What Really Happened to the WTC?

[hrothgar]

There are many plausible explanations so we are trying to look at all the facts to figure out which one is more likely to be true. Even if it were planned, somebody still has to give the go ahead to push the button. If it was a conspiracy then he certainly wouldn't admit to it on television. This was not an impromptu remark "in the middle of a crisis" that was caught on camera. It was sometime after the fact and he was reflecting on what had happened and the decisions he made that day and the pull it comment was a remark about a decision he had made that day. I think the quote was something like "so I made the decision to pull it." This sounds like he is saying they chose a controlled demolition of the building rather than risking a spontaneous collapse.

 

What I find interesting is that WTC 7 is the only steel-framed modern skyscraper in the history of world to have been allegedly collapsed by fire alone. You'd think many an investigation would be done by structural engineers as to how to prevent such a thing in the future but as far as I'm aware, there has been no official investigation into the cause of the WTC 7 collapse and the only informal investigation that was done found that fire was the cause but stated something to the effect that fire causing the collapse was a very improbable scenario. I've seen at least two pictures of steel framed buildings that have been gutten by fire and all that was left was the steel frame. Without the jet fuel in WTC 7, how could the fire have gotten hot enough to behave so differently from other high-rise steel-framed structure fires?

Here's what wikipedia has to say about this...

 

Within the PBS documentary America Rebuilds, aired in September 2002, Larry Silverstein, the owner of Building Seven and leaseholder and insurance policy holder for the remainder of the WTC Complex, recalled the collapse of WTC7:

 

I remember getting a call from the Fire Department commander, telling me they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, 'You know, we've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is just pull it.' And they made that decision to pull and then we watched the building collapse. [84]

 

Some critics of the official theory have said that the term "pull" is industry jargon for planned demolition and that Silverstein's remark exposes his assent to demolishing the building. [85]

 

Silverstein's spokesperson, Mr. Dara McQuillan, later explained:

 

In the afternoon of September 11, Mr. Silverstein spoke to the Fire Department Commander on site at Seven World Trade Center. The Commander told Mr. Silverstein that there were several firefighters in the building working to contain the fires. Mr. Silverstein expressed his view that the most important thing was to protect the safety of those firefighters, including, if necessary, to have them withdraw from the building.

 

McQuillan said that by "it" Silverstein meant the contingent of firefighters remaining in the building.[86] The firefighters themselves describe how they were pulled out of the building[87].

 

Researcher Jim Hoffman disputes the assertion that "pull" is industry jargon. A Google search, he says, fails to uphold the assertion. For this and other reasons, he says, the case built from Mr. Silverstein's statement is "extremely weak." He concludes: "While failing to provide substantial evidence for the controlled demolition of WTC 7, the story has functioned to eclipse the overwhelming case for demolition based on the physical characteristics of the collapse. . ." [88]

 

Controlled demolition experts at ImplosionWorld.com deny this, saying that they have never heard the term used to refer to the demolition of a building. They also argue against the theory that controlled demolition was used to bring down 7 World Trade Center.[27]

[hrothgar]

Here is a link to the implosionworld report cited in my last post

 

http://www.implosionworld.com/WTC%20COLLAP...rd%208-8-06.pdf

 

They seem skeptical about the points you raise (to say the least)

 

Where this gets frustrating is that you and the authors of the report are disagreeing about basic facts. You say red, they say blue. You say up, they say down.

 

Case in point: You assert "What I find interesting is that WTC 7 is the only steel-framed modern skyscraper in the history of world to have been allegedly collapsed by fire alone."

 

The report states

 

1. Many steel structures have collapsed from fire

2. Thousands of tons of steel girders impact WTC #7 (in other words, the building didn't collapse from fire alone)

 

Indeed, the report that I cite seems specifically structured to refute many of the points that you bring up. It almost looks like your quest for heterodoxy is simply quoting the conventional wisdom amongst conspiracy theorists...

 

In any case, I have no way of knowing which of the competing sets of facts is "true".

Accordingly, its not a particularly interesting discussion

[Winstonm]

The original question was what happened to the WTC ?

 

If the WTC towers were built as proclaimed, it seems remote that the official version is accurate. But if they were not built to specs, who ok'd it, who profited, and was there a cover-up after the fact?

[hotShot]

A Boing 767 fully loaded has a weigth of 180 tons, it is about 150 ft long and wide and about 50 ft high. If can be faster than 500 mph. To calculate impact energy you need to take the square of the speed and multiply it with the mass. The result is huge. I don't think the floors were designed to put 150 ton objects on it. So they were stressed to the limit.

The mechanical damage to the structure must have been enourmous.

The plane must have destroyed 3-4 floors, and when the stucture weakened the mass of the upper part of the building started moving downwards. Now asume that 20% of the buildings mass were above the impact, it means that a 100000 tons hammer droped about 50 ft hit the structure of the underlying floor. When you look at the collaps you will see, that whenever this hammers hits, the floors that are hit collapse. This goes sort of top down.

Feb. 1993 they blew 700kg of TNT in garage, and that didn't damage the building seriously. To damage a building like that you need much more, or you have to drill holes and put it inside. And this won't go unnoticed.

And notice the other WTC buildings that did not collapse, were damaged so much, that they had to take them down.

 

Seems to me that people have a problem of understanding what enourmous powers elementary natural forces like fire, strom, eathquakes etc. can have.

[jtfanclub]

The original question was what happened to the WTC ?

 

If the WTC towers were built as proclaimed, it seems remote that the official version is accurate. But if they were not built to specs, who ok'd it, who profited, and was there a cover-up after the fact?

Well, the article Hrothgar pointed out makes it clear that what happened does not support an explosion. You can make whatever you can out of my points as well, but there's just no way that explosives can explain the stuff that Jones & Company are claiming. You can figure that out just from the inherent contraditions in his report, without any outside information at all, which is what I was trying to point out.

 

So you can believe that it was to spec and the forces were stronger than we thought, or that that it wasn't built to spec, or that aliens did it, but explosives and thermite simply don't explain it. It simply isn't possible.

 

Anyhow, as far as who OK'd it and who profited, it was built in New York, back when the construction firms there were all owned by the Mafia (allegedly). I would find it shocking if it *was* built up to spec.

 

And speaking of spec, I'm not going to speculate on whether there was a coverup.

[DrTodd13]

Without the jet fuel in WTC 7, how could the fire have gotten hot enough to behave so differently from other high-rise steel-framed structure fires?

Because it had a great deal of diesel fuel in the basement, supposedly. It may have very well had other chemicals as well, possibly including thermite.

 

I still think it was ground shock that did most of the damage there, combined with the fire. They shared a foundation, so it would have been a hell of a shock. Combine that with the diesel burning, and....

I think this is ignoring the evidence. Seismic records show a maximum of a 2.3. This is not even close to large enough to do any structural damage.

[DrTodd13]

I like that implosion company report Hrothgar. Thanks for posting it. Like I said before, the theory that the buildings were primed for destruction with explosives is shot down since to believe that stretches imagination. The report is actually agnostic on a couple of points discussed here for which they admit they have insufficient evidence. They also contradict a point stated here that Silverstein gave the order to remove the firefighters. They say that he would not have had such an authority. So, the comment is still a bit anamolous but not a reason to be convinced of a conspirary. Also, the report doesn't discuss the building between WTC 1/2 and WTC 7. It must have also been hit by a similar amount of material. Was a fire not started there and that is why that building didn't collapse? That is something I'd like to know that they didn't address.

 

Anyway, I'm not set on heterodoxy or orthodoxy. Frankly, the truth of this matter doesn't matter all that much to me because I already hate the government and radical Islam. It is more of a matter of curiosity and so I have the luxury of not having to have a definitive position and looking at both sides.

 

Thanks again for the link.

[Winstonm]

1) The government's conspiracy theory:

 

Directed by a militant hiding in a cave in Afghanistan, 19 young men armed with box cutters hijacked 4 airliners after having only recently learned to fly and somehow were able to both fly, turn, and navigate 2 of these planes without opposition from fighter planes and crash them into each tower of the world trade center, and that the subsequent fire weakened the steel 50% causing a collapse of the floors which then pancaked down causing the complete destruction of both towers as well as a separate building, WTC 7.

 

2) An alternate theory:

 

Planned implosions brought down each building, including thermate charges to vertically cut the 47 columns of interior support, insuring total collapse.

 

 

Which theory best explains the following:

 

1) The steel central core collapsed along with each structure.

2) Countless witnesses, including firemen and reporters, heard explosions preceding the collapse and during the collapse, the predecing blasts from the basement that rocked the ground.

3) Audio captures a muffled boom prior to the start of the first collapse.

4) Molten steel was found in the basement after the collapse.

5) The fires could not have burned hot enough to melt steel.

6) Pictures of some of the remaining central core steel showed angular breaks or cuts.

7) All 3 buidlings fell at free-fall speed with no resistance from the floors below.

 

Which theory best explains these coincidences:

 

1) In the days before the attack, there was a huge surge in put-options on the stocks of American Airlines and United Airlines (some gone unclaimed.)

2) Larry Silverstein had recently acquired a 99-year lease on the WTC and had insured them for among other things "terrorist attacks." He later won a court case in which he claimed two attacks so his award was doubled.

3) The company that provided security for WTC was run by the brother of George Bush.

4) Shaped charges are used in controlled demolitions to create angular cuts in the support columns.

5) The PNAC had suggested that what was needed to galvanize the American public to their ideologies was "a new Pearl Harbor".

6) Controlled demolitions result in collapse at near free-fall speed.

7) FEMA had arrived in New York City the day before the collapses.

 

 

Which theory answers the question: who profited?

 

1) Afghanistan and Boeing, etc..

2) Iraq and Haliburton

3) The Patriot Act.

4) The Department of Homeland Security

5) Larry Silverstein and over $1 billion in insurance money.

6) The purchasers of all those put-options on American and United Airlines.

7) PNAC and a "new Pearl Harbor."

 

"When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

[pbleighton]

Winston, why did the planes fly into the buildings?

 

Peter

[bid_em_up]

Winston, why did the planes fly into the buildings?

 

Peter

Or rather, next he will be claiming that no planes actually flew into the buildings.

 

Oh, I know....the "conspiracy" just created those images in our minds. No planes ever actually flew into them at all, right? Geez.

[DrTodd13]

Here are a few things I heard the other day. Silverstein supposedly got 7 billion in insurance payouts. It doesn't sound right but the same report said he had only invested 15 million in the properties. That's one heck of a return on investment. Yes, they cited that he had also taken out policies specifically covering terrorist attacks right after getting the lease. I don't know if that is an unusual action or not.

 

I also heard that WTC 7 fell about 6pm and that last firefighter left the building 5 or 6 hours previous to this. This docu I saw claimed that Silverstein's "pull" comment referenced the time around which the building fell and not 5 or 6 hours earlier when the firefighters left. Also, there was some debate over the use of the word "pull" in the demolitions industry. This same docu had a clip of a demolitions guy using the word "pull" to describe finishing the demolition of one of the WTC buildings in the days after the attack. This docu was obviously pro-conspiracy so take it as you will and check the sources.

 

Also, there was obviously a conspiracy to damage these buildings. The only question is whether it was a conspiracy of 25 or 50 radical muslims or whether the conspiracy included anyone in government. It is obviously possible to keep this conspiracy quiet enough because it happened so I don't think the "any conspiracy that large would be detected" argument necessarily applies.

[Winstonm]

Would someone explain this to me, then, if the "official" story is right? http://www.911studies.com/911photostudies116.htm

and this: http://www.911studies.com/911photostudies121.htm

 

What happened to WTC 6, an image caught on CNN videotape before any of the collapses had begun?

 

And take particular notice of item #5 here: http://www.911studies.com/911photostudies17.htm

 

Cars magically change colors here: http://www.911studies.com/911photostudies20.htm

 

And maybe even this: http://www.911studies.com/911photostudies43.htm

 

Again, does the official story make sense?

[Winstonm]

Winston, why did the planes fly into the buildings?

 

Peter

For what reason did they fly into the buildings? I don't know. I don't even think that is particularly relevant. I don't think the issue is who stood to gain from two airliners crashing into the towers but who would have profited the most from the total collapse of both towers.

 

 

I view the crashes and the collapses as two separate events and possibly each having its own orchestrator and profit motives. Who caused the crashes is not nearly so important as who or what caused the collapses.

 

The WTC had been attacked before with bombs so it wouldn't be a surprise if indeed terrorists once again attacked those symbolic creations; why this same group would also pick on the pentagon for attack makes no sense. But if your goal is to create a new enemy against which to wage your agenda then an attack on the pentagon makes more sense - and these people can simply be ordered to keep mouths shut.

 

But some others would have to be paid off.

 

Supposedly, the twin towers were white elephants, tremendous money losers whose owners had trouble keeping filled with renters. They were also supposed to have been filled with blow-on asbestos, making them nearly impossible to implode legally or to clean. If this is true, then it is rather an amazing coincidence that Larry Silverstein signed a 99-year lease on these losers and then inusred them for billions against terrorist attack only weeks before the attacks and ended up with a relatively nice, clean new construction site free of asbestos claims and problems with the EPA. Not only did Larry Silverstein collect billions from the insurance, he retained the right to rebuild on the same site.

 

And someone or someones made millions off put-options on Untited and American as well as other higher-than-normal put options on the companies that occupied WTC and the insurers of the WTC. Surely just a coincidence.

 

The biggest problem with WTC is pulling the pieces together from so many fragmented sources and eliminating the speculative and irrational - when you concentrate on the proven and the recordings, an entire new perspective is gained that cannot fail to create almost overwhelming doubt as to the official line.

 

Anyone interested should look into the list of doubters - you won't find the usual Clinton-killed-so-and-so crowd; what you find are engineers, professors of physics, PhDs, and other bright, questioning minds who no longer accept the fact-finding of the NIST and are calling simply on a re-opening of the investigation.

 

You will find speculation, such as I have made, about who stood to profit - but with so much secrecy and ineptitude shown by the original investigation, to speculate on "who stood to gain" is a reasonable question asked mostly by reasonable men and women.

 

The hardest part is ferreting out the non-sense and real conspiracy whackos and focusing on the concerns of bright, questioning minds.

 

Vincent Bugliosi used to tell his juries that circumstantial evidence is not like a chain, as the defendent's lawyers claimed, that if a chain is broken the entire chain becomes useless; no, circumstantial evidence is like a rope - if you cut through one strand the rope is still solid and strong.

 

Much of 9-11 investigation is like building a rope from individual strands picked up here and there - just because one strand turns out to be weak or breaks does not affect the other strands that have been shown to be true.

[Winstonm]

Winston, why did the planes fly into the buildings?

 

Peter

Or rather, next he will be claiming that no planes actually flew into the buildings.

 

Oh, I know....the "conspiracy" just created those images in our minds. No planes ever actually flew into them at all, right? Geez.

Have you heard of Operations Northwood? This was a document released in 1998 by the freedom of information act. It was a proposal created and signed by the joint chiefs of staff in 1962 and delivered to Robert McNamara, and it proposed creating false attacks against Americans and blaming the attacks on Cuba, so as to garner public support to go to war to overthrow Castro.

 

This is not whacko conspiracy theory. This is fact. This actually happened.

 

Do you remember Joseph McCarthy?

 

How about the Tonkin Gulf?

 

Bombing Cambodia?

 

Watergate?

 

Or how about this quote from "The Godfather"?

Michael: My father is no different than any powerful man, any man with power, like a president or senator.

Kay Adams: Do you know how naive you sound, Michael? Presidents and senators don't have men killed.

Michael: Oh. Who's being naive, Kay?

 

Yes, who is being naive?

[EricK]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_conspiracy_theories

 

gives a balanced account of all the 9/11 conspiracy theories. Well worth a read if you are interested in this sort of thing.

[Gerben42]

Why is this thread still running?

 

+++ THIS IS AN OFFICIAL NOTICE FROM THE MINISTERY OF TRUTH +++

No planes have crashed into the World Trade Center. These buildings were demolished to make room for a monument honouring our great Leader.

Big Brother is watching you.

[Winstonm]

Why is this thread still running?

 

Because a recent poll shows that 36% of the American public now believe the government was either involved in or had enough information available to prevent the attacks.

 

5 years after the Kennedy assasination you would have been hard pressed to find 1% who believed it was a conspiracy.

 

To convince 36% takes compelling evidence and not just the rants of a bunch of looneys.

[cherdano]

Why is this thread still running?

 

Because a recent poll shows that 36% of the American public now believe the government was either involved in or had enough information available to prevent the attacks.

Not sure what the 36% really means, but if they believe the government let or made this happen on purpose, then these 36% are irrational enough that no discussion will make them change their mind. So I see no point to this thread.

[Winstonm]

Why is this thread still running?

 

Because a recent poll shows that 36% of the American public now believe the government was either involved in or had enough information available to prevent the attacks.

Not sure what the 36% really means, but if they believe the government let or made this happen on purpose, then these 36% are irrational enough that no discussion will make them change their mind. So I see no point to this thread.

So you are saying that being in the majority equates to being rational? If minority viewpoints equated to irrationality whereas majority viewpoints always coincided with the truth we would still believe in a flat Earth that was the center of the universe. Fortunately, not eveyone believed the official doctrine.

[helene_t]

Here are a few things I heard the other day.  Silverstein supposedly got 7 billion in insurance payouts.

Yes, a lot of popular media hits have been proven to be fabricated in order to get money out of the insurance companies. Some well-documented examples include Exxon Valdez, the Dresden bombings, the Spanish flu, the Russian revolution, Egypt's 7 plagues and the extinction of the dinosaurs. Not to mention the performance of the Polish open team in Estoril.

To convince 36% takes compelling evidence and not just the rants of a bunch of looneys.

Ha-ha, do you know how many percents of the American public believes in ghosts, astrology and UFOs, not to mention creationism, hydrogen fuel, anti-bacterial soap and the Gerber convention? I'm sure you can come up with a better argument :D

[EricK]

Why is this thread still running?

 

Because a recent poll shows that 36% of the American public now believe the government was either involved in or had enough information available to prevent the attacks.

 

5 years after the Kennedy assasination you would have been hard pressed to find 1% who believed it was a conspiracy.

 

To convince 36% takes compelling evidence and not just the rants of a bunch of looneys.

The reason these conspiracy theories are so widespread today compared to the sixties is the internet.

 

What sources of information did people have after the Kennedy assassination? How easily could some random crank get his theory into a place where millions, even billions of people could see it?

 

Note that since the rise of the internet far more people believe in every single conspiracy theory. By selective reporting of evidence it is quite easy to convince people of some really quite crazy ideas which the totality of the evidence just doesn't support.

[Winstonm]

The reason these conspiracy theories are so widespread today compared to the sixties is the internet.

 

That is exactly right - I remember back in the sixties all we had to rely on were the newspaper accounts and the news shows.

 

One explanation is the lack of credibility within the news - where are the Edward R. Murrows or Walter Cronkites of today? The other problem is the lack of openness to address the questions raised - when the concerns raised are seemingly valid and no forthright explanation is forthcoming, the only avenue left is debate within a group and independent investigation - which is what takes place on the internet.

 

As we all know, anyone can say anything on the internet and make any wild type of claim without facts - and with the advent of computer enhancements and photo workshops not a single picture or tape can be accepted as genuine.

 

It makes for a confusing and deceitful atmosphere with real information interspersed with misinformation. No wonder so many simply accept the official story as reality.

 

I know for me, it would be interesting to hear from a commercial airline pilot about the chances of an inexperienced pilot whose only previous training came in Cessnas and simulators taking the controls of a jumbo jet at 30,000 feet and 200 miles out and being able to not only find the right major city on instruments only, but then to deliver the aircraft into a preselected target - and what would the chances be for this to occur 3 times?

 

The reason the 9-11 question marks won't go away is because the ramifications are so great if the official version is untrue - much higher stakes than for the Kennedy assasination or Watergate or the Gulf of Tonkin.

 

I don't consider myself any type of whacko but at the same time I would surely like reasonable and satisfactory answers to the seemingly many questionmarks and holes in the official version of events.

 

I am not in the camp with the conspiracy theorists nor am I on the side of the government's version - suffice it to say I am sufficiently puzzled by the omissions and contradictions to want to see a comprehensive re-investigation by an independent agent - if we were willing to spend umpteen million dollars on Clinton's sex life surely we can spend a few more on a point-by-point explanation of the contradicting arguments.

[cherdano]

The reason these conspiracy theories are so widespread today compared to the sixties is the internet.

 

That is exactly right - I remember back in the sixties all we had to rely on were the newspaper accounts and the news shows.

 

One explanation is the lack of credibility within the news - where are the Edward R. Murrows or Walter Cronkites of today? The other problem is the lack of openness to address the questions raised - when the concerns raised are seemingly valid and no forthright explanation is forthcoming, the only avenue left is debate within a group and independent investigation - which is what takes place on the internet.

 

As we all know, anyone can say anything on the internet and make any wild type of claim without facts - and with the advent of computer enhancements and photo workshops not a single picture or tape can be accepted as genuine.

 

It makes for a confusing and deceitful atmosphere with real information interspersed with misinformation. No wonder so many simply accept the official story as reality.

 

I know for me, it would be interesting to hear from a commercial airline pilot about the chances of an inexperienced pilot whose only previous training came in Cessnas and simulators taking the controls of a jumbo jet at 30,000 feet and 200 miles out and being able to not only find the right major city on instruments only, but then to deliver the aircraft into a preselected target - and what would the chances be for this to occur 3 times?

I think this would be a waste of time. Probably every serious pilot knows this is possible, after all it's evidently a lot easier to fly a plane into a building than to land it safely on a runway.

 

So if someone is willing to believe that we were misinformed about who was flying the planes, why should he believe a single experienced pilot about your desired claim? If s.o. includes such a huge part of the administration and law enforcement in his conspiracy theory, what stops him from including a few more airline pilots?

 

The same has happened with the demolition theories. It has been discussed in the engineering community (and yes, independent of the US government) to great extent whether the buildings could collapse just by the impact of the plane and the resulting fire, and the conclusion was a clear yes. Do the conspiracy theorists care? Of course not, they still know there had to be explosives in the towers.

 

And anyway, big parts of the American public believe stuff that is a lot more dangerous. They believe Saddam was behind 9/11, global warming doesn't exist/isn't caused by humans/doesn't matter, etc. If I were trying to convince the American public to be rational about one of these things, I would rather pick a topic that is politically so dangerous. (Convincing the American public of the non-existence of Saddam-9/11 ties a few years ago might have saved some couple of thousands lives, after all.)

 

Arend

[rona_]

(Convincing the American public of the non-existence of Saddam-9/11 ties a few years ago might have saved some couple of thousands lives, after all.)

 

More like 60,000 lives, unless you don't count Iraqi lives. :wub:

[pbleighton]

"More like 60,000 lives, unless you don't count Iraqi lives."

 

Unfortunately, most Americans don't count Iraqi lives, which is why we are there.

 

Peter