September 11, 2001 - An overview of some important facts to keep in mind when thinking about the events of that day.
World Trade Center and More
- Did you know that prior to, and following, the September 11, 2001 destruction of the north and south towers of the World Trade Center (along with the 47-storey Building 7 -- some 350 feet away) there has not been one high-rise, steel-framed building anywhere in the world which collapsed due to burning?
------------------
- Did you know that according to the "official, government" account of the events of September 11, 2001 all three of the foregoing steel-framed buildings had metal pilings which were weakened due to extreme heat, and these weakened pilings led to the eventual 'pancake' collapse of all three World Trade Center buildings?
------------------
- Did you know that both the north and south towers of the World Trade Center were constructed using a set of 47 massive steel columns running around the inner core of these buildings and, in addition, there were 236 steel columns running along the perimeter of each of these buildings [240 perimeter columns if one counts the four corner columns which were actually just inside the buildings exterior]?
------------------
- Did you know that Building 7, a 47 storey-building and part of the World Trade Center complex, was constructed with 24 massive steel columns running around the core of the building, together with 57 perimeter steel columns?
------------------
- Did you know that Building 7, which was some 350 feet from the twin towers, was not struck by an airplane, but it collapsed?
------------------
- Did you know that the "official" government story is that Building 7 somehow caught fire and engulfed the building in a raging inferno?
------------------
- Did you know that according to photographic evidence, the fires which were burning at Building 7 were not substantial and were limited to scattered areas on only a few floors?
------------------
- Did you know that in the report prepared by FEMA concerning, among other things, the collapse of Building 7, very little credibility was given to the idea that the diesel fuel being stored in Building 7 caught fire and caused the building to collapse, and part of the reason for the low credibility of that hypothesis is no one has advanced a plausible explanation about how the diesel fuel stored in the building caught fire?
------------------
- Did you know that the 9/11 Commission did not explore the circumstances surrounding the collapse of Building 7?
------------------
- Did you know that very few of the perimeter steel columns of either of the twin tower buildings were lost due to the impact of the planes and that the buildings were specifically designed to retain their structural integrity by means of the remaining, intact perimeter and core columns in the event of damage due to commercial airline crashes, hurricanes, and other calamities?
------------------
- Did you know that steel starts to melt around 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit, but hydrocarbon fires arising from, say, burning jet fuel would not reach more than 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit ... or 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit less than what would have been necessary to melt any one section of the 47/24 core columns of the three respective buildings, or the 236/57 perimeter columns of the three buildings, let alone all 47/24 of the core columns or all 236/57 of the perimeter columns of the three World Trade Center buildings?
------------------
- Did you know that in order for steel to melt, the steel would have to be exposed to a sustained source of, at least, 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit ... brief or very limited exposure to such high temperatures is not enough?
------------------
- Did you know that some experts who support the government's "official story" concerning the events of 9/11 say that if steel is heated to a temperature of 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit, the steel will lose 80 percent of its strength? But, did you know that these same experts tend to leave out the fact that one would have to subject such steel to a very, very high source of heat for a considerable period of time in order to heat even one portion of a massive column of steel to 1300 degrees Fahrenheit?
------------------
- Did you know if one were to heat one section of a steel column that heat transfer would tend to radiate away some of the heat from the section being heated, thereby, making it harder to attain and sustain 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit at any given point?
------------------
- Did you know that in 2004 a fire raged for 17 hours in a 54-story steel-frame building in Caracas, Venezuela and that the intensity of the fire was such that it completely gutted the top 23 stories of the building, and, yet, the building did not collapse?
------------------
- Did you know that in 1991 a fire burned in a steel-structure building (One Meridian Plaza) in Philadelphia for 18 hours with such intensity that 8 out of 38 stories were gutted and even though many of the building's beams and girders sagged and twisted due to being exposed to the intense heat for such a long period of time, nonetheless, the building did not collapse?
------------------
- Did you know that less than 15 minutes after the second of the twin towers was hit, photographs of the towers, as well as the testimony of both firefighters and people temporarily trapped in those buildings, indicate that the fires in the buildings were only scattered and slight, as well as not being even sufficiently hot, in most places, to either melt or break the exterior glass of the buildings?
------------------
- Did you know that although the south tower of the WTC was hit second, suffered less structural damage than the north tower, and exhibited fewer fires than the north tower, nonetheless, the south tower collapsed first, some 56 minutes after being struck by the airplane?
------------------
- Did you know that the north tower collapsed 1 hour and 42 minutes after being struck?
------------------
- Did you know that tests were carried out in Great Britain during the 1990s in order to investigate the extent of damage which might occur if steel beam structures were enveloped in high-intensity heat (1500 - 1700 degrees Fahrenheit) for many hours (4), and no collapse of the steel beams was observed in any of these experiments?
------------------
- Did you know that video and photographic evidence indicates that when the south tower started to collapse, the collapse began at a point much lower than the point where the airplane struck the building and much lower than where fires were burning?
------------------
- Did you know that there was a rumor (started by whom?) circulating in conjunction with the events of 9/11 at the World Trade Center that the fuel from the commercial jets which struck the buildings leaked into the pit formed by the core of the building and started intense fires throughout the twin towers, and, yet, there is not any evidence supporting this rumor or any evidence to indicate how the fuel was ignited on the lower levels or how the fire escaped from the core into the interior of the buildings or what the fire fed on until it could find its way into the offices on the lower levels?
------------------
- Did you know that even if it were the case that some steel pilings -- whether perimeter or core -- were heated sufficiently so that they lost a substantial portion of their strength and, as a result, buckled, thereby, starting a pancake-domino effect which brought the buildings down, nonetheless, the pancaking would not have been symmetrical (which would require that all 47 core and all 236 perimeter steel columns weakened and buckled at precisely the same time and in precisely the same way) but would have been highly asymmetrical and that this is direct contradiction of the video evidence with respect to the collapse of the twin towers?
------------------
- Did you know that there is absolutely no evidence that any of the 47 or 24 massive core columns in the three WTC buildings that collapsed were subjected to the sort of intense heat for extended periods of time which would have been necessary to weaken those columns?
------------------
- Did you know that of the 16 perimeter beams from the World Trade Center that were examined, only three showed evidence of having been subjected to temperatures higher than 482 degrees Fahrenheit (far below the 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit needed to structurally weaken steel provided that the steel is heated for a a sufficiently long enough period at such an elevated temperature) and, in addition, there is absolutely zero evidence that any of the core steel columns were subjected to temperatures even as high as 482 degrees of Fahrenheit?
------------------
- Did you know that criminal evidence was removed from the World Trade Center complex (and ramming two commercial jets into buildings resulting in substantial lost of life is a criminal offense many times over) when the metal wreckage from the buildings was carted away and sold to companies overseas before the evidence could be rigorously analyzed to be able to reconstruct exactly what did cause the WTC buildings to collapse?
------------------
- Did you know that all three of the World Trade Center buildings which collapsed did so at very close to free-fall rates of speed (i.e., free fall would occur if one were to drop an apple off the top of any of these buildings and there was nothing, but air, resisting the fall of this body)?
------------------
- Did you know that if the pancake theory of collapse for the three buildings were correct, the steel frame and concrete materials below each collapsing floor should have provided resistance to the collapse and, thereby, produced a rate of collapse slower than what was actually observed and recorded by video with respect to each of the WTC buildings?
------------------
- Did you know that when tall, many-storied buildings fall at, or very near, to a free-fall rate that this is evidence for concluding that the building may have collapsed due to "implosion", or controlled demolition, or some other unknown set of forces (e.g., see Judy Wood and her ideas concerning the use of directed energy in conmjunction with the WTC complex - Dr. Judy Wood) rather than as a result of a random, pancaking effect due to fire-weakened, buckling beams and girders?
------------------
- Did you know that there are only a few companies in the world with the experience and expertise necessary to collapse tall skyscrapers in a controlled way that directs the building to collapse straight down into its own "footprint" -- that is the area circumscribed by the buildings foundation?
------------------
- Did you know that part of the art and science of implosions or controlled explosions in relation to collapsing skyscrapers is to set the explosive charges so that they go off in a precise sequence that removes the concrete, steel girders and beams from the floor below the one which is collapsing in order that the collapsing floor will meet with neither resistance (and, thus, the free-fall-like signature of imploding skyscrapers) nor anything which would interfere with the symmetrical collapse of each floor (and, thus, the symmetrical collapse into the building's footprint)?
------------------
- Did you know that the report issued by the NIST (National Institute for Standards and Technology) put forth a theory -- entirely unsupported by any forensic evidence -- that the destruction of the twin towers came about as collapsing floors tugged on the perimeter columns of each of these buildings, resulting in a structural instability in these peripheral beams that increased the overall gravity load on the core columns, thereby leading to a 'global' collapse of the buildings?
------------------
- Did you know that besides lacking any actual evidence to substantiate the NIST theory for building collapse, the NIST theory cannot explain either the quality of near free-fall speeds of the collapse of the three WTC buildings nor can that theory explain the symmetrical footprint property of all three collapsing WTC buildings -- in fact, the NIST theory would only be consistent with a non-free-fall-like collapse which was very asymmetrical ... neither of which was observed in the collapsing WTC buildings?
------------------
- Did you know that if the government's "officially-adopted pancake theory" were true, there very likely would have been massive, largely intact, steel columns -- both core and perimeter -- that still would be standing (albeit, possibly, bent and twisted a little) from the 110 storey original structures and that these steel columns would likely extend upward many, many stories into the sky rather than having collapsed into a relatively small, compact, several storey-high heap of wreckage?
------------------
- Did you know that in controlled demolitions of skyscrapers high explosives such as RDX are used in order to slice through the steel beams and girders like a hot knife through butter and, in the process, cut the beams and girders into much smaller manageable lengths of steel that will both take away resistance to the free-fall-like collapse of the building and, as well, help bring the building down in a symmetrical way within a relatively well-defined, compact footprint landing area?
------------------
- Did you know that the same high explosives which are used to slice up the core and peripheral steel columns of a skyscraper are powerful enough to reduce all non-metallic components of the building (such as poured concrete) into powder?
------------------
- Did you know that a certain amount of evidence concerning the presence of evaporation as well as sulfidation of steel was found amidst the wreckage of the World Trade Center and that both of these findings are consistent with the idea that there was a detonation of high explosives in the three WTC buildings but inconsistent with a pancake theory driven entirely by the theory that allegedly weakened beams and girders created instability which led, in turn, to a global, gravitational-based collapse of the buildings?
------------------
- Did you know that the "official" pancake theory adopted by the government would not have reduced the concrete portions of the three WTC buildings to powder but, instead, would have yielded much larger chunks of concrete because the energy generated through the force of gravity of uncontrolled collapsing buildings would not have been sufficient to be able to produce pulverized powder particles (Look at the material on the site of Dr. Judy Wood Dustification?
------------------
- Did you know that for the most part, evidence indicates that the non-metallic portions of the three WTC buildings which collapsed were pulverized into relatively small particles rather than the much larger chunks of concrete one would expect to find if the "official" story concerning the collapsed buildings were true?
------------------
- Did you know that there were a large number of independent reports (many from firefighters who were familiar with such phenomena) indicating that people heard a collection of explosions, along with flashes, prior to the collapse of the twin towers -- reports which are consistent with what is known as a "demolition ring" -- that is a series of explosions running around a building during a controlled demolition or implosion?
------------------
- Did you know that many of the foregoing reports came from an oral history of 9/11 (consisting of some 503 firefighters and medical workers who responded to the World Trade Center tragedies) compiled by the New York City Firefighters (FDNY) which was released to the public on August 12, 2005 but only after a suit was brought, under the Freedom of Information Act, against Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration in 2002 by The New York Times, together with a number of the families who lost loved ones on 9/11, and only after the New York Court of Appeals sided with the Times/9/11 families following a three- year legal tug of war concerning the public release of the oral histories?
------------------
- Did you know that on the weekend of September 8th and 9th prior to September 11, 2001, there was a power down in the south tower of the WTC so that there was no power from floor 50 to the top of the building (over half of the tower) which means that this portion of the building was entirely without surveillance cameras or other forms of electronic security, and for about 35-36 hours there were many 'engineers' and 'technicians' who were going in and out of the building for some sort of 'upgrading' of the tower?
------------------
- Did you know that in the weeks prior to September 11, 2001, both of the twin towers were evacuated on a number of occasions?
------------------
- Did you know that the company which is in charge of security for the World Trade Center is now called Stratesec, but from 1993 until 2000, this company was known as Securacom, and Marvin Bush, brother of President Bush, was on the Board of Directors for this company, while from 1999 until 2002, Wirt Walker III, a cousin of President Bush, was the CEO of Stratesec, and, yet, none of this appears in The 9/11 Commission Report?
------------------
- Did you know that the "official story" of the government concerning the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings on September 11, 2001 was that an entirely random pancake collapse of three skyscrapers took place, producing near-free-fall rates of collapse (meaning a complete lack of resistance from the floors below), as well as a symmetrical footprint (meaning that there was absolutely nothing skewing the fall and preventing the collapse from proceeding straight down -- including the 70 to 80 floors below where the planes crashed that had none of its beams and girders melted or weakened by the heat from alleged, intense fires in these buildings)?
------------------
- Did you know that the "official story" of the government requires one to believe that on one and the same day, within a matter of hours of one another, and within a few hundred yards of one another, three buildings at the World Trade Center collapsed, independently of one another, due to a "perfect" storm of chance factors and collapsed in such a way that, in the entire history of humankind, such results have, heretofore, only been able to be generated by very, very highly skilled and expert technicians in a meticulously planned and precisely controlled fashion?
------------------
- Did you know there is both video and photographic evidence showing that heavy steel beams were ejected from the collapsing twin towers in a variety of directions -- ranging up to several hundred yards -- and these directions of ejection included both horizontal and upward lines of trajectory ... something that a building which was collapsing in accordance with the pancake theory could not replicate since the only force at work in the pancake theory is gravitation which pulls things downward and does not push material horizontally outward or in an upward direction for hundreds of feet?
------------------
- Did you know that the law of conservation of momentum states that a rotating body will continue to rotate at the same speed and with the same direction of rotation unless acted upon by an external torque force, and, yet, although, initially, when the south tower began to collapse, the floors above where the airplane impacted the south tower of the WTC began to move and rotate in a direction toward the hole created by the airplane, nonetheless, subsequently, video evidence shows that, first, the speed and rotation of this portion of the building collapse began to decelerate as well as reverse its direction of rotation (both of which violate the law of conservation of momentum unless one posits a force outside of gravity that caused this), and, then, all of the floors above the point of impact turned into pulverized powder in mid-air, allowing the building to collapse relatively symmetrically into its foundational footprint?
------------------
- Did you know that Philip Zelikow was appointed as the executive director of the 9/11 Commission -- a position which was authorized to direct the research of 75 Commission staff members and, as such, was responsible for determining what issues would, and would not, be pursued by that staff -- or how rigorously -- and what 'facts' and witnesses would, and would not, be examined by the commissioners who conducted public hearings?
------------------
- Did you know that Philip Zelikow had previously worked with Condoleezza Rice in the National Security Council during the presidency of George H. W. Bush and later co-authored a book with her during the ’90's, and, then, helped Rice organize the National Security Council during the presidency of George W. Bush, and, then, was appointed to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board where he was the primary author of NSS 2002 (The National Security Strategy of the United States of America) which laid out, in detail, the position first enunciated by President Bush at West Point in June of 2002 concerning the alleged right of the United States to attack anyone who was perceived to represent a potential threat to U.S. interests even if such countries, states, or groups did not currently constitute a 'clear and present danger' to the integrity of the continental United States and had not attacked America or Americans and, and, therefore, Philip Zelikow had a vested interest in ensuring that the 9/11 Commission reached conclusions which were consonant with NSS 2002 ... which is exactly what happened?
------------------
- Did you know that Philip Zelikow did not reveal some of the foregoing information to the people who were looking to hire a director to oversee the "official" investigation into the events of 9/11, and, therefore, he kept crucial information hidden concerning his ability to be fully objective in conjunction with the postion of director of the Commission's investigation into the events of September 11, 2001?
------------------
- Did you know that Philip Zelikow had written an initial draft of the final 9/11 Commission Report before any investigation had taken place?
------------------
- Did you know that prior to his position as executive director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow had a number of conversations with Richard Clarke, the former National Security Counter-terrorism director in 2000 and 2001, about al-Qaeda and Usama bin Laden, but Philip Zelikow was never called as a witness by the 9/11 Commission concerning the nature of those discussions?
------------------
- Did you know that at least half of the ten commissioners, both Democrats and Republicans who conducted the televised public inquiries, had the sort of associations, ties, histories, and conflicts of interest (either with oil companies, Saudi Arabia, George Tenet, the intelligence community, the Iran-Contra cover-up scandal, the Bush administration, or who were active proponents for attacking Iraq long before 2003) which should have precluded them from serving as members of such an inquiry ... especially, if one wanted to avoid even the appearance of impropriety and, thereby, eliminate the possibility of questions being raised in relation to the integrity of the conclusions and findings of such a commission?
------------------
- Did you know that on many occasions, official commissions are often not meant to arrive at the truth but are, instead, a political tool used to give the impression of seriousness without much underlying substance?
------------------
-Did you know that such commissions are often exercises in misdirection away from root problems and causes so that vested interests will remain protected despite an illusory veneer of critical investigation and thoroughness?
------------------
- Did you know that every theory, without exception, concerning the causes of the events of 9/11 is a conspiracy theory, including the "official" theory of the U.S. government which maintains that 19-plus individuals conspired together as members of al-Qaeda to attack the United States on September 11, 2001, and, therefore, the task of any such conspiracy theory is to be able to plausibly account for all or the vast majority of the available data and evidence?
------------------
- Did you know that the official theory of the United States government concerning the events of 9/11 cannot plausibly and reasonably account for all of the foregoing facts and evidence in a way that is consistent with their theory?
------------------
- Did you know that 40% of those who view Fox television on a regular basis still believe that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 and/or conspired with al-Qaeda to set the events of 9/11 in motion despite the fact that after much disinformation, misinformation, hemming, hawing, and evasion from members of the Bush administration, even President Bush finally admitted in a September 2006 interview with Brian Williams of NBC that the President knows that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11?
------------------