
CDI's burying the evidence of the
bombing of the Murrah Building.
00:55:30
Regardless, I think what happened to the World Trade Center is simple enough.
It was brought down in a carefully planned controlled demolition.
It was a psychological attack on the American People,
and it was pulled off with military precision.
have value?
don't?
