Brigham Young University group accuses
U.S. officials of lying about 9/11
By Elaine Jarvik Deseret Morning News, Saturday, January
28, 2006
Last fall, Brigham Young University physics professor
Steven E. Jones made headlines when he charged that the
World Trade Center collapsed because of
"pre-positioned explosives." Now, along with a
group that calls itself "Scholars for 9/11
Truth," he's upping the ante. "We believe that
senior government officials have covered up crucial facts
about what really happened on 9/11," the group says
in a statement released Friday announcing its formation.
"We believe these events may have been orchestrated
by the administration in order to manipulate the American
people into supporting policies at home and abroad."
Headed by Jones and Jim Fetzer, University of Minnesota
Duluth distinguished McKnight professor of philosophy,
the group is made up of 50 academicians and others. They
include Robert M. Bowman, former director of the U.S.
"Star Wars" space defense program, and Morgan
Reynolds, former chief economist for the Department of
Labor in President George W. Bush's first term. Most of
the members are less well-known. The group's Web site (www.ST911.org) includes
an updated version of Jones's paper about the collapse of
the Twin Towers and a paper by Fetzer that looks at
conspiracy theories. The government's version of the
events of 9/11 - that the plane's hijackers were tied to
Osama bin Laden - is its own conspiracy theory, says
Fetzer, who has studied the John F. Kennedy assassination
since 1992.
"Did the Bush administration know in advance about
the impending attacks that occurred on 9/11, and allow
these to happen, to provoke pre-planned wars against
Afghanistan and Iraq? These questions demand immediate
answers," charges a paper written collectively by
Scholars for 9/11 Truth. The group plans to write more
papers, and present lectures and conferences. "We
have very limited resources and no subpoena powers,"
Fetzer said. "What you have is a bunch of serious
scholars taking a look at this and discovering it didn't
add up. We don't have a political ax to grind."
Fetzer has doctorates in the history and philosophy of
science. "One of the roles I can play here," he
said, "is to explain why a certain line of argument
is correct or not." In his original message to
potential members last month, Fetzer warned that joining
the group might make them the subject of government
surveillance and might get them on various lists of
"potential terrorists."
The group's charges include:
. Members of the Bush administration knew in advance that
the 9/11 attacks would happen but did nothing to stop
them.
. No Air Force or Air National Guard jets were sent to
"scramble" the hijacked planes, which were
clearly deviating from their flight plans, although jet
fighters had been deployed for scramblings 67 times in
the year prior to 9/11. The procedure for issuing orders
for scrambling was changed in June 2001, requiring that
approval could only come from the Secretary of Defense,
but Donald Rumsfeld was not alerted soon enough on 9/11,
according to Scholars group.
. The video of Osama bin Laden found by American troops
in Afghanistan in December 2001, in which bin Laden says
he orchestrated the attacks, is not bin Laden. The
Scholars for 9/11 Truth compared the video with a photo
of the "real" bin Laden and argue that there
are discrepancies in the ratio of nose-length to
nose-width, as well as distance from tip-of-nose to ear
lobe.
The Scholars group hopes that media outlets around the
world will ask experts in their areas to examine the
group's findings and assertions. If this were done, they
argue, "one of the great hoaxes of history would
stand naked before the eyes of the world."
The group also asks for an investigation of the collapse
of the World Trade Center buildings, following up on
points made in Jones's paper, "Why Indeed Did the
WTC Buildings Collapse?" That paper, recently
updated, has been posted on Jones's BYU Web site since
last November. Jones argues that the WTC buildings did
not collapse due to impact or fires caused by the jets
hitting the towers but collapsed as a result of
pre-positioned "cutter charges." Proof, he
says, includes:
. Molten metal was found in the subbasements of WTC sites
weeks after 9/11; the melting point of structural steel
is 2,750 degrees Fahrenheit and the temperature of jet
fuel does not exceed 1,800 degrees. Molten metal was also
found in the building known as WTC7, although no plane
had struck it. Jones's paper also includes a photo of a
slag of the metal being extracted from ground zero. The
slag, Jones argues, could not be aluminum from the planes
because in photographs the metal was salmon-to-yellow-hot
temperature (approximately 1,550 to 1,900 degrees F)
"well above the melting temperatures of lead and
aluminum," which would be a liquid at that
temperature.
. Building WTC7 collapsed in 6.6 seconds, which means,
Jones says, that the steel and concrete support had to be
simply knocked out of the way. "Explosive
demolitions are like that," he said. "It
doesn't fit the model of the fire-induced pancake
collapse."
. No steel-frame, high-rise buildings have ever before or
since been brought down due to fires. Temperatures due to
fire don't get hot enough for buildings to collapse, he
says.
. Jones points to a recent article in the journal New
Civil Engineering that says WTC disaster investigators at
NIST (the National Institutes of Standards and
Technology) "are refusing to show computer
visualizations of the collapse of the Twin Towers despite
calls from leading structural and fire engineers."
Neither Jones nor other members of the Scholars group
suggests who would have planted the explosives, but they
argue that the devices could have been operated by remote
control.
Jones says he has received thousands of e-mails from
people around the world who either support his ideas or
think he's "nutty," and he still gets about 30
e-mails a day on the topic. He continues to do research
on cold fusion, which he prefers to call metal-catalyzed
fusion "to distinguish it from the claims" of
former University of Utah chemistry professors B. Stanley
Pons and Martin Fleishmann, "which we do not accept
as verified." He reports that his metal-catalyzed
fusion work is going well, with three scientific papers
published last year.
Jones will present a talk entitled "9/11 Revisited:
Scientific and Ethical Questions" at Utah Valley
State College at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 1.
E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com
THE MOST
CONTROVERSIAL DOCUMENTARY ABOUT 9/11 AIRS ON AUSTRALIAN
TV NETWORK
January 5, 2006
Contact: Dave vonKleist 573-378-6049
911 - In Plane Site, the most
controversial video documentary ever produced about 9/11,
aired on Australias TEN television
network Wednesday evening. For one and a half hours,
hundreds of thousands of Australians were mesmerized and shocked
by images of the 9/11 attacks that to this day had
never been seen by the public. It is reported that
the network has received more response from the airing of
911 In Plane Site than in recent
history. www.911inplanesite.com
Network executives are scrambling to meet the demands
of callers that jammed the phone lines and requested a
re-airing of the documentary. According to a network
programming spokesperson, the overwhelming majority of
calls were positive and viewers thanked the network for
airing the program.
E-mails poured into the producers of 911 In
Plane Site on Wednesday expressing support and
thanks for the production as well as sadness, fear and
anger as a result of the cover-up of the information
contained in the video.
Despite efforts to suppress the information and
questions raised in 911 In Plane Site,
an increasing number of military experts and commercial
airline pilots are coming forward to support and validate
the information contained in the documentary. Many are
now calling for a re-opening of the investigation into
the September 11th attacks.
Dave vonKleist, producer and co-host of The
Power Hour radio program (www.thepowerhour.com)
stated: The American people and the people of the
world deserve the truth. Every country has been
dramatically affected by 9/11 and the evidence indicates
that we all have been lied to by government and media
officials. Justice must be served and the real terrorists
must be exposed and prosecuted.
The Power Hour
www.thepowerhour.com
Joyce Riley & Dave vonKleist
Fox News of Binghamton New York aired
Loose Change 911 a few months ago. That
presentation is top notch and the phone lines were
jammed. NEWS RELEASE
Explosive Testimony: Police & Firemen
Report What Really Happened on 911
Oral Histories
ByDavid Ray Griffin
http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=2006011810422319
"[T]here was just an explosion [in the south
tower]. It seemed like on television [when] they blow up
these buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way
around like a belt, all these explosions."
--Firefighter Richard Banaciski
"I saw a flash flash flash [at] the lower level of
the building. You know like when they demolish a
building?" --Assistant Fire Commissioner Stephen
Gregory
"[I]t was [like a] professional demolition where
they set the charges on certain floors and then you hear
'Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop'." --Paramedic Daniel
Rivera
____________________________________________________________________
The above quotations come from a collection of 9/11 oral
histories that, although recorded by the Fire Department
of New York (FDNY) at the end of 2001, were publicly
released only on August 12, 2005. Prior to that date,
very few Americans knew the content of these accounts or
even the fact that they existed.
Why have we not known about them until recently? Part of
the answer is that the city of New York would not release
them until it was forced to do so. Early in 2002, the New
York Times requested copies under the freedom of
information act, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg's
administration refused. So the Times, joined by several
families of 9/11 victims, filed suit. After a long
process, the city was finally ordered by the New York
Court of Appeals to release the records (with some
exceptions and redactions allowed). Included were oral
histories, in interview form, provided by 503
firefighters and medical workers. (1)
Emergency Medical Services had become a division within
the Fire Department.(2) The
Times then made these oral histories publicly available.
(3)Once the content of these
testimonies is examined, it is easy to see why persons
concerned to protect the official story about 9/11 would
try to keep them hidden. By suggesting that explosions
were occurring in the World Trade Center's Twin Towers,
they pose a challenge to the official account of 9/11,
according to which the towers were caused to collapse
solely by the impact of the airplanes and the resulting
fires. In any case, now that the oral histories have
finally been released, it is time for Americans and the
world in general to see what these brave men and women
reported about that fateful day.
If this information forces a re-evaluation of the
official story about 9/11, better now than later. That
said, it must be added that although these oral histories
are of great significance, they do not contain the first
reports of explosions in the Twin Towers. Such
reports---from firefighters, reporters, and people who
had worked in the towers---started becoming available
right after 9/11. These reports, however, were not widely
publicized by the mainstream press and, as a result, have
for the most part been known only within the "9/11
truth movement," which has focused on evidence that
seems inconsistent with the official story.
I will begin by summarizing some of those previously
available reports. Readers will then be able to see that
although in some respects the newly released oral
histories simply add reinforcement, they also are
revelatory documents: Some of the testimonies are quite
stunning, even to people familiar with the earlier
reports; and there are now so many testimonies that even
the most skeptical reader is likely to find the
cumulative effect impressive.
Previously Available Testimony Suggestive of Explosions
in the Twin Towers The day after 9/11, a story in the Los
Angeles Times, referring to the south tower, said:
"There were reports of an explosion right before the
tower fell, then a strange sucking sound, and finally the
sound of floors
collapsing."(4)
A story in the Guardian said that "police and fire
officials were carrying out the first wave of evacuations
when the first of the World Trade Centre towers
collapsed. Some eyewitnesses reported hearing another
explosion just before the structure crumbled. Police said
that it looked almost like a 'planned implosion.'"(5) "Planned implosion"
is another term for controlled demolition, in which
explosives are placed at crucial places throughout a
building so that, when set off in the proper order, they
will cause the building to come down in the desired way.
When it is close to other buildings, the desired way will
be straight down into, or at least close to, the
building's footprint, so that it does not damage the
surrounding buildings. This type of controlled demolition
is called an "implosion." To induce an
implosion in steel-frame buildings, the explosives must
be set so as to break the steel columns. Each of the Twin
Towers had 47 massive steel columns in its core and 236
steel columns around the periphery.
To return now to testimonies about explosions: There were
many reports about an explosion in the basement of the
north tower. For example, janitor William Rodriguez
reported that he and others felt an explosion below the
first sub-level office at 9 AM, after which co-worker
Felipe David, who had been in front of a nearby freight
elevator, came into the office with severe burns on his
face and arms yelling "explosion! explosion!
explosion!"(6)
Rodriguez's account has been corroborated by José
Sanchez, who was in the workshop on the fourth sub-level.
Sanchez said that he and a co-worker heard a big blast
that "sounded like a bomb," after which "a
huge ball of fire
went through the freight elevator."(7)
Engineer Mike Pecoraro, who was working in the sixth
sub-basement of the north tower, said that after an
explosion he and a co-worker went up to the C level,
where there was a small machine shop. "There was
nothing there but rubble," said Pecoraro.
"We're talking about a 50 ton hydraulic
press--gone!" They then went to the parking garage,
but found that it was also gone. Then on the B level,
they found that a steel-and-concrete fire door, which
weighed about 300 pounds, was wrinkled up "like a
piece of aluminum foil." Having seen similar things
after the terrorist attack in 1993, Pecoraro was
convinced that a bomb had gone off.(8)
Given these testimonies to explosions in the basement
levels of the towers, it is interesting that Mark
Loizeaux, head of Controlled Demolition, Inc., has been
quoted as saying: "If I were to bring the towers
down, I would put explosives in the basement to get the
weight of the building to help collapse the
structure."(9)
Multiple Explosions
Some of the testimonies suggested that more than one
explosion occurred in one tower or the other. FDNY
Captain Dennis Tardio, speaking of the south tower, said:
"I hear an explosion and I look up. It is as if the
building is being imploded, from the top floor down, one
after another, boom, boom, boom."(10)
In June of 2002, NBC television played segments from
tapes recorded on 9/11. One segment contained the
following exchange, which involved firefighters in the
south tower: Official: Battalion 3 to dispatch, we've
just had another explosion. Official: Battalion 3 to
dispatch, we've had additional explosion. Dispatcher:
Received battalion command. Additional explosion.(11)
Firefighter Louie Cacchioli, after entering the north
tower lobby and seeing elevator doors completely blown
out and people being hit with debris, asked himself,
"how could this be happening so quickly if a plane
hit way above?" After he reached the 24th floor, he
and another fireman "heard this huge explosion that
sounded like a bomb [and] knocked off the lights and
stalled
the elevator." After they pried themselves out of
the elevator, "another huge explosion like the first
one hits. This one hits about two minutes later . . .
[and] I'm thinking, OOh. My God, these bastards put bombs
in here like they did in 1993!'"(12)
Multiple explosions were also reported by Teresa Veliz,
who worked for a software development company in the
north tower. She was on the 47th floor, she reported,
when suddenly "the whole building shook. . . .
[Shortly thereafter] the building shook again, this time
even more violently." Then, while Veliz was making
her way downstairs and outside: "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 pushing detonator buttons.
. . . There was another explosion. And another. I didn't
know where to run."(13)
Steve Evans, a New York-based correspondent for the BBC,
said: "I was at the base of the second tower . . .
that was hit. . . . There was an explosion. . . . The
base of the building shook. . . . [T]hen there was a
series of explosions."(14)
Sue Keane, an officer in the New Jersey Fire Police
Department who was previously a sergeant in the U.S.
Army, said in her account of the onset of the collapse of
the south tower: "[I]t sounded like bombs going off.
That's when the explosions happened. . . . I knew
something was going to happen. . . . It started to get
dark, then all of a sudden there was this massive
explosion." Then, discussing her experiences during
the collapse of the north tower, she said: "[There
was] another explosion. That sent me and the two
firefighters down the stairs. . . . I can't tell you how
many times I got banged around. Each one of those
explosions picked me up and threw me. . . . There was
another explosion, and I got thrown with two firefighters
out onto the street."(15)
Wall Street Journal reporter John Bussey, describing his
observation of the collapse of the south tower from the
ninth floor of the WSJ office building, said: "I . .
. looked up out of the office window to see what seemed
like perfectly synchronized explosions coming from each
floor. . . . One after the other, from top to bottom,
with a fraction of a second between, the floors blew to
pieces."(16)
Another Wall Street Journal reporter said that after
seeing what appeared to be "individual floors, one
after the other exploding outward," he thought:
"OMy God, they're going to bring the building down.'
And they, whoever they are, HAD SET CHARGES. . . . I saw
the explosions."(17)
A similar perception was reported by Beth Fertig of WNYC
Radio, who said: "It just descended like a timed
explosion bringing a building down. . . . It was coming
down so perfectly that in one part of my brain I was
thinking, 'They got everyone out, and they're bringing
the building down because they have to.'"(18)
A more graphic testimony to this perception was provided
on the film made by the Naudet brothers. In a clip from
that film, one can watch two firemen describing their
experiences to other firemen. Fireman 1: "We made it
outside, we made it about a block . . . ." Fireman
2: "We made it at least two blocks and we started
running." He makes explosive sounds and then uses a
chopping hand motion to emphasize his next point:
"Floor by floor it started popping out . . . ."
Fireman 1: "It was as if they had detonated--as if
they were planning to take down a building, boom boom
boom boom boom . . . ." Fireman 2: "All the way
down. I was watching it and running. And then you
just saw this cloud of shit chasing you down."(19)
As these illustrations show, quite impressive testimony
to the occurrence of explosions in the Twin Towers
existed even prior to the release of the oral histories.
As we will see, however, these oral histories have made
the testimony much more impressive, qualitatively as well
as quantitatively. The
cumulative testimony now points even more clearly than
before not simply to explosions but to controlled
demolition.
Testimonies in the Oral Histories Suggestive of
Controlled Demolition Several FDNY members reported that
they heard an explosion just before the south tower
collapsed. For example, Battalion Chief John Sudnik said
that while he and others were working at the command
post, "we heard a loud explosion or what sounded
like a loud explosion and looked up and I saw tower two
start coming down."(20)
Firefighter Timothy Julian said: "First I thought it
was an explosion. I thought maybe there was a bomb on the
plane, but delayed type of thing, you know secondary
device. . . . I just heard like an explosion and then a
cracking type of noise, and then it sounded like a
freight train, rumbling and picking up speed, and I
remember I looked up, and I saw it coming down."(21)
Emergency medical technician Michael Ober said:
"[W]e heard a rumble, some twisting metal, we looked
up in the air, and . . . it looked to me just like an
explosion. It didn't look like the building was coming
down, it looked like just one floor had blown completely
outside of it. . . . I didn't think
they were coming down. I just froze and stood there
looking at it."(22)
Ober's testimony suggests that he heard and saw the
explosion before he saw any sign that the building was
coming down. This point is made even more clearly by
Chief Frank Cruthers, who said: "There was what
appeared to be at first an explosion. It appeared at the
very top, simultaneously from all four sides, materials
shot out horizontally. And then there seemed to be a
momentary delay before you could
see the beginning of the collapse."(23)
These statements by Ober and Cruthers, indicating that
there was a delay between the explosion and the beginning
of the collapse, suggest that the sounds and the
horizontal ejection of materials could not be attributed
simply to the onset of the collapse.
Shaking Ground before the Collapse
As we saw earlier, some people in the towers reported
that there were powerful explosions in the basements.
Such explosions would likely have caused the ground to
shake. Such shaking was reported by medical technician
Lonnie Penn, who said that just before the collapse of
the south tower: "I felt the ground shake, I turned
around and ran for my life. I made it as far as the
Financial Center when the collapse happened."(24)
According to the official account, the vibrations that
people felt were produced by material from the collapsing
towers hitting the ground. Penn's account, however,
indicates that the shaking must have occurred several
seconds before the collapse.
Shaking prior to the collapse of the north tower was
described by fire patrolman Paul Curran. He was standing
near it, he said, when "all of a sudden the ground
just started shaking. It felt like a train was running
under my feet. . . . The next thing we know, we look up
and the tower is
collapsing."(25)
Lieutenant Bradley Mann of the fire department, one of
the people to witness both collapses, described shaking
prior to each of them. "Shortly before the first
tower came down," he said, "I remember feeling
the ground shaking. I heard a terrible noise, and then
debris just started flying everywhere. People started
running." Then, after they had returned to the area,
he said, "we basically had the same thing: The
ground shook again, and we heard another terrible noise
and the next thing we knew the second tower was coming
down."(26)
Multiple Explosions
The oral histories contain numerous testimonies with
reports of more than one explosion. Paramedic Kevin
Darnowski, for example, said: "I started walking
back up towards Vesey Street. I heard three explosions,
and then we heard like groaning and grinding, and tower
two started to come down."(27)
Gregg Brady, an emergency medical technician, reported
the same thing about the north tower, saying: "I
heard 3 loud explosions. I look up and the north tower is
coming down now."(28)
Somewhat more explosions were reported by firefighter
Thomas Turilli, who said, referring to the south tower,
that "it almost sounded like bombs going off, like
boom, boom, boom, like seven or eight."(29)
Even more explosions were reported by Craig Carlsen, who
said that while he and other firefighters were looking up
at the towers, they "heard explosions coming from
building two, the south tower. It seemed like it took
forever, but there were about ten explosions. . . . We
then realized the building started to come down."
"Pops"
As before, "pops" were reported by some
witnesses. "As we are looking up at the [south
tower]," said firefighter Joseph Meola, "it
looked like the building was blowing out on all four
sides. We actually heard the pops. Didn't realize it was
the falling--you know, you heard the pops of the
building. You thought it was just blowing out."(31)
"Pops" were also reported by paramedic Daniel
Rivera in the following exchange:
Q. How did you know that it [the south tower] was coming
down?
A. That noise. It was noise.
Q. What did you hear? What did you see?
A. It was a frigging noise. At first I thought it
was---do you ever see professional demolition where they
set the charges on certain floors and then you hear 'Pop,
pop, pop, pop, pop'? That's exactly what--because I
thought it was that. When I heard that frigging noise,
that's when I saw the
building coming down.(32)
Collapse Beginning below the
Strike Zone and Fire
According to the official account, the
"pancaking" of the floors began when the floors
above the strike zone, where the supports were weakened
by the impact of the airplanes and the resulting fires,
fell on the floors below. Some witnesses reported,
however, that the collapse of the south tower began lower
than the floors that were struck by the airliner and
hence lower than the fires.
Timothy Burke reported that while he was watching flames
coming out of the south tower, "the building popped,
lower than the fire." He later heard a rumor that
"the aviation fuel fell into the pit, and whatever
floor it fell on heated up really bad, and that's why it
popped at that floor." At the
time, however, he said, "I was going oh, my god,
there is a secondary device because the way the building
popped. I thought it was an explosion."(33)
This same twofold observation was made by firefighter
Edward Cachia, who said: "As my officer and I were
looking at the south tower, it just gave. It actually
gave at a lower floor, not the floor where the plane hit.
. . . [W]e originally had thought there was like an
internal detonation, explosives, because it went in
succession, boom, boom, boom, boom, and then the tower
came down."(34)
Other Indications of Controlled
Demolition
Some witnesses reported other phenomena, beyond
explosions, suggestive of controlled demolition.
The Appearance of Implosion: When a building close to
other buildings is brought down by controlled demolition,
as mentioned earlier, it typically implodes and hence
comes straight down into, or at least close to, its own
footprint, so that it does not fall over on surrounding
structures.
As we saw above in the accounts that were previously
available, both police and fire officials were quoted as
saying that the towers seemed to implode.
This perception was also stated in the oral history of
Lieutenant James Walsh, who said: "The [north tower]
didn't fall the way you would think tall buildings would
fall. Pretty much it looked like it imploded on
itself."(35)
Flashes
Another common feature of controlled demolitions is that
people who are properly situated may see flashes when the
explosives go off. Assistant Commissioner Stephen Gregory
said: "I thought . . . before . . . No. 2 came down,
that 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 . . . [at] the lower level of the building. 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."(36)
Flashes were reported in the north tower by Captain Karin
Deshore, who said: "Somewhere around the middle of
the World Trade Center, there was this orange and red
flash coming out. Initially it was just one flash."(37)
Demolition Rings:
At this point, Deshore's account moved to another
standard phenomenon seen by those who watch controlled
demolitions: explosion rings, in which a series of
explosions runs rapidly around a building. Deshore's next
words were: "Then this flash just kept popping all
the way around the building and that building had started
to explode. The popping sound, and with each popping
sound it was initially an orange and then a red flash
came out of the building and then it would just go all
around the building on both sides 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."(38)
An explosion ring (or belt) was also described by
firefighter Richard Banaciski. Speaking of the south
tower, he said: "[T]here was just an explosion. It
seemed like on television [when] they blow up these
buildings. It seemed like it was going all the way around
like a belt, all these
explosions."(39)
A description of what appeared to be a ring of explosions
was also given by Deputy Commissioner Thomas Fitzpatrick,
who said: "We looked up at the [south tower] . . . .
All we saw was a puff of smoke coming from about 2 thirds
of the way up . . . . It looked like sparkling around one
specific
layer of the building. . . . My initial reaction was that
this was exactly the way it looks when they show you
those implosions on TV."(40)
Horizontal Ejections:
Another feature of controlled demolition, at least when
quite powerful explosives are used, is that things are
ejected horizontally from the floors on which the
explosions occur. Such ejections were mentioned in the
testimony of Chief Frank Cruthers above. Similarly,
Captain Jay Swithers said: "I took a quick glance at
the building and while I didn't see it falling, I saw a
large section of it blasting out, which led me to believe
it was just an explosion."(41)
Firefighter James Curran said: "When I got
underneath the north bridge I looked back and . . . I
heard like every floor went chu-chu-chu. Looked back and
from the pressure everything was getting blown out of the
floors before it actually collapsed."(42)
Battalion Chief Brian Dixon said: "I was . . .
hearing a noise and looking up. . . . [T]he lowest floor
of fire in the south tower actually looked like someone
had planted explosives around it because . . . everything
blew out on the one floor. I thought, geez, this looks
like an explosion up there, it
blew out."(43)
These reports by Curran and Dixon conform to what can be
seen by looking at photographs and videos of the
collapses, which show that various materials, including
sections of steel and aluminum, were blown out hundreds
of feet.(44)
Such powerful ejections of materials are exactly what
would be expected from explosions powerful enough to
cause such huge buildings to collapse.
Dust Clouds:
The most visible material ejected horizontally from
buildings during controlled demolition, especially
buildings with lots of concrete, is dust, which forms
more or less expansive dust clouds. Some of the
testimonies about the collapse of the south tower mention
that it produced an enormous amount of dust, which formed
clouds so big and thick that they blocked out all light.
Firefighter Stephen Viola said: "You heard like loud
booms . . . and then we got covered with rubble and dust,
and I thought we'd actually fallen through the floor . .
. because it was so dark you couldn't see anything."(45)
Firefighter Angel Rivera said: "That's when hell
came down. It was like a huge, enormous explosion. . . .
The wind rushed. . . , all the dust. . . and everything
went dark."(46)
Lieutenant William Wall said: "[W]e heard an
explosion. We looked up and the building was coming down
right on top of us. . . . We ran a little bit and then we
were overtaken by the
cloud."(47)
Paramedic Louis Cook said that after the debris started
falling, "everything went black" and "you
couldn't breathe because [of] all the dust. There was
just an incredible amount of dust and smoke." He
then found that there was, "without exaggerating, a
foot and a half of dust on [his] car."(48)
The kind of dust clouds typically produced during a
controlled demolition can be seen on videos of the
demolition of Seattle's Kingdome and the Reading Grain
Facility.(49) If these
videos are then compared with photos and videos of the
collapses of the Twin Towers,(50)
it can be seen that the dust clouds in the latter are
even bigger.(51)
Timed or Synchronized Explosions:
Some people said that the collapses had the appearance of
timed, synchronized demolitions. Battalion Chief Dominick
DeRubbio, speaking of the collapse of the south tower,
said: "It was weird how it started to come down. It
looked like it was a timed explosion."(52)
Firefighter Kenneth Rogers said: "[T]here was an
explosion in the south tower. . . . I kept watching.
Floor after floor after floor. One floor under another
after another and when it hit about the fifth floor, I
figured it was a bomb, because it looked like a
synchronized deliberate kind of thing. I was there in
'93."(53)
Debates about Controlled
Demolition
Given so many signs that the buildings had been brought
down by controlled demolition, we might expect that
debates about this issue would have taken place. And they
did. Firefighter Christopher Fenyo, after describing
events that occurred after the first collapse, said:
"At that point, a debate began to rage because. . .
many people had felt that possibly explosives had taken
out 2 World Trade, and officers were gathering companies
together and the officers were debating whether or not to
go immediately back in or to see what was going to happen
with 1 World Trade at that point. The debate ended pretty
quickly because 1 World Trade came down."(54)
Firefighter William Reynolds reported on a conversation
he had with a battalion chief: "I said, 'Chief,
they're evacuating the other building; right?' He said,
'No.' . . . I said, 'Why not? They blew up the other
one.' I thought they blew it up with a bomb. I said, 'If
they blew up the one, you
know they're gonna blow up the other one.' He said, 'No,
they're not.' I said, 'Well, you gotta tell them to
evacuate it, because it's gonna fall down and you gotta
get the guys out.' . . . He said, 'I'm just the Battalion
Chief. I can't order that.' . . . I said, 'You got a
fucking radio and you got a fucking mouth. Use the
fucking things. Empty this fucking building.' Again he
said, 'I'm just a Battalion Chief. I can't do that.' . .
. Eventually this other chief came back and said, 'They
are evacuating this tower.' . . . And sometime after that
. . . I watched the north tower fall."(55)
As both accounts suggest, the perception that the south
tower had been brought down by explosives may have
resulted in fewer lives being lost in the north tower
collapse than would otherwise have been the case.
Why Testimony about Explosions Has
Not Become Public Knowledge
If so many witnesses reported effects that seemed to be
produced by explosives, with some of them explicitly
saying that the collapses appeared to be cases of
controlled demolition, why is this testimony not public
knowledge? Part of the answer, as I mentioned at the
outset, is that the city of New York refused to release
it until forced to do so by the highest court of the
state of New York
But why did we have to wait for this court-ordered
release to learn about these testimonies? Should not they
have been discussed in The 9/11 Commission Report, which
was issued over a year earlier? This Report, we are told
in the preface, sought "to provide the fullest
possible account of the events surrounding 9/11."
Why does it not include any of the testimony in the 9/11
oral histories suggestive of controlled demolition?
The answer cannot be that the Commission did not know
about these oral histories. Although "[t]he city
also initially refused access to the records to
investigators from . . . the 9/11 Commission," Jim
Dwyer of the New York Times tells us, it "relented
when legal action was threatened."(56) So the
Commission could have discussed the testimonies about
explosions in the oral histories. It also, in order to
help educate the public, could have called some of the
firefighters and medical workers to repeat their
testimony during one of the Commission's public hearings.
But it did not. Why, we may wonder, have the firefighters
and medical workers not been speaking out? At least part
of the reason may be suggested by a statement made by
Auxiliary Lieutenant Fireman Paul Isaac. Having said that
"there were definitely bombs in those
buildings," Isaac added that "many other
firemen know there were bombs in the buildings, but
they're afraid for their jobs to admit it because the
'higher-ups' forbid discussion of this fact."(57)
Would we not expect, however, that a few courageous
members of the fire department would have contacted the
9/11 Commission to tell their story? Indeed. But telling
their story to the Commission was no guarantee that it
would find its way into the final report---as indicated
by the account of
one fireman who made the effort. Firefighter Louie
Cacchioli, who was quoted earlier, testified in 2004 to
members of the Commission's staff. But, he reported, they
were so unreceptive that he ended up walking out in
anger. "I felt like I was being put on trial in a
court room," said Cacchioli. "They were trying
to twist my words and make the story fit only what they
wanted to hear. All I wanted to do was tell the truth and
when they wouldn't let me do that, I walked out."(58)
That Cacchioli's experience was not atypical is suggested
by janitor William Rodriguez, whose testimony was also
quoted earlier. Although Rodriguez was invited to the
White House as a National Hero for his rescue efforts on
9/11, he was, he said, treated quite differently by the
Commission: "I met with the 9/11 Commission behind
closed doors and they essentially discounted
everything I said regarding the use of explosives to
bring down the north tower."(59)
When reading The 9/11 Commission Report, one will not
find the name of Cacchioli, or Rodriguez, or anyone else
reporting explosions in the towers. It would appear that
the Commission deliberately withheld this information, as
it apparently did with regard to Able Danger(60) and many other things that
should have been included in "the fullest possible
account of the events
surrounding 9/11."(61)
The definitive report about the collapse of the towers
was to have been provided by the National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST). According to Rodriguez,
however, this investigative body was equally uninterested
in his testimony: "I contacted NIST . . . four times
without a response. Finally, [at a public hearing] I
asked them before they came up with their conclusion . .
. if they ever considered my statements or the statements
of any of the other survivors who heard the explosions.
They just stared at me with blank faces."(62)
In light of this report of NIST's response, it is not
surprising to find that its final report, which in the
course of supporting the official story about the
collapses ignores many vital issues,(63)
makes no mention of reports of explosions and other
phenomena suggestive of controlled demolition.
Conclusion
It is sometimes said that the mandate of an official
commission is, by definition, to support the official
story. Insofar as that is true, it is not surprising that
neither NIST nor the 9/11 Commission saw fit to discuss
testimony suggestive of explosions in the Twin Towers,
since this testimony
is in strong tension with the official story. At least
most of those who offered this testimony did not, to be
sure, mean to challenge the most important element in the
official story about 9/11, which is that the attacks were
entirely the work of foreign terrorists. For example,
firefighter Timothy Julian, after saying that he
"thought it was an explosion," added: "I
thought maybe there was a bomb on the plane, but delayed
type of thing, you know secondary device."(64) Assistant Commissioner James
Drury said: "I thought the terrorists planted
explosives somewhere in the building."(65) The problem, however, is that
a bomb delivered by a plane, or even a few explosives
planted "somewhere in the building," would not
explain the many phenomena suggestive of controlled
demolition, such as explosion rings and other features
indicating that the explosions were
"synchronized" and otherwise "timed."
As Mark Loizeaux, the head of Controlled Demolition,
Inc., has explained, "to bring [a building] down as
we want, so no one or no other structure is harmed,"
the demolition must be "completely planned."
One needs "the right explosive [and] the right
pattern of laying the charges."(66)
The 9/11 oral histories, therefore, create a
difficult question for those who defend the official
story: How could al-Qaeda terrorists have gotten access
to the Twin Towers for all the hours required to place
all the explosives needed to bring down buildings of that
size? It is primarily because they force this question
that the testimony about explosions in the
towers is itself explosive.
Notes
1. Jim Dwyer, "City to Release Thousands of Oral
Histories of 9/11
Today," New York Times, August 12, 2005. As Dwyer
explained, the oral
histories "were originally gathered on the order of
Thomas Von Essen, the
city fire commissioner on Sept. 11, who said he wanted to
preserve those
accounts before they became reshaped by a collective
memory."
2.
3. Jim Dwyer, "Vast Archive Yields New View of
9/11," New York Times,
August 13, 2005.
4.
5. These oral histories are available at a NYT website
(http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/html/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/me
t_WTC_histories_full_01.html).
6.
7. Los Angeles Times, September 12, 2001.
8.
9. "Special Report: Terrorism in the US,"
Guardian, Sept. 12, 2001.
10.
11. Greg Szymanski, "WTC Basement Blast and Injured
Burn Victim Blows
'Official 9/11 Story' Sky High," Arctic Beacon.com,
June 24, 2005.
12.
13. Greg Szymanski, "Second WTC Janitor Comes
Forward With
Eye-Witness Testimony Of 'Bomb-Like' Explosion in North
Tower Basement,"
Arctic Beacon.com, July 12, 2005.
14.
15. "We Will Not Forget: A Day of Terror," The
Chief Engineer, July,
2002.
16.
17. Christopher Bollyn, "New Seismic Data Refutes
Official
Explanation," American Free Press, Updated April 12,
2004
(http://www.americanfreepress.net/09_03_02/NEW_SEISMIC_/new_seismic_.html).
18.
19. Quoted in Dennis Smith, Report from Ground Zero: The
Story of the
Rescue Efforts at the World Trade Center (New York:
Penguin, 2002), 18.
20.
21. "911 Tapes Tell Horror Of 9/11," Part 2,
"Tapes Released For
First Time," NBC TV, June 17, 2002 (www.wnbc.com/news/1315651/detail.html).
22. Greg Szymanski, "NY Fireman Lou Cacchioli Upset
that 9/11
Commission 'Tried to Twist My Words,'" Arctic
Beacon.com, July 19, 2005.
Although the oral histories that were released on August
12 did not include
one from Cacchioli, the fact that he was on duty is
confirmed in the oral
history of Thomas Turilli, page 4.
23.
24. Dean E. Murphy, September 11: An Oral History (New
York:
Doubleday, 2002), 9-15.
25.
26. BBC, Sept. 11, 2001.
27.
28. Quoted in Susan Hagen and Mary Carouba, Women at
Ground Zero:
Stories of Courage and Compassion (Indianapolis: Alpha
Books, 2002), 65-66,
68.
29.
30. John Bussey, "Eye of the Storm: One Journey
Through Desperation
and Chaos," Wall Street Journal, September 12, 2001
(http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/040802pulitzer5.htm).
31.
32. Alicia Shepard, Cathy Trost, and Newseum, Running
Toward Danger:
Stories Behind the Breaking News of 9/11, Foreword by Tom
Brokaw (Lanham,
Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 87.
33.
34. Quoted in Judith Sylvester and Suzanne Huffman, Women
Journalists
at Ground Zero (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002),
19.
35.
36. For the video of this conversation, see
"Evidence of Demolition
Charges in WTC 2," What Really Happened
(http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/wtc2_cutter.html).
37.
38. Oral History of John Sudnik, 4 (for where to find the
9/11 oral
histories of the FDNY, see note 3, above).
39.
40. Oral History of Timothy Julian, 10.
41.
42. Oral History of Michael Ober, 4.
43.
44. Oral History of Frank Cruthers, 4.
45.
46. Oral History of Lonnie Penn, 5.
47.
48. Oral History of Paul Curran, 11.
49.
50. Oral History of Bradley Mann, 5-7.
51.
52. Oral History of Kevin Darnowski, 8.
53.
54. Oral History of Gregg Brady, 7.
55.
56. Oral History of Thomas Turilli, 4.
57.
58. Oral History of Craig Carlsen, 5-6.
59.
60. Oral History of Joseph Meola, 5.
61.
62. Oral History of Daniel Rivera, 9.
63.
64. Oral History of Timothy Burke, 8-9.
65.
66. Oral History of Edward Cachia, 5.
67.
68. Oral History of James Walsh, 15.
69.
70. Oral History of Stephen Gregory, 14-16.
71.
72. Oral History of Karin Deshore, 15.
73.
74. Ibid.
75.
76. Oral History of Richard Banaciski, 3-4.
77.
78. Oral History of Thomas Fitzpatrick, 13-14.
79.
80. Oral history of Jay Swithers, 5.
81.
82. Oral History of James Curran, 10-11.
83.
84. Oral History of Brian Dixon, 15. Like many others,
Dixon
indicated that he later came to accept the official
interpretation, adding:
"Then I guess in some sense of time we looked at it
and realized, no,
actually it just collapsed. That's what blew out the
windows, not that there
was an explosion there but that windows blew out."
85.
86. See, for example, Eric Hufschmid's Painful Questions:
An Analysis
of the September 11th Attack (Goleta, Calif.: Endpoint
Software, 2002); Jim
Hoffman's website (http://911research.wtc7.net/index.html);
and Jeff King's
website
(http://home.comcast.net/~jeffrey.king2/wsb/html/view.cgi-home.html-.html),
especially "The World Trade Center Collapse: How
Strong is the Evidence for
a Controlled Demolition?"
87.
88. Oral History of Stephen Viola, 3.
89.
90. Oral History of Angel Rivera, 7.
91.
92. Oral History of William Wall, 9.
93.
94. Oral History of Louis Cook, 8, 35.
95.
96. The demolition of the Kingdome can be viewed at the
website of
Controlled Demolition, Inc.
(http://www.controlled-demolition.com/default.asp?reqLocId=7&reqItemId=20030
317140323), that of the Reading Grain Facility at
ImplosionWorld.com
(http://implosionworld.com/reading.html).
I am indebted to Jim Hoffman for
help on this and several other issues.
97.
98. See the writings of Hufschmid, Hoffman, and King
mentioned in
note 44.
99.
100. For a calculation of the energy required simply for
the
expansion of one of the resulting dust clouds, see Jim
Hoffman, "The North
Tower's Dust Cloud"
(http://911research.wtc7.net/papers/dustvolume/volume.html).
Hoffman
concludes that gravitational energy would have been far
from sufficient.
101.
102. Oral History of Dominick DeRubbio, 5. DeRubbio, at
least
professing to accept the official interpretation, added,
"but I guess it was
just the floors starting to pancake one on top of the
other."
103.
104. Oral History of Kenneth Rogers, 3-4.
105.
106. Oral History of Christopher Fenyo, 6-7.
107.
108. Oral History of William Reynolds, 8.
109.
110. Dwyer, "City to Release Thousands of Oral
Histories of 9/11
Today."
111.
112. Randy Lavello, "Bombs in the Building";
Prison Planet.com
(http://www.prisonplanet.com/analysis_lavello_050503_bombs.html).
113.
114. Greg Szymanski, "NY Fireman Lou Cacchioli Upset
that 9/11
Commission 'Tried to Twist My Words'" Arctic
Beacon.com, July 19, 2005.
115.
116. Greg Szymanski, "WTC Basement Blast and Injured
Burn Victim
Blows 'Official 9/11 Story' Sky High," Arctic
Beacon.com, June 24, 2005.
117.
118. See MSNBC, "Officer: 9/11 Panel Didn't Pursue
Atta Claim" August
17, 2005 (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8985244&&CM=EmailThis&CE=1),
and
Philip Shenon, "Navy Officer Affirms Assertions
about Pre-9/11 Data on
Atta," New York Times, August 22, 2005.
119.
120. For other items, see David Ray Griffin, The 9/11
Commission
Report: Omissions and Distortions (Northampton:
Interlink, 2005).
121.
122. Greg Szymanski, "WTC Basement Blast and Injured
Burn Victim
Blows 'Official 9/11 Story' Sky High," Arctic
Beacon.com, June 24, 2005.
123.
124. See Kevin Ryan, "Propping Up the War on Terror:
Lies about the
WTC by NIST and Underwriters Laboratories," in David
Ray Griffin and Peter
Dale Scott, eds., 9/11 and the American Empire:
Intellectuals Speak Out
(Northampton, Mass.: Interlink Books, Fall 2006), and Jim
Hoffman, "Building
a Better Mirage: NIST's 3-Year $20,000,000 Cover-Up of
the Crime of the
Century" (http://911research.wtc7.net/essays/nist/index.html).
125.
126. Oral History of Timothy Julian, 10.
127.
128. Oral History of James Drury, 12.
129.
130. Liz Else, "Baltimore Blasters," New
Scientist 183/2457 (July 24,
2004), 48
(http://archive.newscientist.com/secure/article/article.jsp?rp=1&id=mg183245
75.700). Surprisingly, after explaining how precisely
explosives must be set
to ensure that a building comes straight down, Loizeaux
said that upon
seeing the fires in the Twin Towers, he knew that they
were "going to
pancake down, almost vertically. It was the only way they
could fail. It was
inevitable." Given the fact that fire had never
before caused tall
steel-frame buildings to collapse, let alone in a way
that perfectly
mimicked controlled demolition, Loizeaux's statement was
doubly puzzling.
His company, incidentally, was hired to do the clean-up
of the WTC site
after 9/11.
131.
132. I could not have written this essay without the
amazingly
generous help of Matthew Everett, who located and passed
on to me most of
the statements in the 9/11 oral histories quoted herein.
______________________________
David Ray Griffin is professor emeritus of philosophy of
religion and
theology at the Claremont School of Theology and
Claremont Graduate
University, where he taught 31 years. He has published
some 30 books,
including The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions
about the Bush
Administration and 9/11 (Interlink Books, 2004) and The
9/11 Commission
Report: Omissions and Distortions (Interlink Books,
2005).
© David Ray Griffin.
911truth.org hereby grants to all readers of this website
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