Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Seven Troubling Facts Concerning 9/11

These seven troubling facts have been drawn from the various venues and topics of 9/11. Although it is arguable if any of these reach the status of “smoking guns,” there are a number of “slam dunks,” incriminating clues, and one “dog that does not bark” kind of clue.

  1. A free-fall drop of WTC 7 was the prominent feature in all the “collapse” videos. This might be called a “slam dunk,” in that the laws of physics require the addition of energy to remove all the lower steel columns that would otherwise resist the fall. The top visible part of World Trade Center Building 7 is potential energy before it descends. This potential energy must convert fully to kinetic energy during free fall, or it isn’t free fall. This means none of what had been potential energy is available to abruptly remove the lower columns out from under the falling upper section. The only possible explanation is that additional non-gravitational energy sources must have been planted. In conventional controlled demolitions, the other energy sources are placed carefully at the base of columns. When the time comes for detonation, these exotic accelerants do their destructive work as planned, serving as incendiaries or explosives.

    The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), the government agency assigned to investigate this, agreed the building exhibited a free-fall drop. However, they approached their analysis of the problem by creating a sophisticated computer model of the building, and then declared their computer model was "consistent with" the video records. NIST also said their computer model did not include a “blast” event, and therefore, explosives were not involved. However, this is a pathetic explanation, in that their computer model produced a visualization looking nothing at all like the video records.
  1. An explosive event at the Pentagon occurred at approximately 9:32 AM. It was announced as a “fire at the Pentagon” on network TV approximately six minutes before the time of the alleged aircraft impact. This might be thought of as an incriminating clue, in that either there were two separate explosive events, or there was just one that didn’t involve an aircraft. If there was just one, the 9/11 Commission’s accounting of the aircraft impact is completely wrong.
  2. The stand down of the Nation’s air defense. Each of the four airplane events started with what should have been declared in-flight emergencies. Loss of communications, deviation from approved flight plans, and loss of transponder signals has always been responded to immediately with a fighter aircraft joining on the wing of the wayward aircraft, to assess the extent of the emergency. This is routine, and the response is always rapid. But on September 11, 2001, none of the four were treated as emergencies. They were all called “hijackings,” taking them into a new protocol put into place just two months earlier. This new protocol actually slowed down the decision-making process to the point where effectively there was no response at all. The net effect was a stand down of the air defense system, an incriminating clue that has all the marks of being intentional.
  3. Continual stonewalling by the government. As we reach the tenth anniversary, the continuing government stonewalling has become one of the most disturbing aspects. All three Branches of the Federal government have dug in. No member of Congress even hints at offering support for a new investigation. The Administration is equally uncooperative. For example, efforts by a building professional to gain information on the NIST computer modeling of WTC 7 was denied for such an outlandish reason as saying the release of the information “may endanger public safety.” The Judiciary is doing their share of the stonewalling as well, preventing every petitioner that comes before them from even having the chance to call their witnesses. Taken together, this stonewalling is itself an incriminating clue, suggesting powerful persons of influence may be behind this unwillingness for government officials to at least ask questions.
  4. Nanothermite in the dust. Four samples of dust collected independently from assorted locations in lower Manhattan were found to contain a high-tech pyrotechnic, nanothermite. One of the samples was collected less than twenty minutes after the second tower was destroyed, therefore cleanup operations couldn’t have contaminated the dust. Although it isn’t known what role the nanothermite played in the destruction of the towers, the material shouldn’t have been there. An international team of scientists reported on their investigation of the iron oxide – aluminum nanothermite, in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, 2009, 2, 7-31, under the title, “Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe,” by Niels Harrit, et al. As government officials have offered no explanation as to how these chips could have found their way into the dust, it represents an incriminating clue.
  5. None of the eight pilots entered the 7500 hijack code. Commercial pilots are trained to enter the digits ‘7500’ into their transponder at the first sign of a hijack. This takes only about three seconds to dial in the code and transmit. The fact that none of the eight commercial pilots transmitted this code raises serious questions concerning the hijack scenario itself. This is suggestive of the clue from Sherlock Holmes’ famous case, the “dog that does not bark.”
  6. Twin Towers demolished in near symmetry, whereas fires were asymmetric. Furthermore, fires had never before brought down a steel-framed high rise. If fires were able to bring down steel-framed high rises, the resulting rubble would be at least as disordered as the fires themselves. The 9/11 Commission Final Report doesn’t try to explain how the Towers were destroyed, it only goes to the point of global-collapse initiation. Therefore, the Official Story doesn’t even attempt to explain how asymmetric fires turn into a symmetric global collapse. This is at the very least a “slam dunk.”

Monday, August 1, 2011

Competing Theories

Other than the Official Conspiracy Theory, there are three candidate alternative theories as to how the World Trade Center towers were destroyed; Explosive Nanothermite, Directed Energy Weapons (DEW), and Nukes. The mainstream 9/11 Truth leadership is urging that we circle the wagons around what they call “the strongest” of these, Explosive Nanothermite, as we approach the 10th anniversary.

But Explosive Nanothermite has the annoying distraction of not being explosive enough, not even in the same ballpark as conventional high explosives such as RDX or even TNT. T. Mark Hightower has brought this matter into focus with his Nanothermite Challenge, calling for evidence in the open literature demonstrating iron-oxide/aluminum nanothermite with a detonation velocity of at least 2,000 m/s, significantly beyond the highest reported in the open literature of 895 m/s. (Even that is an inadequate velocity, in that it would have to be 8,750 m/s in order to be equal to that of RDX.) The deadline was reached with no submittals in the inbox. I am finding many of the leading supporters of the nanothermite hypothesis are dismissive and sarcastic in their responses when nanothermite as a high explosive is challenged.


The DEW hypothesis of Dr. Judy Wood, together with the many areas of evidence pointing to that hypothesis, is packaged nicely in her book, Where Did The Towers Go? Many proponents of the Explosive Nanothermite hypothesis are quite insistence that no one give any words of support to Dr. Wood’s ideas. I have taken an open-minded approach to her work, but have found weaknesses in each of the areas of evidence that I examined more closely. One of the most critical issues is whether or not extremely high temperatures were involved in the building destructions, as well as in the debris pile at Ground Zero the weeks afterwards. Dr. Wood had pointed out a photo of workers in a hole near the WTC 2 basement, known as the Liberty St. Hole. The workers didn’t appear to be affected by very high temperatures, which supposedly would make the hole feel like an oven. She said this was in the immediate vicinity of a hotspot labeled Location F, which had a surface temperature measured with an airborne infrared sensor at about 801˚ F. A close examination reveals it is over 100 ft. from Location F. Thus, this piece of evidence is lacking in support Dr. Wood’s hypothesis.


The Nukes hypothesis doesn’t appear to have a similar technical weakness, but rather has the stigma associated with it that anyone supporting it will immediately be marginalized. (Actually, there are several different theories within this category, but I lump them as one.) I brought it up as one possibility I hated to mention on an e-list. A response promptly came back from one of the nanothermite advocates, asking me if my reason for hating to mention it was, “because you understand exactly…how it makes us look to mention it.”


The question more and more surfacing is, at what point should an open attitude toward any or all of these theories be abandoned?