Trying To Get Facts Out About 9/11
The US government is trying to get facts out to rebut some of the conspiracy theories that swirl around 9/11. Of course, the conspiracy theorists simply won't listen to it. But maybe some hard facts will keep the more rational folks from going off the deep end.
According to a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll carried out in July, more than one-third of Americans suspect U.S. officials helped in the September 11 attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could later go to war.
The State Department responded this week with a rebuttal of World Trade Center demolition theories and doubts about other events of the day that abound on the Internet.
It listed some of the most prevalent September 11 myths, led by claims the twin towers were destroyed by secretly planted explosives, not burning passenger jets.
"This is how the collapses may have appeared to non-experts, but demolition experts point out many differences," said a department "special feature" available at http://usinfo.state.gov/media/misinformation.html.
Demolition professionals always blow the bottom floors of a structure first, while the collapses began at upper levels — where the hijacked Boeing 767s hit, it said.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed on September 11. The Bush administration responded by leading an invasion of Afghanistan and, in 2003, of Iraq.
'CORRECTIVE' EFFORT
The State Department was providing "corrective information" in response to misinformation in the media and on the Internet, said Joanne Moore, a department spokeswoman.
The information in the rebuttal was not new, she added, but drawn from public sources.
In a similar vein, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology posted a "fact sheet" on its Web site on Wednesday in question-and-answer format responding to alternative theories about the fire and the collapse.
NIST, which carried out a three-year investigation, concluded the towers collapsed after being hit by separate, fuel-laden aircraft flown by hijackers.
The resulting fire, which reached temperatures as high as 1,000 degrees C (1,800 degrees F), led to an inward bowing of perimeter columns and subsequent collapses, NIST found in 43 volumes that comprise a final report issued last October.
Of course, because it is coming from the government, the zealots dismiss it out of hand (along with the laws of physics, of course). But the folks at Reuters provide a bit too much credibility to the critics, too:
"NIST is a group of government scientists whose leaders are Bush appointees, and therefore their report is not likely to veer from the political story," said Kevin Ryan, an editor of the online Journal of 9/11 studies.
Ryan says he was a former site manager of a division of Underwriters Laboratories, an independent, not-for-profit product-safety testing and certification organization.
Sounds impressive, no? "Former site manager of a division of" UL. People reading this would get an inflated sense of Mr. Ryan's credentials. He was actually former Site Manager for Environmental Health Laboratories in South Bend, Indiana according to Wikipedia. Not exactly a credible voice on things to do with structural engineering.
As I have mentioned before, I know of exactly one engineer and one professor of physics who are part of the group. All the rest are either "soft" science types or have no engineering background whatsoever. I have also mentioned the NIST report before and noted that steel loses 80% of its yield strength at 600° C. There is nothing on this earth that could have prevented the towers from collapsing when two fuel laden aircraft were intentionally flown into them. By al Qaeda terrorists. Who take full credit for the attack.
UPDATE: The New York Times also has an article. They also have one detail I was not aware of, but that completely demolishes the 9/11 nut's arguments.
The report brought to light one little-known detail about the morning: a private demolition monitoring firm, Protec Documentation Services, had seismographs at several construction sites in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Those machines documented the tremors of the falling towers, but captured no ground vibrations before the collapses from demolition charges or bombs, according to a separate report by Brent Blanchard, the director of field operations for Protec. It is available online at www.implosionworld.com.
Asked for comment, Mr. Ryan said that his online 9/11 journal would soon publish an article on those seismic recordings. He also maintained that the Protec paper did not adequately address why puffs of smoke were seen being expelled from some of the floors. However, the federal investigators said that about 70 percent of a building’s volume consists of air, and what looked like puffs of smoke were jets of air — and dust — that were pushed ahead of the collapse.
That and the impossible logistics of the planting of explosives pretty much wipe the theories out. But never fear, now they are developing a theory of "super-thermite". They won't give up this lunacy.
UPDATE: Or is it REALLY Super-thermite they are looking for? Hmmmmm?
UPDATE: Klein Verzet has it all in easy to understand cartoon form.
Other Links to this Post
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Right Wing Nut House — Sunday, 3 September , 2006 @ 9:27 am
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Flopping Aces » Blog Archive » Remembering 9/11, The Liberal Way — Sunday, 3 September , 2006 @ 10:54 am
By Rick Moran, Sunday, 3 September , 2006 @ 8:13 am
That physicist you reference, Jones, says that some kind of “Superthermite” was used to bring down the towers.
Laughable.
By Gaius, Sunday, 3 September , 2006 @ 8:18 am
Heh - it’ll be alien death rays when the superthermite doesn’t pan out.
By MrGone, Sunday, 3 September , 2006 @ 10:42 am
I don’t much subscribe to the conspiracy theory but after reading some of the skeptics points, I do find myself wondering about at least one thing. Why did WT7 fall? It wasn’t hit by a plane. It didn’t have some enormous fire or explosion. The skeptics point out correctly that no other steel frame building has ever collapsed before or since in spite of massive fires raging for many hours. The Meridian building in Phila comes to mind. It burned for over 19 hours and didn’t collapse. There are many other examples of steel frame buildings having very large fires and not collapsing.
In addition, this is addressed briefly in the report and they do not have an answer. They suggested that further study is warranted. Again, I’m not being paranoid but this question was never fully answered and the cause unknown at this point.
By Gaius, Sunday, 3 September , 2006 @ 11:01 am
If the fireproofing is removed, steel softens very quickly. That is why the NFPA codes have mandated fireproofing for many years. Driving a jet into the building would, I suspect, pretty effectively remove the concrete that shielded the steel.
By Gaius, Sunday, 3 September , 2006 @ 11:22 am
Here’s your answer on WTC-7:
14. Why is the NIST investigation of the collapse of WTC 7 (the 47-story office building that collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001, hours after the towers) taking so long to complete? Is a controlled demolition hypothesis being considered to explain the collapse?
When NIST initiated the WTC investigation, it made a decision not to hire new staff to support the investigation. After the June 2004 progress report on the WTC investigation was issued, the NIST investigation team stopped working on WTC 7 and was assigned full-time through the fall of 2005 to complete the investigation of the WTC towers. With the release and dissemination of the report on the WTC towers in October 2005, the investigation of the WTC 7 collapse resumed. Considerable progress has been made since that time, including the review of nearly 80 boxes of new documents related to WTC 7, the development of detailed technical approaches for modeling and analyzing various collapse hypotheses, and the selection of a contractor to assist NIST staff in carrying out the analyses. It is anticipated that a draft report will be released by early 2007.
The current NIST working collapse hypothesis for WTC 7 is described in the June 2004 Progress Report on the Federal Building and Fire Safety Investigation of the World Trade Center Disaster (Volume 1, page 17, as well as Appendix L), as follows:
An initial local failure occurred at the lower floors (below floor 13) of the building due to fire and/or debris-induced structural damage of a critical column (the initiating event) which supported a large-span floor bay with an area of about 2,000 square feet;
Vertical progression of the initial local failure occurred up to the east penthouse, and as the large floor bays became unable to redistribute the loads, it brought down the interior structure below the east penthouse; and
Triggered by damage due to the vertical failure, horizontal progression of the failure across the lower floors (in the region of floors 5 and 7 that were much thicker and more heavily reinforced than the rest of the floors) resulted in a disproportionate collapse of the entire structure.
This hypothesis may be supported or modified, or new hypotheses may be developed, through the course of the continuing investigation. NIST also is considering whether hypothetical blast events could have played a role in initiating the collapse. While NIST has found no evidence of a blast or controlled demolition event, NIST would like to determine the magnitude of hypothetical blast scenarios that could have led to the structural failure of one or more critical elements.
By MrGone, Sunday, 3 September , 2006 @ 2:02 pm
Like I said, they have no conclusion at present and are actively considering a blast scenario. That’s all I said to begin with, the verdict’s still out and they have no satisfactory theory or answer as of yet. I’ll just wait and see what they come up with.
Regarding the fireproofing and temperatures that steel will soften and/or melt, I’m not fully convinced. Not that I think the US had anything to do with it but there are really some significant flaws in the analysis. For example, the first tower to collaspe had a much more “glancing” blow, burned much shorter, but still collapsed first. Watching the videos, there were people standing in the gaping hole of the tower. How hot could it have been there? I don’t know what the truth is but personally, I’m not 100% satisfied with the reports. I realize by saying this, most of you will call me a wackjob but I have read the skeptic’s views and while some of it can be easily dismissed, some of it cannot. Maybe we’ll never know the real answer but I’m glad that some are at least asking for better than we have so far.
By Gaius, Sunday, 3 September , 2006 @ 2:10 pm
Did you read the NIST document? Most of what you are concerned about is covered.
By MrGone, Sunday, 3 September , 2006 @ 2:19 pm
Yes, I am still not convinced. They talk about the extreme temperatures of the jet fuel. Well, what is jet fuel? Kerosene. Not exactly the hottest burning flame and far from the temperatuers needed to significantly weaken or melt structural steel. I’ll repeat myself here at the risk of being labeled a kook. You should take a look at what the main presentations are at st911.org. It’s not as crazy as you’d think. Again, some can be dismissed outright, but some cannot. I also think before you comment on these “theories”, it would behoove you to at least read or watch the presentation. Many of the NIST arguments are taken to task quite scientifically.
I’m not a believer in what many say is the conspiracy but as far as I’m concerned, many questions have yet to be fully answered.
By Robin Waldvogel, Monday, 4 September , 2006 @ 10:24 am
MrGone
Many tragedies and accidents are never fully explained.
Many investigations are never fully satisfactory.
Conspiracy theories spring from these inconsistencies. We all like a puzzle and we like to think we know more than others.
But it’s really just this simple:
Occam’s razor!
By AJ, Monday, 4 September , 2006 @ 5:04 pm
Occam’s razor!
Yup, just as simple as that. It really is.
Regards, AJ.
By Roland Hesz, Tuesday, 5 September , 2006 @ 2:07 am
“But it’s really just this simple:
Occam’s razor!”
Yup.
Even if the result of “Occam’s razor” is overturned in a few years.
I saw a kid over the cookie jar.
Occam’s razor said: he tried to take it from the shelf and broke it.
He produced a bit complicated story about a cat, a stray ball, which did not add up.
And later was proven true.
Occam’s razor.
But most probably it works in this case. Just never forget, that it’s not infallible.
By skeptosis, Saturday, 21 October , 2006 @ 12:50 pm
to robin, AJ, gaius, & the author:
the problem with the long-awaited NIST report on WTC7 is that NIST still maintains that “no steel was recovered from WTC7″ - google the phrase, and you’ll find it in context in NCSTAR 1-3.
the problem with THAT is that FEMA had and examined A36 structural steel from WTC7, for Report 403 Appendix C (limited metallurgical examination). there are pictures of it. the steel, subject to ’sulfidation and intergranular melting’ has been described as ’swiss cheese’.
(try occam’s razor that: what’s most likely to have turned structural steel to swiss cheese - diesel fire? gypsum? acid rain? ocean salt? thermite?)
and yet for some reason NIST is unaware that the steel exists. which gives them the ability to say that ‘NIST has found no evidence … of a controlled demolition’.
i’ve written to NIST and FEMA’s experts (barnett et al. @ WPI) about this, trying to figure out who has the steel and why it hasn’t been transferred to NIST for their investigation sometime in the past FIVE YEARS…
still no response.
that’s not a conspiracy theory, just a question why the investigators are choosing to ignore physical evidence.
By Gaius, Saturday, 21 October , 2006 @ 1:39 pm
Do you actually understand what those terms mean and how the process occurs? Do you have an inventory of the contents of the buildings prior to the airplanes being crashed into them?
By Gaius, Saturday, 21 October , 2006 @ 1:51 pm
Perhaps this will help clarify it:
http://www.wpi.edu/News/Transformations/2002Spring/steel.html
All it takes is sulfur present - that is all. That, as they point out, may even have come from acid rain. Or I would be very unsurprised to find it present in common building materials and building contents including plastics and rubbers.
The researchers do not even know when the process began.
By skeptosis, Sunday, 22 October , 2006 @ 5:08 am
Gaius - thanks, but i’ve read all about the deep mystery of melted steel already. and FEMA 403. and NCSTAR. i’m sure you’re trying to be helpful, but you’re missing the point.
how are the researchers supposed to determine WHEN the process began, if they’re not even willing to look at the evidence?
NIST isn’t using that steel as part of their investigation, because they continue to maintain that ‘no steel was recovered’. instead they say that ‘properties for the steel… will be based on literature and contemporaneous documents’. the literature will not show silver dollar-sized holes burned through structural steel, will it?
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also, if acid rain or ocean salt were the culprit, as WPI suggested and you repeated, wouldn’t this post-eutectic appearance be widely documented, given the large number of buildings in coastal urban areas? surely you’re not suggesting that this is the first such office building to have ever had a fire in it..