Controversy and conspiracies III

Mr. Rudin,

Last night's program (9/11: Conspiracy Files) states as fact that WTC7 was engulfed in "raging flames" for "several hours" which then facilitated its collapse - THIS IS FACTUALLY UNTRUE.

There were several small fires visible through the unbroken windows of the structurally undamaged building. For this program to say otherwise is to be clearly complicit in misrepresenting the TRUTH.

I can't wait to see how next weeks' program continues to expand this falsehood - i know one thing for sure, it will not include any footage of "raging fires" that "burned for several hours" nor will it show any actual damage to WTC7 that would account for its collapse.

According to the show's online intro, "The Conspiracy Files travels across the United States to investigate, speaking to eye witnesses and tries to separate fact from fiction."

The show's attempt to separate FACT from FICTION is, thus far, a dismal and inexplicable failure.

If the upcoming show concerning WTC7 is to have ANY credibility, it had better feature the infamous admission by Larry Silverstein that the building was "PULLED."

See it for yourself if you haven't already:

"Mr. Pull-It" Larry Silverstein and WTC 7

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZRnyAIMFWo

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

"They'd just been put back on the wrong shelf - 2002 rather than 2001. Not so sinister after all."

Oh come on. For ordinary tapes this might be understandable, but film of the worst atrocity of the 20th century, which led directly to the Afghan War . . . .
. . . I'm not a conspiracy theorist about 9/11, but I do know of another topic I have an interest in where BBC staff routinely suppress the truth . . .
. . . you can see why people people wonder, can't you.

"I was very keen to get to the bottom of what exactly happened."


Well done, you feel a slight pang of curiosity 7 years after the wool was pulled over your eyes.

What happened on 9/11 is extremely clear for all to see, but it will never be said out loud for anyone to hear, obviously. People are less likely to trust you if they find out you have been using their fear as a political tool.

"who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present, controls the past"

Dear Mr Rudin .

You say.

The official explanation is that this third huge tower at the World Trade Center collapsed because of ordinary fires -

Can you please supply the source of this "official" explanation. I have looked extensively in the 9/11 Commission report, and no explanation to the collapse of WTC 7 is offered.

#3 I meant worst terrorist atrocity, obviously. Sorry about that.

Mind you since I'm posting again anyway, can I extend the "you can see why people wonder" comment to the satellite feed cutting off? How often does that happen to the BBC? But it happened this time? The same obscure event that you mislaid the tapes for? The same event that you had a misreporting problem with?

You really did have a bad day, didn't you.

The two most basic commonsense question that the conspiracy theorists have never provided an answer to are:

1) If this really was a government plot, then why has NOBODY involved (of which there would be hundreds) come forward and said anything? And how on earth would all these people have been persuaded to be part of mass slaughter of their own people in the first place?

2) If, as people claim, the whole point was to justify Bush's desire for war, then why not just knock ONE tower down? It would've had the same effect on public opinion

It really frustrates me that my fellow man could be so incredibly blinkered in their desire to believe in something.

Oh for heaven's sake. I lived 6 blocks from the WTC and first of all, building 7 was a 47 story building, less than half the height of the towers. Second, it's face had been heavily damaged up to the 18th floor by falling debris from the towers; fires had started all over the lower floors, but there was no water pressure, and the firefighters couldn't control the fire, as they could not control the enormous amount of fires burning all over the remains of the WTC complex. Creaking had been heard coming from the building and it came down around 5:20 P.M. or so, meaning the fires had been burning all day. There's no mystery here.

@alexwanson

"You really did have a bad day, didn't you."

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. [ref]

To be honest I would expect 9/11 to be the day most likely to cut corners, loose tapes or forget details on satellite feeds. I suspect most of the news room had been running around for the majority of the day in controlled panic to report on the biggest event of the year. Tired and overworked people make mistakes, it's only human.

Well Mr Rudin, I, for one, am certainly looking forward to your new ‘Conspiracy Files’ regarding WTC7. I hope it is far more searching, questioning and balanced than last year’s ridiculous ‘look’ at the many questions which are being asked by millions of ordinary people around the world. As the BBC lost all credibility for reporting impartially after the whitewash of the Hutton enquiry though, I’m not holding my breath.

I hope that you mention the findings of Professor Jones of particles of un-ignited thermate (as used by the military to cut steel) found in the debris from the three WTC buildings, including WTC7. I also hope you mention the microscopic iron spheres also found in the debris and the significance of that. Furthermore I hope you mention the molten metal which existed under the wreckage for weeks after the collapse. I hope that you can explain these oddities, and also just how the building collapsed at freefall speeds (note the word freefall here, this is significant when one takes into account the physics, which I hope you have done).

I hope that you include the testimony of many firefighters who heard a countdown seconds before the building collapsed, and also the testimony of the explosions heard in the building and reports of the dead bodies which lay in WTC7.

I have no answers to these questions, I have no ‘conspiracy theory’, but I do have many questions. Perhaps your programme will be brave enough to answer them, but I rather think it won’t.

The trouble with conspiracy theorists is they'll never be satisfied by any explanation unless it confirms their conspiracy theory. Even then, if the official explanation supported the conspiracy theory, the theorists would be convinced a worse conspiricy is being covered up.

There was a lot of confusion that day. Of the top of my head I can remember reports of car bombs in Washington DC and 4 other missing planes. When people are scared like speculation become rife, even normally reliable news sources are not immune.

To the conspiracy theorists, think of any interaction that you have with the government (any goverment). They simply aren’t smart or organised enough to pull off something that complicated.

"..7WTC, had collapsed before it actually did."

Still doesn't shed any more light. If Reuters "picked up from a local news story" that, then why not explain which local news story was referenced and how that got from "the fire service feared that Tower 7 might collapse."?

Why did the story go out without confirmation?

In any case the key point is as you so eloquently put it, how did it come to be the first and only skyscraper in the world to have collapsed because of fire.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

"You really did have a bad day, didn't you."

If there was to be any day where several things go wrong at once, then that would be the day. The single biggest live news story ever, contimuous TV coverage for 3-4 days, every film crew and reporter you have deployed on the ground providing coverage and filing stories, producers madly scrambling around the newsroom trying to make sense of it all and pull all the threads together, all the while everyone trying to take in the emotional impact of it all? No, I wouldn't expect there to be a few snafus on such a day...

This WTC7 "conspiracy" is pretty weak by "conspiracy" standards. There's nothing at stake here. Even if something was proved, so what? Let's assume the building was "pulled" (controlled demolition) as the owner Larry Silverstein put it in an interview. Probably the most "sinister" reason for this was to recoup insurance money on an otherwise damaged building, and to not need to pay for all the additional costs of securing the building, repairing it, or having to manually demolish it. Wow, what an evil plot to subvert the American public.

This is probably the most mundane footnote to the 9/11 attacks there is. Can you imagine there being a press conference and they admitted to demolishing WTC7? Some teary-eyed Silverstein "coming clean"? Don't expect that to make headlines.

I find it amazing how much time people invest (waste?) into conspiracies--not even good conspiracies--such like these. If people spent even half that effort in more tangible issues we might actually see some useful social change.

"If this really was a government plot, then why has NOBODY involved (of which there would be hundreds) come forward and said anything?"

Code-breaking at Bletchley Park during World War Two involved thousands of people, all of whom kept totally silent until the work was officially revealed during the 1970's.

"If, as people claim, the whole point was to justify Bush's desire for war, then why not just knock ONE tower down? "

If I were to invade Russia I wouldn't do it in June, but Operation Barbarossa was.

"And how on earth would all these people have been persuaded to be part of mass slaughter of their own people in the first place?"
I don't understand why anyone watches soccer matches, but millions do. There really is no accounting for how some people think.

"I suspect most of the news room had been running around for the majority of the day in controlled panic"

But the BBC is supposed to be the world's premier news organisation, more than capable of handling something like this, which after after all happened in accessible areas in the most favourable country possible apart from the UK itself.


I don't actually subscribe to the conspiracy theory myself, but let's face it, if feeble arguments like this are all that's offered against it I can see why people do.

I've just had a thought - there wouldn't have been anything on the 2002 shelf in 2001, if indeed, a 2002 shelf even existed.

Here are the facts about WTC7

1. It was hit by falling debris and burning material.
2. It was heavily damaged down one site with a huge gouge carving for some 20 floors on one side.
3. It house an electrical substation and a number of generators.
4. Fires started on multiple floors, probably because fuel lines to the generators ruptured. Smoke was pouring out of one side all day.
5. It burnt out of control all day. Firefighters didn't even bother trying to contain the fire, concluding the building was a write off and there was no one inside to even rescue.
6. Weakened by fire and structural damage, the building finally collapsed. Collapse appears to have started internally because the penthouse fell in considerably before the outside fell, suggesting the inner collapse took out the remaining supports and cause the outer shell to fall.
7. Numerous firefighters are on record saying they knew it was going to collapse. There is even tape footage of firefighters saying it before collapse stating.

There is no mystery to why it fell down. People have managed to construct an entire conspiracy out of nothing.

As for the "missing tape" and why a reporter might report the building collapsed before it had... Does anyone seriously think a BBC reporter has a clue what the non-descript WTC7 building looked like. I doubt many people who worked or lived a few blocks away even knew what it looked like.

Thanks for having a closer look at the collapse of building 7.
It's good to note the change of tone from the last time BBC aired a programme about 9-11, with pretty condescending web links about conspiracy theorists, like this one...
https://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6368341.stm
Agreed, there are a lot of tunnel visioned nuts, who only believe information that supports their views (within the media, and the public, on both sides), but there are also a lot of rational, logical thinking people who want answers to the serious unanswered questions surrounding 9-11.
As someone who works in the metal/mining industry, the traces of molybdenum at the World Trade Centre site is something I would like an explanation for. The molten metal at ground zero is another. And the disappearance of the Twin Towers 47 massive central column supports is another mystery that has not been explained to me.
It's a shame it's take nearly 7 years for journalists to start investigating an event with such world altering repercussions, but hopefully the BBC will do a better job now than it did last time.

These conspiracy theories are ridiculous and simply a credit to the wild imagination of mankind. Hundreds of horrified motorists on the adjoining freeway watched the airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, yet some folks who were never there claim that a missle hit the building as part of a Bush administration conspiracy. Tens of thousands of people personally witnessed two airplanes full of jet fuel slam into the Twin Towers, yet there are some claim that these people are deluded or lying.

A controlled demolition of the Towers would require the complacency of hundreds, if not thousands, of people in a monstrous crime. Security guards, maintence crews, janitors, and building engineers would all have to unite to turn a blind eye to the precision placement of explosives. I live in a 500 unit apartment building that has four full-time building engineers and two security guards. You can imagine how many support personnel worked round the clock to sustain two 110 story towers. In a city as diverse and assertive as NYC, you would be hard pressed to find even a dozen people who could agree on a common lunch entree, let alone mass murder.

The Bush administration did not need to engage in domestic mass slaughter and imperil the economy in order to build the case against Iraq for war. The 9/11 conspiracy theory is an insult to the victims of the tragedy.

alexswanson,

The codebreakers at Bletchley Park were part of a concerted national effort to overcome a common enemy. They were a lot more motivated to keep silent than fireman and police officers would be if they were forced to slaughter thousands of their fellow citizens in peacetime for the political convenience of an unpopular president. As for comparing a passion for football with a willingness to commit mass murder, well I'm no football fan either but pheeuww!

Mike

In haste.

I do not wish to be unkind, but reading your contribution at the start of this blog, I was left with the impression that you were more concerned about dismissing the possibility that the BBC was part of a conspiracy to bring down WTC 7 than you were about whether there WAS a conspiracy to bring down that building. There is a suggestion of "he who doth protest too loudly", is there not? But, I for one do not believe that the BBC was part of the conspiracy, if conspiracy there was.

More seriously, you write that Reuters wrongly reported a "local news story" and withdrew the report as soon as it became clear that the WTC 7 had not collapsed. Now, this piece of information surely leads to more questions than it answers?

1) At precisely what time did Reuters pick up that story?

2) What was the original source of the "local news story", and at what time precisely did that local news outlet become aware of the report of the collapse?

3) At precisely what time did the BBC pick up the Reuters story?

4) At precisely what time did Reuters withdraw the story?

5) At precisely what time did the BBC become aware that the Reuters story was false (though of course it turned out to be true!)?

6) At precisely what time did the BBC inform its listeners/viewers that the televised report of WTC 7's collapse (before it had collapsed, with the building still standing and clearly visible in the background) was wrong?

Is there no process in law to bring to account those deluded obsessives who insist on peddling their bizarre 911 fantasies? They are profoundly disrespectful to the bodies and authorities who toiled to deal with the aftermath, and to the countless individuals touched by the tragedy. Libel laws are frequently wielded to redress far lesser insults. Why not here?

That this tiresome claptrap be so rampant in the US is perhaps no big surprise given the propensity of Americans to believe in fairy-tales (Roswell aliens, Kennedy plots, faked moon landings, God....). But where are the famous litigation lawyers? Let them step forward to protect the reputations of those who deserve it, for a change.

but that makes this the first and only skyscraper in the world to have collapsed because of fire
well third actually as the official report and independent studies have verified that the twin towers were brought down by the steel eventually yielding due to heat.
on the finding of molybdenum well no great mystery there check the International Molybdenum Association web site it is a coating for architectural stainless steel, which was the principal cladding material of the two towers (also used on canary wharf One Canada square building) so it would be expected that some molten metal would have remained.

Read Tim Weiner's book The History of the CIA - Legacy of Ashes and you will appreciate that however abhorrent it may be to even contemplate such a conspiracy it is certainly not beyond the realms of possibility given the extremes that the CIA have gone to in the last 60 years with the knowledge of the President in may cases.

Also consider the size of the "hole' in the Pentagon building caused by the 3rd aircraft. Objective scientific opinion from individuals far more qualified than us indicates that if a plane really did crash into the building , the hole should have been exponentially larger than it was.

I was in the old Bankers Trust / Deutsche Bank building across the street on 9/11. I dont want to believe it but my human intstinct is that something, and I don't know what it is, is not quite right . Maybe we will never know but constructive debate should take place.

First of all, everybody should understand that the official explanation for 9/11 is itself a conspiracy theory - 19 middle eastern men conspired to fly planes into the twin towers, Pentagon etc. The question is whether the official version of the conspiracy theory is correct. I have my doubts - there are too many open questions. I suggest that all interested parties read David Ray Griffin's book "The New Pearl Harbor" for background. If you're interest is piqued you could then review Popular Mechanics "Debunking 9/11 " and then could review David Ray Grifffin's response "Debunking 9/11 Debunking" to see the folly in the Popular Mechanics book.

Likely we will never know what happened on 9/11 and who was responsible. Personally at the least I believe this corrupt Bush administration knew of the attacks and let them happen and I think there is a good chance they were more involved. People say they are too incompetent to carry out the attacks - and its true they are incompetent - but perhaps their incompetence is shown in the myriad of smoking guns they left in their wake.

The comment by 1.24pm is the type of unquestionning complaceny that the Bush administration relies on. You say lets assume that the building was pulled as Larry Silverstein said and that it was for the insurance money. Sure - he collected big on insurance - which incidentally he had just taken out for terrorist attacks before 9/11 - what great timing. But how long do you think it takes to wire a building on fire with explosives to pull it? A lot longer than the couple of hours that they had and yet it collapsed almost perfectly, at free fall speeds, into its footprint - like a controlled explosion. It leads to the question of how come this building seemed pre-wired for a controlled explosion. Then there's the thermate at the scene which someone else referenced. Lots of questions, people, lots of questions. The more digging you do, the more uncomfortable the truth becomes and the greater the need for a full independent investigation of the 9/11 attacks.

So a journalist with the BBC, writes about a BBC TV programme which examines a conspiracy in which the BBC was implicated, and we're supposed to believe you! Yeah right!

So you're saying it's all down to misintepreted statements cause by chinese whispers and a misfiled tape! After seven years is the best excuse you could come up with?

And comments are moderated too! I bet those who know the real truth will have their posts purged and find themselves visited by mysterious men in the early hours.

(only joking)

There is only one problem with dividing the world into conspiracy theorists and non-conspiracy theorists. It has never helped anyone, anywhere, get closer to the truth of any complex, real-world situation. That is its only weakness.

Let me call that tendency - the dividing of people, and their detailed theories about the real world, into two groups - conspiratology.

Conspiratology, like scientology, has its pretensions to advanced thinking. But it is not. It is easy to show that in the group labeled conspiracy theorists there are some nutters. Therefore, conspiratology claims, nobody it puts in the CT category is to be taken seriously.

This is not advanced thinking. It is the absence of critical thinking.

Some women are nutters. Margaret Thatcher is a woman. Mother Teresa was a woman. Which proves what? Some black people are nutters. Robert Mugabe is a murderous thug. Does that make Sir Trevor McDonald either? Such argument from insult is the absence of critical thinking

In #20 don't try to label frasay but admit he speaks better sense than those on either 'side' thus far. He doesn't get sidetracked by BBC tapes but points to some of the genuine and disturbing mysteries of what happened on 9-11. He also praises the BBC for not ducking some of the real issues this time, which seems deserved, given that you've interviewed Steven Jones and Richard Gage. Mind you, why you bother with anyone from Loose Change is beyond me. That's still a big negative against your programme, for me.

We'll have to see if you've done justice to the much more qualified views of Jones and Gage when we view the end result.

But labeling either of them conspiracy theorists and thinking that ends everything of importance in the argument is convenient, lazy and wrong.

Most adults literally live with a goldfish bowl over their heads, which prevents the vast majority from seeing the world with a clarity of vision. However, the goldfish bowls give the majority of adults a warm, fuzzy feeling of security inside, nominally called their comfort zones, and many are happy with this state of mind.

The way the majority of these adults perceive and evaluate data is regulated by the general consensus and customs of the societies they live in. Therefore, their frame of reference tends to be limited in scope, in order to keep that society running, and that society running them.

Until the goldfish bowls are removed from millions of heads, then no truths will be learned. 9/11 and Building 7 will go the way of the JFK assassination, mired in Majestic truths, whispered hearsay and conspiracy balderdash.

I was just outside New York in Tarrytown on 9/11. Panic and confusion was total all around the metropolitan area. We were evacuated from our offices and were told there were more planes heading for New York. The panic and confusion downtown can totally explain all of the events around the news coverage. I despise the neo-con project and much of the USA's foreign policies over the last 50 years, but to suggest that the US government sponsored or carried out these attacks is simply beyond credibility. All real conspiracies (and they are usually much smaller scale) get found out pretty quickly. If 9/11 was an inside job, just think how many people would have had to be involved. Do the conspiracy theorists not think that at least one of those Americans might just have baulked at the thought of murdering many of their own compatriots?

senojnerrad:

I don't think anybody is suggesting that policemen and firefighters were part of the conspiracy. I personally don't see that they would need to be, if they genuinely believed that the plane crashes caused the towers to collapse. you might claim that they were experts; I humbly suggest that very few people are experts in what happens if an airliner hits a skyscraper.

All I'm doing is pointing out that the anti-conspiracy arguments are often feeble as well.

I chose the soccer comparison as a neutral one, but I could just as well point out that socialism has killed millions of people over the last century or so, and yet some people are still proud to claim allegiance to that doctrine. For some people, the right ideology will justify anything. I'm not saying it happened: all I'm saying is that it is naive to suggest that it physically couldn't.

I guess it's better late than never to finally hear the truth of the "mysterious BBC psychic ability"!

Seriously though, conspiracy theorists (or truthers as they like to call themselves) are many different people from different walks of life and I think it's wrong to be stereotypical of them. Some lost loved ones in the attacks, some are there to make $$ and some are just verging on paranoia.

The hardcore "truthers" seem to be in denial about certain facts, which makes it impossible to change their views scientifically. I think the muddied landscape of the Bush Administration has encouraged these ideas to flourish. With time most of the conspiracy questions have been answered, which shows the power of reason.

Perhaps the only thing left to learn is how to construct buildings that can withstand a similar scenario. The direct cause appears to be fire, although the role of the damage from the plane impact/tower collapses have not been fully quantified relatively to the damage from the fires. For example, if there were widespread fires, but no impact, would WTC1 or 2 collapse? The same question for WTC2, but without the damage from falling debris. I don't think the NIST report really answers this properly.

The design of the twin towers was obviously different from most other skyscrapers in that the strength was mostly in the outer walls of the structure. That design could be significantly weaker than traditional skyscraper designs, which would mean that collapse in other large buildings would be less likely.

In any case, conspiracy theorists are good for our society as long as they are peaceful. Some of the greatest physicists and mathematicians that are responsible for our technological development would almost certainly fall into a paranoid personality type that would see patterns and connections when there are none. They are also a signal of the triumph of freedom that we have.

The skill of organising so many hijackings is not with the Arab people. It is certainly a joint CIA-Mossad operation. Once agents are involved, there is no leak.

How did OBL manage to bring down the building 7 ?

How did OBL manage to neutralise the entire war machinery of USA for almost 100 minutes when the aircrafts were criss-crossing the US airspace ?

How did OBL manage the 'put options' on AA and UA ?

When you take the surmise that it was a joint CIA-Mossad operation, things fit very well. No other explanation appears credible.

I'm pleased that Auntie has finally got to grips with this question, because it certainly is the most well supported "conspiracy theory" about 9/11.

Every time I hear the words "twin towers", I just think "there was three of them".

I shall be viewing the programme with interest.

Mike!you tell me one person who has ever said the BBC was part of a conspiracy?yes thats right nobody has suggested that but it is kind of unusual to predict in advance an event that has never happened ever before don,t you think.Remember that Guilliani is on tape saying he knew the WTC would collapse before they actually did.It is virtually impossible to preempt steel framed building collapses when only three buildings in history have ever done that.I watched the first couple of minutes of the last conspiracy files.My God how i laughed.You started with an Air Traffic Controller saying a plane had been hijacked and was heading for New York.Then you said the interceptor jets did not know where to go and went the wrong way.Am i supposed to believe that nobody,even though it had already been established the hijacked plane was heading for New York,thought oh hang on i think i should head for New York.Utter garbage is my verdict on that tripe!.

Wow this blog post really brought out the official story theorists. I would like to state again that anybody who uses the word conspiracy theory as a derogatory term really needs to get their head checked. Dissent is the greatest form of patriotism.

it is very possible that wt7 may have eventually collapsed from fire, i don't think any alternative theorists dispute this. But it would have collapsed in an asymmetrical way and probably only partially (these are basic laws of physics, which for some reason don't apply to official theorists)

People have to realise that the official theory is just that A THEORY. No scientific facts have yet to surface in anyway from the official theorists, yet countless journals from scientists and engineers showing science in action are flooding the alternative theorists. This is why we, the critical thinkers are asking questions rather than towing the offical line.

Its even got to a laughable position where the alternative theory's are being debunked by blatantly propaganda sites. Do you really want to believe a website like JOD9/11 that has an advisory board with a man called "shagster" on it? then go straight ahead.

The upcoming WT7 report has a segment that states that just before collapse a fireball shot out of all the windows. Apparently according to nist there is no logical reason for this. well i have one crazy theory for you, but i don't think you want to hear it.

also anyone who thinks a conspiracy of this magnitude takes anymore that 10 people is living in an alternative reality. Have none of you heard of a thing called a "lie" its what people use to manipulate subordinates.

I really cant see the use of arguing with defenders of the official theory anymore. they are faceless entities who for all we know could be the same sweaty geek typing under different names. Instead of defending their official facts (of which there are none) they attack the theory of others. which is exactly what a conspiracy theorist does.

But hey, peak oil just hit and before long they will be living in run down city's fighting over copper wiring with the rest of us wondering what happened. we shall smile and pat them on the head and tell them about the history they hid from themselves for so long, invite them back to our sustainable communitys and all be friends again.

"They'd just been put back on the wrong shelf - 2002 rather than 2001. Not so sinister after all."

Oh come on. For ordinary tapes this might be understandable, but film of the worst atrocity of the 20th century, which led directly to the Afghan War . . . .
. . . I'm not a conspiracy theorist about 9/11, but I do know of another topic I have an interest in where BBC staff routinely suppress the truth . . .
. . . you can see why people people wonder, can't you.

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Actually the noteriety of the film in question would lead toa much higher liklyhood of misfiling. ordinary tapes get put in place once and very rarely moved, this tape was likely removed and replaced numerous times over the following years, at any time any junior reporter, production worker or librarian could have gotten careless


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I humbly suggest that very few people are experts in what happens if an airliner hits a skyscraper

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They wouldn't need to be. All the necessary can be simulated extremely accurately via computer model, you would need only be an expert in architecture and material science.

Dear Mike,

Once again you needlessly veer towards the extreme opinions voiced by some who doubt the 9/11 official theory.

You say: “Some people suggest… the police, the fire service, first responders and even the media” were involved. In 4 years of following this story I would say that this is a very marginal aspect to the 9/11 truth movement. Nearly all “Truthers” are sympathetic to these groups and there are many Police/Fire/First Responders/victims associations that are calling for a reinvestigation. You may as well investigate the UFO/Satanic/religious 9/11 Truth fringe while you’re at it.

The BBC misreporting (or pre-reporting the collapse of WTC7) is also regarded as a marginal issue. What is key to investigators is where or from whom this announcement originated. So why your surprise at Dylan Avery’s comment? The obvious defence of protecting sources will no doubt be used if Reuters is probed further.

As for the “2002 shelf” instead of the “2001 shelf” and the “17.15 satellite timer”– while plausible explainations they are also, conveniently, totally indisputable.

The evidence for the WTC7 “controversy” pointing to internal conspiracy in the 9/11 event is quite simply the 3 simultaneous shots of the building collapsing. They show:

1. Foreknowledge of the event (the cameras were setup and pointing directly at WTC7).

2. Identifiable puffs of smoke (demolition “squibs”) along the front upper right of the building.

3. Uniform collapse at freefall or gravitational speed (approx. 6 to 7 seconds) indicating a simultaneous failure of the structure, which must be considered an impossible outcome of small and unevenly distributed fires.

I look forward to Sunday’s programme.

Please anyone who thinks it is to fantastic to be for 9/11 to be 'an inside job' or who say too many people would be involved please remember the Iran-Contra affair.

A massive conspiracy involving the US govt. Drug dealing, terrorists, hostages, gun-running, and lots of money, It ran for years, involved thousands and was real. It happened.

There is precedent for these things happening on a similar scale, with a similar collection of govt, military and foreign actors.

Are you sure this is the final question on 9/11? I remember some letters containing anthrax spores delivered to several US government departments. And also a plane being 'evaporated' after crashing into the Pentagon?

As someone else has pointed out, you contradict yourself, Mike, when you say the official explanation for WTC7's collapse was fire, and then state that the official NIST inquiry has yet to report. The substantial problem is that you cannot wire a building for demolition in so short a time - it had to have been done before. To those who say it collapsed due to fire and damage, it was a good 400 yards or more from WTC 1 and 2, and WTC 5 and 6, which were much nearer and much more severely damaged, did not collapse in the same way. Watch the video -how can it have been possible for it to collapse straight down when the damage was only to one side? This is a crazy suggestion - it's basic physics, it would have fallen asymmetrically and much more slowly.
I submit that nobody who has seriously studied this building can argue any case other than controlled demolition. That includes studying the similarity with other CDs as well as all the related facts - ie the offices contained in WTC7, the Silverstein statement, the video of the demolition countdown, the issue of the report of the collapse being too early. Don't come on this blog without having looked at it properly and condemn "conspiracy theorists" as wackos, you are not thinking clearly about the implications of this.
I am not stupid, I am well educated and a perfectly ordinary person, not given to any form of exaggeration or weird beliefs, just concerned about the fact that the US and Britain has launched a "global war on terror" and the removal of habeas corpus, among other things, on the back of all this. Oh and the families of many the victims are calling for a proper explanation, and indeed were instrumental in forcing a reluctant Bush to set up the 9/11 commission in the first place, an inquiry which even its chairman admits was deeply flawed. Go back to the source material and put up some serious arguments if you can. I suggest there arent any.
Mike, you'd better deliver something a bit more robust than the clips I've seen so far, or you're in for more of this!!

16. Bionic-Badger :

'Even if something was proved, so what? Let's assume the building was "pulled" (controlled demolition) as the owner Larry Silverstein put it in an interview.'

======

It takes several weeks to prepare a building for a controlled demolition - the skill and planning required to correctly pack a structure with explosives, so that it falls into its' own footprint, is a highly specialized and exact science.

The "so what?" is that pulling any building requires weeks of advanced planning and preparation - you don't just "decide" to pull a building and Larry Silverstein did not just "decide" on September 11 to demolish WTC7 - it HAD to have been planned weeks in advance.

Amending my comment #20, I should have said the molybdenum "spherules" found in the trade centre dust samples are the mystery, because moly has an exceptionally high melting point (2623 celsius).

One more point worth making...
All these people saying 100's or 1000's of people would have to be involved in a coverup, are the same people who believe only 19 people carried out the terrorist operation successfully. Hmmm. How many people are necessary for an operation of this magnitude? Is it 19, or 1000's?
How many people does it take to wire a building? 1 or 2 dozen, or a hundred? I would have thought about 20 men, given the time and access, could do the job.

Were people in the US administration involved, or were they blackmailed/threatened into covering up the event? There are hundreds of possible scenarios, but really, this analysis should probably come after we first understand how the buildings came down.

Why haven't people come forward? Actually they have. Hundreds of pilots, architects, military personal and academics have come forward questioning the official story. Search the web for patriots questioning 9-11.

It is not disrepectful to ask questions and search for the truth. I think it's racist not to ask these questions, and make sure we're at war with the right enemy.

I have to laugh at remarks such as those made by 'Magic-Moose' ('Here are the facts about WTC-7') . . etc

Why do you think that NIST have taken 7 years to attempt to investigate this ? Because buildings of that size do not, and never have done prior or since, spontaneously collapse through their own sub-structure due to fires, falling debris, presence of electrical substation or any other of the items listed on Magic-Moose's so called fact list.

They do, on the other hand, collapse in exactly this manner if carefully placed explosives are used to remove the substructure in a planned demolition, so it seems reasonable to speculate that that was the cause in this case.

Magic-Moose sez... 'People have managed to construct an entire conspiracy out of nothing'

My goodness. If only this were true. Such a bald and utterly un-informed statement could only ever be made by someone who has absolutely no interest in pursuing true accountability these horrendous events.

I myself don't believe everything claimed by the "conspiracy theorists" but I have seen Loose Change and a few similar videos, and while they may be making some wild accusations they are also undeniably raising some very important questions that the Bush Administration has neglected to answer. Why was this the first time fire has been able to melt reinforced and fire-proofed steel supports? Why are there no scraps bigger than a car door of the plane that hit the Pentagon and why is the hole less than half the size of a 767? Why is it that in the video footage of 9/11 can you see small explosions at the base of the one of the Twin Towers just a few second before it imploded on itself much like other buildings implode when purposefully demolished? Who knows. And those are only a few of the many questions I, and many other people blindly labeled "conspiracy theorists" have.

Perhaps there are perfectly logically explanations that I do not understand given that I am not a physicist, but maybe not. It is certainly not impossible or unlikely for the US Government to plan and execute this event and to coerce, bribe, threaten or persuade 1000s of people to follow along with it. To wave away all questions like those presented in Loose Change is ignorance, I have never believed in blindly accepting what you've been told without questioning it, and when it comes to 9/11 we should all be questioning it.

It may turn out that all the conspiracy theories are wrong but don't be naive enough to think they could never be right either. You'd be surprised what the US Government has covered up over the years, this would only be the tip of the iceberg.

> And also, holding to conspiracy theories absolutely does not insult the thousands of people who were killed that day, there is no denying that they died unfair and horribly unjust deaths, the question is merely who was truly responsible for the cause of those deaths. Whoever was responsible deserves a very special place in hell for what they have done.

"2) What was the original source of the "local news story", and at what time precisely did that local news outlet become aware of the report of the collapse?"

As explained in the original article, the source was many firemen saying they expected the building to collapse. With apologies for my ignorance, I fail to see

a. The relevance of the rest of your other questions.
b. How the answers to them would point to conspiracy and
c. How you could reasonably expect those sort of detailed records to be kept by journalists reporting on the most horrific event most of them ever have or will see.

I'm afraid the evidence for conspiracy in the collapse of WTC7 eludes me.

There was confusion in media reports? Well duh. Understandable in the circumstances. Journalists are human beings for cripes sakes. I think we can cut them some slack on that one.

They reported something had happened that hadn't happened YET? Uh, yeah, the closest thing to experts on the scene (the firemen) said they expected it to happen. In the confusion this got picked up and some people wrongly ran with it as having happened. I expect interest rates to go up later in the year. If I instead say now that the Bank of England HAS put up interest rates already, does that mean I'm part of a conspiracy? Cool.

I can *just about* get my head round conspiracy theories for the twin towers, but at the end of the day you have to remember the people being asked to research this offically are dealing with what effectively is the worlds largest crime scene, and a swathe of evidence that is compacted, burned, melted and deformed. They probably won't have answers to every minute detail people can pick out on video footage today, but that doesn't mean they never will, or that there was a conspiracy. There is no way they could know, for example, the complete contents of both towers on 9/11. Therefore how could you possibly expect them to account for the colour of every minute flame that eminated from the building?

I understand *wanting* to believe there is more to it - that so many couldn't have died as a result of the actions of so few, that it shouldn't be that easy to commit such carnage. It's almost 'safer' to believe that our Governments were complicit in these attacks than they were powerless to stop them.

Wanting to believe it doesn't make it true though. The simple fact is that on September 11 2001, terrorists hijacked planes with the intention of taking as many lives as possible, and tragically they were successful in that goal.

See what Governments consider in order to justify attacks on other sovereign nations.
Google Northwoods Document. Now an unclassified top secret US Military document in the 60s illustrating several, "false flag ops" including shooting down a plane full of American sports student and blaming it on the Cubans. The same document refers to other options "real or simulated"
The Neocon Document just pre 911 stated it would need another "Pearl Harbour Event" in order to get public backing for a huge military build up.
Whod have thought Hitler and cohorts would murder so many innocents. Its been done before. Oh but of course we are a much more civilized nation now (US and UK) we wouldnt do such a thing would we!!.

Further to my questions raised at #10 above, I have two more.

If Osama Bin Laden actually carried out this attack, why does it not mention this as one of his crimes he is wanted for on his page on the FBI website? Don't believe me, then check out yourself his page on the official FBI website. (To give you a clue here, the FBI says that it has no evidence linking Bin Laden with 911).

And secondly, if concrete and steel skyscrapers can so easily collapse, just because of a few fires, why are the Governments, and the BBC, not leading the Health and Safety brigade in warning the millions of people who live and work every day in such tall buildings around the world. Could it be because the World Trade Centre 7 tower was the only one to have fallen in history as a result solely of fire? Hmmm... most perplexing..

Hmmm...

Just got interested in this debate after stumbling across it.
It seems that there are a lot of interesting and pertinent questions being asked by people who clearly have some understanding of events and facts surrounding 9/11. Also there seems to be some emotionally couched rejection and incomprehension of the need to ask these questions by those who feel they already fully understand the events. Why the unwillingness to seek further understanding?

If there are unanswered questions that official investigations have not satisfactorily provided answers for (e.g. how the vast bulk of a steel framed skyscraper collapses symmetrically in seconds from fire damage) then surely we all would like and benefit from objective answers?

It strikes me as very strange that after nearly seven years with all the current scientific/ engineering knowledge and power available through computer modelling that there is no definitive recognised explanation for this. Or if there is can someone point me in its direction?

So we should be asking Reuters where they got their information then!

rdrake98: eek, I just Googled "Conspiratology"

Thomas Keane has admitted that the 9/11 Commission was set up to fail and Norad lied.NIST have never explained the total collapse of the towers and never had any intention of explaining the total collapse of the twin towers.They did however admit without the fire the buildings would have stood indefinitely.There have been 3 different investigations into those collapses by NIST,FEMA and Silverstein Weidlinger.Which do you pick Global collapse,pancake effect or column damage.Why would anybody think it acceptable for 3 separate reports to blatantly contradict each other.Who are these experts that can,t get their story straight.There are too many contradictions and very little hard evidence concerning 9/11 and i deal in facts not fairy tales.Now Mike Rudin has all the answers,well i wager Mike Rudin comes out of this looking like Comical Ali.And why would he make this when NIST have yet to publish their final report.FEMA attempted to explain why WTC7 collapsed but admitted their theory had very little chance of being correct.So that means nobody in an official capacity has ever explained anything yet Mike Rudin takes it upon himself to do just that.Reading this blog you are taking the same road as last time which ended in total humiliation for the BBC.Conspiracy files was an embarrassment,a huge joke.Rudin will explain nothing,he will give us soundbites and Popular mechanics,don,t expect any thing else.

For anyone with even a passing knowledge of cutting and welding steel with oxy-acetylene torches, there is no conspiracy theory--9-11 was an inside job, and there is no question about it. End of story.
For those who question how secrecy could be maintained, what would you divulge if your family and loved ones were threatened for something you might say, and you might be killed, disappeared or imprisoned as well?
For anyone who still believes that their government could not possibly create or allow such things to happen, study history--look up Operation Northwoods; read John Perkins' "Economic Hit Man" and Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine"; Bill Blum's "Killing Hope" and many other informative books.
Conspiracies do in fact exist--it is a documented fact--and using the derisively defamatory label "theorists" only serves to distract others from learning and believing what in fact might be true.
In answering these questions for yourself, it is always good policy to 'follow the money' while asking yourself 'cui bono'?
Though much is public concerning 9-11, there are still many questions needing answers, and the real perpetrators needing to answer for what they have done, and the same applies to the later subway bombings in London. Both were excuses to hide real intent and ambitions, and both succeeded in the manipulation of people to allow actions which otherwise would have been impossible.
The BBC story this responds to is only a small part of the cover-up which allows similar atrocities to continue, perhaps abetted by some who are in denial and do not realize they are complicit.
Regards,,,John

olddocross

Your post #47 - how interesting that you attempt to discredit my post #23 - I was on a fishing expedition, and you took the bait - you are a shill, aren't you?!

Those were perfectly reasonable questions, and you know it, don't you?!

Thank you for the thoughtful article.

You may be interested in a scientific paper recently published that contains details about the collapse of WTC 7:

https://arxiv.org/abs/0806.4792

This will take you to a page hosted by Cornell University that will allow you to browse or download a copy of the paper.

Thanks again,

Sean Lynch

strateshutr says "follow the money" in post 54. How very true...

One important fact that's not been brought up here so far (I think) is that people in the shadows profited to the tune of many billions of dollars after betting that US Airline stocks -- United Airlines (the operator of Flight 175 and Flight 93) and American Airlines (the operator of Flight 11 and Flight 77) plus banks and insurance companies, would fall heavily in the coming weeks. This type of transaction is the notorious "put option," a contract that allows holders to sell assets at specified prices by a certain date, allowing them to profit from declines in stock values.

In the days before the 9/11 attack, these shadowy individuals were behind the purchasing of huge volumes of put options of the two Airlines used in the "attack" as well as banks and insurance companies, suggesting a cabal knew exactly what would happen when the stock markets reopened for business a week after 9/11 occurred. And surprise surprise, American Airlines and United Airlines, plus quite a few insurance companies and banks, posted huge losses in stock values, so those holding the put options were in line to rake in billions and billions of dollars.

For a few days after 9/11, these stock irregularities got prominent mainstream media coverage. I remember seeing extensive reports on ITN News, and then suddenly there was a blackout of all coverage relating to the put option irregularities. Why?

I don't think it was a coincidence that before the 9/11 attack, there was also a huge surge in purchases of "call options" [the opposite of the put option -- betting that the value of companies would go up] in Weapons manufacturers. We all know that companies of this ilk would benefit financially in the long term from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I don't know about the readership here, but I'm smelling a rather big military industrial rat behind 9/11, but it's probably only one of many players, another being the Western world's financial sector -- as all the put and call option transactions should have been traced back to their holders, and these people brought to book, but no serious investigation took place.

As a footnote, it's not an "elected" government who was behind 9/11 in my opinion. We're talking about a shadow government entity here, that's 33 degree-masonic based and goes well beyond national borders, involving a whole host of different "compartments" buried within the intelligence agencies of the western world, the military industrial complex and the business and financial sector.

Dozens of posts later, and still no one can deny the tens of thousands of witnesses who watched the events of 9/11/01 with their own eyes. For those of you who have never been to Washington, the Pentagon is ringed by a VERY busy civilian freeway. The attack occured during the morning rush hour. Hundreds of people saw the airliner descend on the Pentagon and slam into the building. I did not witness the actual attack (thank goodness), but I did visit the Pentagon shortly afterward and the damage was far more severe than it appeared on TV.

There can be no denying that 9/11 was a unique event in the history of mankind and engineering. How many other 110 story structures have been hit by commerical jets nearly full of jet fuel traveling at hundreds of miles an hour? The towers, built with late 1960s materials, were not designed to withstand that amount of structural trauma.

It is also farcical to think that the US government is blackmailing thousands of people to keep them silent. The US government is the most polarized it ever been and if there was even the slightest whiff of government involvement, the Democrats would be all over the story to discredit Bush. During the lead up to the Iraq invasion, the Pentagon and CIA were leaking like sieves as government employees opposed to the war tried to discredit and derail the Bush administration.

People from dozens of countries died that day. Have the UK, Russia, Japan, France, Mexico, China, Saudi Arabia and other governments miraculously formed a secret pact to protect the US government and president Bush?

For those of you who think that it is far-fetched for Muslim extremists to use hijacked airliners as bombs, did you think it equally far-fetched when Algerian militants hijacked an Air France jet in 1994 with the intention of crashing it into the Eiffel Tower? What about the man who was caught in 2001 trying to light a fuse on his shoe to bring down an American Airlines flight from Paris? Or the 2006 plot to use basic liquids to destroy dozens of aircraft over the Atlantic? We are facing a creative and skilled adversary and we ignore them at our peril.

Briantist (#52): Thanks. Clearly I should've googled it first myself!

It was a spur-of-the-moment term. But I don't object to the association that much. Because by lumping together very thorough and disciplined researchers like Jones or Gage with hateful, racist loonies (as I take the authors of conspiratology.com to be, from a quick glance) the determined conspiratologist (in my terms) is as guilty for me as any racist bigot. Those who lump together the very good with the very bad, deliberately, in order to contaminate the good and prevent ordinary people from coming near the truth are themselves stooping to the level of the very bad. All the worst conspirators in history did this to their enemies: thus Hitler took the most evil of Jew in history and said "They're all like that and they're all conspiring against us." It's the same game.

What's needed is painstaking, critical thinking and analysis. That's on both sides. The biggest objection to a major CT of 9-11 is, as many have said here, the social issue of how hard it would be to rig the buildings for demolition beforehand without someone blabbing about it later. But the problems with the physics of the explosion and disintegration of the three massive steel-framed buildings (not just 'collapses') won't go away just because of that.

We need totally excellent thinking. I'd exclude the Loose Change people for exactly that reason. They've been much too sloppy, from everything I've read. Jones, Gage and a number of others have maintained a high standard throughout (though not without wrong turnings, like any scientist). That's the way to go.

And we seem to be getting there. Let's see how it's all handled on Sunday evening.

Reuters Shmeuters.
The BBC was fed a tip on 9-11 about WTC7 that came from a source so highly-placed and unimpeachable that they didn't bother to check it by looking over their shoulders out the window.
And now they refuse to say who it was.
This documentary will not be credible no matter what it says, as the BBC is no longer credible.

I can't believe we are even talking about a 9/11 conspiracy! I wonder what the relatives of those poor souls who died in that holocaust think about the maniacs who have the gall to advance such a preposterous theory.

Kudos to those bloggers who have ridiculed the conspiracy theorists with both commonsense and proven facts, and to those who even countenance such a horrific idea - you ought to be ashamed of yourselves!

Sneak Preview news....Zero: An Investigation Into 9/11 premieres in Clapham Picture House July 29th and then goes on limited release August 22nd Nationwide. This film covers the main arguments surrounding what happened but also, crucially, exposes the links between Al Quaeda and The US Govt - did you know the name Al Quaeda is an arabic translation of the english 'the base' and if you add one extra work you get the database, the database of Mujahadeen soldiers created and paid for by the US Govt... ?

Anyway come and watch the film when it comes out. It was the hit of the Rome Film Festival and was shown to the EU Parliament earlier this year. If you want to watch an extended trailer go to www.zero911movie.com . FYI it stars Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo, and Gore Vidal....

# 61. nobleFloridian wrote:

"I wonder what the relatives of those poor souls who died in that holocaust think about the maniacs who have the gall to advance such a preposterous theory."


Well actually they are some of the main critics of the Official Story: The so-called Jersey Girls, relatives of the victims basically lobbied for the 9/11 Commission and are still to this day the most consistant and critic voice of the process. They raised so many questions over, pre-knowledge of the event and why procedures were not followed and trying to establish basic facts. Guess what? Few of their questions have been answered.

Go see "9/11 Press for Truth" for more details.

50. At 6:22pm on 02 Jul 2008, Andy_PN wrote:

"Hmmm...

Just got interested in this debate after stumbling across it.
It seems that there are a lot of interesting and pertinent questions being asked by people who clearly have some understanding of events and facts surrounding 9/11. Also there seems to be some emotionally couched rejection and incomprehension of the need to ask these questions by those who feel they already fully understand the events. Why the unwillingness to seek further understanding?

If there are unanswered questions that official investigations have not satisfactorily provided answers for (e.g. how the vast bulk of a steel framed skyscraper collapses symmetrically in seconds from fire damage) then surely we all would like and benefit from objective answers?

It strikes me as very strange that after nearly seven years with all the current scientific/ engineering knowledge and power available through computer modelling that there is no definitive recognised explanation for this. Or if there is can someone point me in its direction?"

Hi, welcome. I was where you are 12 months ago. I wanted to find the science and computer simulations to explain the 3 towers collapse. I feel as though I'm clever enough to understand with my education and professional background... but guess what there is none. The NIST report on the building performance firstly ignores WTC7 and for the twin towers only attempts to explain fire progression. There is no model that is in the public domain that simulates the collapse mechanism! A university has modeled the impact of the first aircraft in one of the twin towers and it is very good - I recommend it to anyone. It clearly shows the extent of the damage: some of the core columns are severed but the building is designed to transfer the stresses to other columns and it should not have fallen (or even explode into dust) even with the fires in the building. "Something else" must have made that happen.

The second aircraft impact has not been modeled but since it hit more of an angle, it should not severed as many columns. The second tower should have fallen down differently from the first. But it didn't.

WTC7 also fell down in a strange way - just like a controlled demolition rather than a progressive collapse that you would expect from a fire. All suscipous. Now add in the final bits of evidence: concrete turning into micro-fine dust, evidence of the use of thermite explosive in the dust, molten steel at the bases of WTC 1, 2 and 7 (that persisted for weeks) and suddenly you realised the official story is missing a huge chunk of explanation. Will I as a so-called "Conspiracy Theorist" ever believe the official story? Sure I will, provided the official story makes some sense(!), is not self-serving (ie a pretext for war and new laws) and addresses all of the evidence (manner of collapse, the dust, the molten steel, the eye witness testimony of secondary explosions), not just selected items that meet the criteria of the 9/11 Commission report (which was designed to solely support the story invented by politicians and given On The Day of 9/11).

Good luck with your investigations. Please report back anything new and substantial.

i havent noticed anyone talking about the only black boxes in history to have completly melted or never been found. to covienent i say,also who benifited the most from all this.

Hi Mike,

I'm with Dylan Avery in believing the BBC is not involved in any conspiracy associated with 9/11. However, it has been less than candid and is behaving more like the Ministry of Truth than any independent news organization. Do you think that 9/11 is so un-news-worthy and lacking in significance that it doesn't need to be examined in minute detail? Even now, nearly 7 years later 9/11 little is known about the basic facts of the day but its historical importance becomes larger and larger.

So why is the official story so full of holes? Why isn't the media addressing the issues? No air crash investigation, no judical investigation, the flawed 9/11 Commission Report (disowned by its authors), basic facts disputed (cell phones on planes, building collapse mechanism, skyscraper safety, molten steel, etc), insurance scams, pre-knowledge of 9/11, planted evidence such as the magic passports of the hijackers, indeed confirmation of the hijacker identities, who made the fake bin laden video, the cause of the DoD budget overspend reported on 10th Sept 2001... the list just goes on and on and on. And nobody in the mainstream media is investigating. It is left up to students and amateurs. Rather than pointing out the trivial mistakes they have made, why isn't the BBC (or anyone) investigating the very serious and valid points that are being made? (These points are not just "conspiracy theories"!)

"nobleFloridian" is your real name Jeb Bush by any chance?

I've read a fair few of these posts now and there seems to be a mixed veiw on opinions. One thing that stands out is that people who disagree with the conspiracy theorists, disagree with thier veiws vehemently, saying they can't possibly be true. Why? Because belief or understanding of an attrocity so great is a terribly frightening thing? Because we have been taught over the years to beleive hands down what we are told? Or because people don't use the amazing brain they have been given?

I don't know who said something along the lines that the most logical given answer to something regardless of how ridiculous it may sound must be the truth (something like that - if someone would like to correct me on that I'd be grateful)

Laws of physics state that a falling body falls at a given speed - freefall. You cant have the top floors of a 110 storey building fall at free fall through the remaining 70-90 or so floors without there being resistance to slow freefall speed. It's impossible, yet we see that happening, twice, for the first time in human history of skyscrapers. This is despite planes hitting other skyscrapers and standing. Most notable the Empire State Building, which as you know stands to this day. Yet we find ourselves a few hours later with a 47 storey building, which is distanced further away from the twin towers than other buildings that received greater damage that WTC7, but again are still standing. Also physics mentions about a falling body which has damage at a certain point falls unsymetrically, like a tree would in a forest when being cut down. It falls to the side with the least support. WTC7 was only damaged on one side, although this damaged was severe, its fall would not keep with the pattern of a building that has only been damaged on one side. It would fall toward the side with the least support, collapsing toward the Twin Towers. But it didn't it fell gracefully into a pile upon itself. This is impossible. It cannot happen. Try it with anything. Jenga, a snowman, a tree, anything that you have the ability to damage one side enough to make it collapse and it will fall toward the damage. WTC7 was brought down by controlled explosive, fire doesn't burn or can be controlled to an extent its temperature can make a structured collection of static steel girders (a building) uniformally, and universally collapse at exactly the same time.

My point is, those of you who completely disregard any type of conspiracy theory, listen to yourselves, the facts you're being told do not make sense . . logically. Think for as long as is needed to examine the facts and come to a conclusion. Who knows who attacked the WTC's? The point is that these buildings could not have come down in the way that you are being led to beleive - it is impossible. Open your minds a little and think about what you are being told rather than accept everything first hand. humans are intellegent animals and we need to re-learn how to use that intellegence rather than being lazy and just accepting everything.

I am concerned that whenever there are programs on conspiracies it is considered appropriate for the producers to disseminate and destroy the "evidence" upon which the conspiracy has been built, rather than investigate the omissions, real or imagined, that have lead to the conspiracy.

9/11 was unique in that it was covered on live TV as it happened and once it was established "that a small plane has flown into WTC 1" (as reported on FiveLive by Simon Mayo) was actually part of a series of terrorist attacks.

I was impressed on that day by the speed with which the BBC connected incidents up, brought in studio comment to flesh up the visual information presented, and attempted to relate the horrors experienced by New Yorkers on that terrible day. "Conspiracy" could not have been further from my mind at the time.

However, with all the wealth of the visuals I had watched that day, came the realisation from the comments of others that I may have been cheated, and that the coverage may have been deliberately manipulated to add impact. For me this was a matter of trust, and, as has been suggested by other correspondents, the BBC had been found wanting in its reporting on other matters.

Layer on that the pitiful Hutton Enquiry and what we now know of Iraq and Afghanistan and it becomes apparent that our political leaders cannot be trusted and nor can our media.

My observation on programs that seek to explain conspiracy away is that they must also deal with official deceit and the reason why so many political leaders seem happy to lie to us, sell us deceits, and mislead us openly. There is never a moment when these lies, deceits and misrepresentation of fact is questioned in depth at the time. Instead we must wait three decades for material to become available.

At least the USA has attempted to deal with the subject matter of 9/11 and conspiracies by countering the evidence that "Loose Change", "Plane Sight" etc have produced. But even the USA has not tackled the political innuendo exposed in so many programs on 9/11 and its aftermath.

I would like to be able to trust the BBC to deliver news honestly and factually but it seems that increasingly they produce news in the same vein as many tabloids. I think it follows from this that many people will take programs produce by the Corporation with a large pinch of salt. We do need to know what political pressure the BBC has been under since it was humbled by Blair and Campbell if only to put its delivery of "news" into perspective.

To DCHeretic

Why would it be necessary to silence people? I seem to recall that the exposure of Watergate took two journalists a very long time because a large number of those involved were unaware.

We also have the whole point of the USA being shell shocked at being attacked at home and not in some far away place. Exposing the fragile nature of your own defences against such an attack was perhaps the main concern post 9/11 rather than studying in minute detail what actually happened and in what order.

Too many things remain unanswered and not investigated for anyone to feel confident that what we are fed is actually true.

It is hard to take this conspiracy theory seriously when bloggers are writing that the buildings were brought down by "fire." A jetliner weighing several tons slamming into the top quarter of a building at a tremendous speed is far more dramatic than a mere fire in the building. No skyscraper has ever experienced such an impact and hopefully never will again.

After listening to the debate and watching documentaries, the only possible conspiracy that I can accept is perhaps a conspiracy of silence involving a design flaw in the complex. And even that is doubtful.

For those of you who demand more empirical evidence, please make sure that any experiments use the exact same 1960s era steel and other building materials used in the WTC complex. Compare like to like.

Gileshalton, you may be thinking of the statement Conan Doyle attributed to Sherlock Holmes, to the effect that once the impossible is eliminated, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. However, I think you should also consider Occam's Razor, that hypotheses should not be needlessly multipled, the simplest explanation that fits the facts is likely to be correct.

In this case, the simplest explanation is that the generally accepted version of events is correct, but does it fit the facts? You have put forward some suggested facts that would refute it, but are they correct?

To correct your physics, falling bodies fall with uniform acceleration, not speed, until they reach their terminal velocity, the speed at which gravity is balanced by resistance forces, typically air resistance. What we need to consider here is the time it would take the uppermost floors to reach the ground had they been falling through air, compared to the actual time they took. I take it you are saying these times are the same, therefore the lower part of the buildings offered no resistance, therefore it must have been destroyed by explosives before hit by the rubble of the upper floors. Measurement is complicated by a number of practical factors, including the huge clouds of dust that obscure the view on the videos, but seems to indicate that in fact the lower parts of the buildings did offer resistance. That they did, is actually shown very clearly on the videos of the collapse. Pieces of debris can clearly be seen falling faster than the collapse wave goes down the towers, therefore upper part of the towers was encountering resistance from the intact lower part, and the hypothesis of explosives is not required.

The Empire State Building was hit by a very much lighter aircraft travelling at a much lower speed and is of quite different construction. There is no reason for it to react in the same way.

WTC7 received very extensive damage from the falling towers, caught fire, and burnt attended for 7 hours. The firemen present were all expecting it to fall, and it duly did so. A normal building will never fall in the same way as a monolithic structure like a tree, a building is very largely empty space. The fall of WTC7 does seem surprisingly symmetrical at first sight, but actually it isn't, the penthouse disappears early, giving an indication of internal collapse. The building at its lower levels was very unusual, being built over the ConEd substation, with a few massive beams transferring load. Structure Magazine, for structural engineers, did a recent analysis putting forward a possible explanation. NIST may or may not agree with this when their report is eventually published. I would also recommend Dr Keith Seffen's paper on the collapse of the towers, which demonstrates that once collapse started, it would inevitably continue.

There is nothing impossible about the way the buildings collapsed, if it was the engineers of the many countries hostile to the USA would be shouting it from the roof-tops and delight in proving it. They aren't, and I think you should perhaps be more wary of what you are being told by conspiracy websites. See if any of them can answer the key question put by Noam Chomsky, certainly no friend of a republican administration, why should the US frame 19 nationals of Saudi Arabia, its most important supplier of oil in the region, in order to provide an excuse for attacking Iraq?

Ambersil - your knowledge of physical science is obviously much greater than mine, and well done for correcting me on many of my points, but I still stand by the point that I was trying to make. Population on mass need to be less driven by what they perceive to be true and think about facts that once thought through don't add up.

The collapse of those buildings is dubious, albeit with some facts that are both disputed and some that are backed-up. The fact that there is an element of doubt should be something that should ring bells. The official story should be one of complete undoubting fact, if the events are exactly that. On September 11, many things happened, unprecedently so, on more individual occasions than heard of before. Buildings collapsing upon themselves due to fire, planes vapourising, paper passports surviving fireballs, parts of engines completely alien to the planes flown appearing on the street, pyroclastic clouds racing down New York Streets from destruction of buildings collapsing on themselves as is the norm from uncontrolled demolition. I'm not saying the facts you are producing are not fact, but there is to much grey area to think that all these things and much much more could all happen for the first time ever on the same day at pretty much the same time for it to be beleived the officail story is true. Coincidences are surely a product of maths, and when these maths are added up the chances are astronomical, however, not to say impossible.

I still beleive that the fall rate of the twin towers would have been greatly lengthened by a pancake effect compared to the 'near' freefall speed at which they did, and I can't see how a completely uniform drop of 2 110 story buildings could happen considering the impact heights and angles differed so much.

Thanks again for setting me straight on the science I was not acurate on. I do not claim to know everything about the issue, but my point was trying to make people aware of being aware that the media, who are in instances controlled by those who may have had a hand in instigating these things may not be telling the whole truth. We must open our minds to every possiblity that lays before us, rather than just the ones that people with possible bloody hands tell us. Would you (a populus, not you specifically) admit to a massive crime if you were involved?

@Ambersil wrote: I always find it amusing to read these "explanations", especially the line about "correcting your physics", yet then providing not a shred of empirical data only "it seems". This building collapsed in *near* free fall speed, please explain how this was done without controlled demolition technology - and without inventing new laws of physics;)

Finally to conclude with the statement about Chomsky, questioning the sanity of the evildoers for fingering Saudi's, I am again amused that this is the best argument the deniers can come up with - another question, questioning the thought process of the evildoers. And I think we can all agree, whoever it was, we all question their rationality. One request: please don't say the U.S., it was not, that is like saying Italy when you are speaking of the Mafia, or Russia.

"71. At 00:57am on 03 Jul 2008, DCHeretic wrote:

It is hard to take this conspiracy theory seriously when bloggers are writing that the buildings were brought down by "fire." "

Ok, so somehow you've done the research and have a better idea how this occurred than NIST? Really now.

I';m interested to see the rather naive and uninformed comments here it's rather obvious the bbc is bringing this to broader attention of those poorly informed about the events and the considerable research done by various parties.

Educate thyselves, people.

Ambersil, the most possible hypothesis is that one of the most powerful and technologically advanced countries in the world could surmount such a diabolical plan to destroy thier figureheads of finance through a physical attack on the people of a nation is far more acceptable than a few men in a cave in Afganistan (as we are told is the official story) being able do the same thing. It happened in England too - the coincedences are amazing . . multimple tests of serious incidents at precicesly the same time in the same place, the accusations of Muslim people, the passports surviving fireballs where nothing else did etc it's too uncanny. I don't know if you're British or not, but the same denial that the British feel to 7/7 about any consipracy is rejected in the same way the Americans feel to 9/11 but yet we have reverse feelings about each others horrendous catastrophes as we do about the Americans catastrophe because we never beleive that our governments could do such a thing regardless of the cost

Morning All

Mike Rudin - I hope you read these contributions because I have a suggestion for you of an area to explore.

What you need to do is focus on what happened BEFORE the attacks.

There is one piece of information that is fact and is not rational. It is this - there was an exceptionally abnormal increase in the number of put options ( right to sell) in American and United Airlines AND an exceptional increase in the number of call ( right to buy) in defense stocks and stocks of suppliers to defense contractors BEFORE the attacks. It is the AND that is key. If I knew of this in advance this is exactly what I would have done. Apologies guys if this seems technical but it is really very simple.


The beauty of the internet is that most of the time people do not declare who they are or their professional qualifications when posting. Lets change that here and now for the purposes of this debate. I am a law graduate with 22 years experience in investment banking and the reason I am telling you this is because not only has this taught me to focus on facts not emotions but relevant to what I said earlier it is simply not possible that the people who took the option positions both ways i.e. the right to sell the airline stocks and the right to buy the defense stocks did this out of pure speculation. Rational Investors with no inside information do not behave in this way. They would be risking billions in aggregate if these were speculative plays. It simply is not what happens in financial markets.

If you are a physics graduate or a metalurgist or a fire expert or an architect then please give your perspectives on what happened to the buildings. I have given mine in my area of expertise and I am not qualified on these areas.


Mike - get to the brokers and banks and find out who the buyers of the options were if you can and follow the trail. They were not doing this on their own account there must have been underlying clients. If they were doing it on their own account then that would be far more disturbing. Think about it !

Work on the facts .

The other fact is that the BBC did report the collapse of WTC7 12 minutes before it happened based on a Reuters wire. So Reuters by definition made the statement more than 12 minutes before based on an unnamed local source. What was Reuters source ? Tell us.

Good luck. Someone knew about this in advance without doubt - the question is how many people knew ?

One more fact to be established.

Does anyone know if it is true that members of the extended Bin Laden family were flown OUT of mainland US to Saudi through the security cordon within hours of the attacks ?

Why ?

I agree with lydgrace's comments on presenting a more thorough picture of events prior to the "attacks". Were there people for whom the development of a conspiracy theory would be a godsend? Were there people who did know what was about to happen at least in general if not in detail?

A program that demonstrates the development of conspiracies may actually reveal just how complicit high ranking people are in their feeding of red-herrings that mask any small truths that may be touched upon.

We know there are many conspiracies and we know that there is excessive media manipulation. What we do not know for certain is why.

Mike,

I hope Richard Porter isn't your boss. He spent a week looking for the missing tapes and the blog...


https://bbc.kongjiang.org/www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/03/part_of_the_conspiracy_2.html


...went on for a year . It seems to be covering pretty much the same ground although with shorter and snapier contributions because the blog system was so unreliable. That blog would still be going if it wasn't for the bbc's change of technology which froze that blog to just 600 or so comments!

So how come you could quickly find the tapes and Richard Porter (if not your boss, then a senior guy in bbc world news) could not? Was Richard not even trying? Do you know who mislaid the tapes?

Dear Mr Rudin,

The Conspiracy Files screened on the 1st of July was one of the worst pieces of journalism I have ever seen. The 3 'truth' seekers were not allowed to speak for more than about 5 minutes through the entire program and were hardly even allowed to present evidence to support their claims, and every time they did so the good old beeb would start playing on people's heart strings about how upsetting it might be for the victims families.

Not to mention factual inaccuracy. You mention the planes couldn't be tracked because of the transponders. I suggest you find out what Norman Mineta has to say about this (he was in the White House bunker with Dick Cheney by the way). A plane crash in Pennsylvania? I suggest you look on Google for what a plane crash looks like, there's usually this thing called wreckage.

Here is a website that looks very closely at the various theories surrounding the World Trade Centre:

https://www.911myths.com

And here is a report from some real demolition engineeers:

https://www.implosionworld.com/Article-WTC%20STUDY%208-06%20w%20clarif%20as%20of%209-8-06%20.pdf

I hope that the programme producers have checked out these sorts of sources as well as Loose Change.

Please could one of the proponents of what I will call the 'alternative conspiracy theory' surrounding the events of 911 (as opposed to the 'official conspiracy theory' which involved about 19 people or so who came from the middle east) please outline in more detail the extent of the conspiracy, the numbers of people involved, who they were (what were their skills?), what were they motivated by (this is very important, also did they get what they set out to achieve?), were they connected with those people in the 'official' conspiracy explanation (and if so how?), why did they get the BBC involved (surely not the wisest move...), are they the same people or part of the same conspiracy that led to 77 in London, what are these people up to now, how have they managed to get away scot free, etc etc.
Basically there are people posting on here obviously absolutely convinced of the 'alterative conspiracy' yet no-one has painted a anything close to a realistic picture of how this amazing plot was put together, and how they implemented it on the day (did these people have a control room somewhere managing this operation?) and how to this day they have managed to get away with it.

Oh and 'shadowy figures' etc is a cop out. Details please.

Note that lydgrace is another poster asking the right kind of questions in the right kind of way. The ranters, whether for or against a particular conspiracy view, may appear to dominate but it's careful contributions like this that make the discussion worthwhile. And, very importantly, it's only such an attitude that pays due respect to those who died on 9-11 - the majority of whom did so in the very sudden disintegration of the twin towers, whose stability was self-evident for the hour or more after the planes' impact (which is why so many firefighters were sent inside). The memory and dignity of the victims should be our concern at all times, as others have said. But that has to include a passion to uncover the truth of what was done to pitilessly destroy them.

To answer some of the points made in response to my earlier post, #72, may I say this:
Those who say that the towers falling at the speed they did without explosives being involved would violate the laws of physics need to demonstrate that, not just state it as though it were self-evident. Dr Keith Seffen, a professor of engineering at Cambridge, has written the most recent paper on the subject, available here:
https://winterpatriot.pbwiki.com/f/seffen_simple_analysis.pdf Attempts have of course been made to debunk it, that is to be expected, but not at all convincingly.
If the best argument against Chomsky's point is that the perpetrators were irrational, that is very much a self-defeating point. To argue that the assumed perpetrators of the most complicated plot the world has ever seen, perfectly executed, thousands of participants persuaded to take part and keep quiet afterwards, were not all there is beyond absurd.
No conspiracist has yet managed to produce even a coherent account of what might have happened that fits all the agreed facts, there are hundreds of different theories and varients, but one thing they have in common is that thousands must have been involved in the plan and its cover up. More are added every time a conspiracist comments, all the people at NIST, most of the media, acedemics who comment, all are assumed to be involved. What can their motives be, are they paid off, threatened, all with deep political motives? how could they be approached in the first place? "Hi, we are planning to murder thousands of your fellow citizens to give us a better excuse to suppress freedom and invade Iraq, can we rely on your support?" And everyone single one approached either signed up or kept quiet, is that in the slightest bit plausible in the land of the whistleblower, where even the President could not keep secret tapes made in his own office?

Some more minor points:
The idea that 9/11 could not be planned by a few Arabs in a cave is the one of the favourite scoffs of the conspiracists. Leaving aside the racist assumptions, bin Laden had access to considerable funds from his family business, and at the time al Qaeda occupied an extensive training complex, at Tarnak Farms.
Millions of pieces of paper were blowing around the streets of Manhattan, one of those pieces that survived from the towers was a passport, why should that be impossible?
If anomalous engine parts were found, that would indeed be significant. Bring on the evidence!
Pyroclastic flow occurs from volcanoes, dust clouds are something else.
The put options issue is extensively analysed here: https://www.nationalreview.com/rose/rose200407260700.asp American Airlines had issued a profits warning, analysts were recommending getting out of all travel stocks after the dot.com bubble burst, it is all quite rational.

"83. At 11:05am on 03 Jul 2008, tapdancingdan wrote:
Please could one of the proponents of what I will call the 'alternative conspiracy theory' surrounding the events of 911 (as opposed to the 'official conspiracy theory' which involved about 19 people or so who came from the middle east) please outline in more detail the extent of the conspiracy, the numbers of people involved, who they were (what were their skills?), what were they motivated by (this is very important, also did they get what they set out to achieve?), were they connected with those people in the 'official' conspiracy explanation (and if so how?), why did they get the BBC involved (surely not the wisest move...), are they the same people or part of the same conspiracy that led to 77 in London, what are these people up to now, how have they managed to get away scot free, etc etc.
Basically there are people posting on here obviously absolutely convinced of the 'alterative conspiracy' yet no-one has painted a anything close to a realistic picture of how this amazing plot was put together, and how they implemented it on the day (did these people have a control room somewhere managing this operation?) and how to this day they have managed to get away with it."

Ok. Can we agree on basic facts first before we start pointing fingers?

If you go to
https://www.cooperativeresearch.org/project.jsp?project=911_project

Which is factually-based timeline of events (facts: ie information from independent and referable sources of information). And if we can agree some of those facts then we have some opportunity for finger pointing. The BBC is involved only becuase they have not challenged any of the official story.

See number 66: the official story so full of holes and why isn't the media addressing the issues? No air crash investigation, no judical investigation, the flawed 9/11 Commission Report (disowned by its authors), basic facts disputed (cell phones on planes, building collapse mechanism, skyscraper safety, molten steel, etc), insurance scams, pre-knowledge of 9/11, "put" share dealings on companies to be affected by 9/11, planted evidence such as the magic passports of the hijackers, indeed confirmation of the hijacker identities, who made the fake bin laden video, the cause of the DoD budget overspend of $2.2trillion reported on 10th Sept 2001... the list just goes on and on and on. And nobody in the mainstream media is investigating. Why isn't the BBC (or other journalists) investigating the very serious and valid points that are being made? (These points are not just "conspiracy theories"!)

I posted 2 comments on here yesterday (actually saying I think the conspiracy believers are mentally deranged), but both vanished into thin air... spooky, or a conspiracy??

Thank you Tapdancingdan for asking very pertinent questions and rdrake98's endorsement of my request for factual focus.

I would also fully support his statement on memory and dignity of the victims being paramount . I may have mentioned earlier that the company I worked for at the time was housed in the building across the street from the WTC. We owe a duty to the victims to establish the facts. Several of my co workers families were in NYPD and the fire service.

So if there was a conspiracy who was involved and how would they benefit asks Tapdancingdan ?

The gains made on the financial positions I mentioned earlier were enormous. Where were they invested ? Not inconceivably in a war chest or somewhere else in the CIA's budget ? Farcical maybe but not impossible

The event led to a massive surge in Anti Islamic sentiment in the US and the West which in turn diminished exponentially opposition to the entry of the US into Iraq. The phrase War on Terror emerged.

Harnassing this sentiment Saddam is disposed and then US and western oil and oil services companies will secure over time long term contracts in Kurdistan and other parts of Iraq. This has happened and is happening today as we speak and long term contracts are being tendered

Who was involved ? Ok people will say it had to be FBI and CIA with Executive endorsement to achieve something of this scale? I do not know of course but consider what happened in Vietnam where for extended periods including the barbaric extension of the bombing into Cambodia and Laos it was a very small number of people who de facto executed this strategy - Kissinger in particular. It is not inconceivable that a similar concentration of decision making happened in 2001. In Vietnam it was anti communist paranoia and the Domino theory that justified any and all action in South East Asia. In 2001 Communism is replaced by Fundamentalism.

So Islamic fundamentalism is elevated as the new great evil, a fanatical tyrant is removed, the Arab is consistently potrayed in an adverse light by Hollywood and other parts of the media { watch "24" guys !}and access to critical oil and gas contracts secured. Before anyone asks I am a white, anglo saxon protestant !

Much of what I have written above is of course speculation but like I said earlier follow the financial trail and it will lead you to some dark recesses I am certain.

72. At 01:28am on 03 Jul 2008, Ambersil wrote:
"To correct your physics, falling bodies fall with uniform acceleration, not speed, until they reach their terminal velocity, the speed at which gravity is balanced by resistance forces, typically air resistance. What we need to consider here is the time it would take the uppermost floors to reach the ground had they been falling through air, compared to the actual time they took. "

Don't you think that steel frames provide more resistance than air? So any collapse would be slower than free-fall and asymentrical? WTC 1 and 2 fell symetrically despite the aircraft hitting different positions. How do explain the steel beams being ejected horizontally from the towers? The pulvisation of concrete (and bodies!) to dust from the outset?

"I take it you are saying these times are the same, therefore the lower part of the buildings offered no resistance, therefore it must have been destroyed by explosives before hit by the rubble of the upper floors. Measurement is complicated by a number of practical factors, including the huge clouds of dust that obscure the view on the videos, but seems to indicate that in fact the lower parts of the buildings did offer resistance. That they did, is actually shown very clearly on the videos of the collapse. Pieces of debris can clearly be seen falling faster than the collapse wave goes down the towers, therefore upper part of the towers was encountering resistance from the intact lower part, and the hypothesis of explosives is not required."

How do you explain the "explosive" reaction of concrete to dust and the pools of molten steel in the basements of WTC 1, 2 and 7 which persisted for weeks after the event?

"The Empire State Building was hit by a very much lighter aircraft travelling at a much lower speed and is of quite different construction. There is no reason for it to react in the same way. "

Indeed the Empire State Building is a far weaker building than the Twin Towers.

"WTC7 received very extensive damage from the falling towers, caught fire, and burnt attended for 7 hours. "

Madrid tower: burnt for 23 hours with falling down. Please confirm independent sources for "very extensive" since this is not borne out by independent eye witnesses.

"The firemen present were all expecting it to fall, and it duly did so. A normal building will never fall in the same way as a monolithic structure like a tree, a building is very largely empty space. "

This is not very encouraging to all the people that have to work in skyscrapers...

"The fall of WTC7 does seem surprisingly symmetrical at first sight, but actually it isn't, the penthouse disappears early, giving an indication of internal collapse. "

As you would expect from a Controlled Demolition: this allows the building to collapse inwardly. Nb buildings either side of WTC7 were virtually undamage and are still there today.

"The building at its lower levels was very unusual, being built over the ConEd substation, with a few massive beams transferring load. "

Indeed: MASSIVE BEAMS!

"Structure Magazine, for structural engineers, did a recent analysis putting forward a possible explanation. NIST may or may not agree with this when their report is eventually published. I would also recommend Dr Keith Seffen's paper on the collapse of the towers, which demonstrates that once collapse started, it would inevitably continue."

Seffen's paper does not mention WTC7 and seems totally impenetrable. So much for my university maths qualifications! Maths does not explain away physics: note the chemical traces, energy required for dust creation and pools of molten steel.

"There is nothing impossible about the way the buildings collapsed, if it was the engineers of the many countries hostile to the USA would be shouting it from the roof-tops and delight in proving it."

Er... I think they are.

"They aren't, and I think you should perhaps be more wary of what you are being told by conspiracy websites."

And just believe George Bush? Come on, what about all the other anomalies of the day? The official story is full of holes. Don't you think this is important to have a real discussion?

"See if any of them can answer the key question put by Noam Chomsky, certainly no friend of a republican administration, why should the US frame 19 nationals of Saudi Arabia, its most important supplier of oil in the region, in order to provide an excuse for attacking Iraq?"

Are you asking who benefits?
- $2.2trillion DoD overspend (never investigated) announced on 10th Sept
- Huge additional sums spent on US DoD ever since. Check their budget: the auditor for 7th year cannot sign-off the accounts because of total chaos there.
- Gold Bullion at bottom of WTC7 not recovered.
- US economy M1 money supply blip in August 2001 unexplained.
- Silverstien's insurance scam on WTC was worth $7billion or more. WTC towers were a huge white elephant, btw...
- Requirement for gas pipleine in Afghanistan - now approved.
- Excuse to invade Iraq serves the military-industrial complex esp Halliburton (Cheney was CEO of Halliburton).
- US and UK Oil companies just received concessions in Iraq.
- Excuse to apply the Patriot Act (observely written pre-9/11 and waiting to be applied) and so change the US consituition.

Gee, I can't see who would benefit from that lot.

"87. At 12:33pm on 03 Jul 2008, grimble22350 wrote:
I posted 2 comments on here yesterday (actually saying I think the conspiracy believers are mentally deranged), but both vanished into thin air... spooky, or a conspiracy??"

I think calling people mentally deranged for people saying that they don't believe George Bush isn't in the spirit of the bbc's guidelines.

Tell us why you believe George Bush when there has not been any real evidence for his claims (no air crash investigations, building reports that miss evidence such as the molten steel and reprots of secondary devices in the buildings), no evidence except for that extracted by torture. We're still waiting for the report tying Bin Laden to 9/11.

And then tell us why you want to ignore all the evidence that goes counter to the official story.

Then perhaps you can tell us where the logic fails. I am happy to listen to logical and well informed people.

tapdancingdan (#83): we were within a minute of each other at 11.05 so I'll have a stab at your questions, which I do by the way appreciate and take to be honest ones.

First. the 'alternative conspiracy theory' you are seeking information about does not exist. For there are many such theories. That's why we need critical thinking, on either side of the divide. (And the divide is best characterised I think as between those that tend to trust most of the official version, as expressed in the 9-11 Commission Report and the NIST work, and those that have serious questions about it. Nobody in their right minds believes every detail or doubts every detail. The world is surely more complicated than that.)

"please outline in more detail the extent of the conspiracy"

Don't know.

"the numbers of people involved"

Don't know.

"who they were (what were their skills?)"

Don't know.

"what were they motivated by (this is very important, also did they get what they set out to achieve?)"

Don't know. But I do have some thoughts on this. Those that planned and made masses of money from 9-11 (as definitely happened, as lydgrace has begun to detail) were interested not just in immediate financial gain but also in setting on fire the pre-existing battle between Muslim extremism and the West. Arms sales in the 90s at the end of the cold war were down 50%. But even there it wasn't just the money. It was manipulation of the whole world into much more bloodshed, which has to be for some very dark purposes indeed. If any of us are even close to the truth on this we are clearly talking about something horrendously evil. But don't miss the fact that all this conjecture is based on the hard evidence of the way the WTC buildings were destroyed, which simply cannot have happened in the way the OV describes because of the laws of physics.

"were they connected with those people in the 'official' conspiracy explanation"

People disagree on this but I would say yes.

"(and if so how?)"

Don't know.

"why did they get the BBC involved"

They didn't.

"are they the same people or part of the same conspiracy that led to 77 in London"

Don't know.

"what are these people up to now"

Surprisingly, they haven't told me.

"how have they managed to get away scot free"

They haven't. Scholars for 9-11 Truth and Justice have recently had their first paper published in a peer-reviewed engineering journal. Even the BBC may be about to expose some of the obvious lying about WTC7. It may be small beer so far. But STJ911.org continually emphasizes that its aim is not to explain everything that happened - nobody can do that, especially from the outside - but to get an official inquiry that properly addresses the gross anomalies in the case, especially in the mass murder at the WTC site.

You're right that many people who doubt the OV of 9-11 sound much too sure of themselves and their theories. I suggest we need sensible people like you to look very carefully at the real problems of the case, then, armed with more solid information, join the fight for truth and justice from there.

grimble22350 #87, can you go into detail why you believe "conspiracy believers" are "mentally deranged," or do you have to sign a release form from your local psychiatric hospital first?

I'd just like to say that if you're not in possession of all the facts, then it's quite easy to get a distorted view of reality. And when it comes to 9/11 and Building 7, most people's information is filtered by the mainstream television, who in turn get their info from government institutions, so it's not surprising that people believe in the "official" story.

In reply to post 89:
The time taken for the towers to fall WAS slower than if they had fallen through air. WTC2 was seen to tilt to one side initially, ie did not fall symmetrically until global collapse commenced, then given how the top floors were falling on the lower, it was inevitable that the collapse would be symmetrical. Naturally in a chaotic collapse, some debris would be ejected sideways. There is simply no evidence that pulverisation of concrete occurred at the outset, and indeed there were large chunks of concrete in the remains. What is certain to have powdered early on was the many tons of gypsum wallboard, which probably accounts for a large part of the dust clouds.

There is no evidence for molten steel at ground zero, there are some accounts of molten metal, which are more likely to have been aluminium. molten steel is not anyway the result of the use of explosives.

The Madrid tower suffered all its steel component collapsing, just as the WTC did. What remained standing was the concrete core, which the WTC buildings did not have.

Not all the concrete was pulverised and calculations based on that assumption are flawed. Seffen deals with the towers, not WTC7, obviously. sorry you cannot follow his maths, neither can I.

The world's structural engineers are NOT falling over themselves to prove an inside job, whatever country they come from.

Accepting the 'official' account of what happened does not depend in any way on believing G W Bush, it depends on hard evidence and informed opinion, things the conspiracy theories notably lack. Imaginary anomalies cut no ice.

The unaccounted trillions at the Pentagon were known about before 9/11 and continued to be investigated afterwards. Silverstein lost out on the insurance, he was underinsured for the re-building, and has been in court against his insurers many times - his must be the most incompetant insurance scam in history! The pipeline was cancelled and is only now going ahead 7 years later. Fairy gold!

Can I just repeat the observation from someone way back on the thread: the argument is continually made that hundreds or thousands must have been involved in such a conspiracy, and yet the people who say this believe that 19 Arabs carried it off.
Please clarify your position...

Classic....you couldn't make it up.

"This content isn't available at the moment"

Realised it's a bit incriminating and been removed?

Ambersil, #93

This link will take you to a photo showing the Twin towers being constructed...
https://911.yweb.sk/images/co-hovoria-o-pade-WTC-oficialne-spravy/03-WTC_Core_03s.jpg

As you can see, it is hard to miss the central steel core running up the centre of the building. This core housed the elevator systems.

If the floors were falling onto each other as you suggest, what made the steel core disappear. Shouldn't the steel core have remained standing, with a pile of floors at it's base?

I have included the above link to verify that the Twin Towers were not hollow in the middle, as many people still claim.

How was the central steel core's integrity weakened, completely, through both towers? How did the steel above pass through the steel below it with so little resistance?

Loose Change is probably the worst researched investigative documentary of all time. Dylan Avery knows about video editing, but that's about all. Anyone who cites that film as some sort of 'evidence' of global conspiracy needs to take a step back and think. Occam's Razor is extremely applicable to the events of 9/11 - why invoke conspiracy of such huge proportion when the simplest explanations are that a) the US government was incompetent leading up to and during the events of 9/11 and b) that the buildings were not built to the stated specifications. Simple as that.

ayjayhawk wrote:
Can I just repeat the observation from someone way back on the thread: the argument is continually made that hundreds or thousands must have been involved in such a conspiracy, and yet the people who say this believe that 19 Arabs carried it off.
Please clarify your position...

You clarify your position on what happened, then we will be in a position to estimate the numbers involved.

If you are prepared to believe that the perpetrators of an inside job were able to recruit 19 suicide hijackers to fly planes into buildings, which then collapsed, then indeed thousands of people would not need to be involved. However, few if any conspiracists say that. They normally postulate that specially modified remote control planes were used, those on board were gassed, voice morphing technology used to simulate phone calls, explosives planted in the towers, incriminating evidence removed, false reports prepared by FEMA and NIST, a continuing media cover-up, and so on.

Complete nonsense.

If you want to know the true conspiracy behind the whole thing - look up:

A) Larry Silverstien
b) His purchase of the leashold (January that same year!)
c) The bidding process - how he lost and then the winners walked off the pitch and decided they didn't want it.
d) ...and then you can talk about the actual falling of the building.

The mis-reporting is just evidence of how Journalists have become no better than Sheep - not verifying their sources and checking the information is correct (I mean c'mon how can Reuters mistake then be propogated by both the BBC and CNN)

This whole thing was a classic INSURANCE FRAUD. You buy the property in a bidding process, which you loose - but then agree with the winners to a deal which gets you it for $50 million LESS than the winning bid.

Then you burn the thing down, and strangely you try to claim DOUBLE the insured amount ($7.1 bill compared to the insured amount of $3.55 bil)

The insurers object to this and it goes to court - but you don't worry because you're well connected - and hey presto - at the second trial the court reverses it's ealier decision and awards you nearly everything you were after.

I have no doubt whatsoever that in the country where the dollar is king - there are no morals in the making of that money.

If I had followed Larry's effort on a property in this country (but on a much smaller scale) - don't you think the insurance companies would smell fraud?

I suspect the conspiracy was that certain people knew the attacks were going to happen before January 2001 - Larry found this out and decided to profit from the situation.

Everyone benefited from this, the Government got the justification for the war they desperately needed to boost the flagging defence manufacturers, the terrorists got their martyrs, Larry got his $$$'s and the hawks got the patriot act and increased snooping powers.

All winners - except the 3000+ people that they murdered on that day.

But then as Hitler said:
"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it."

....just before he burnt down the Reichstag and then used it to justify the elimination of the Communist party in Germany.

frasay wrote:

"If the floors were falling onto each other as you suggest, what made the steel core disappear. Shouldn't the steel core have remained standing, with a pile of floors at it's base?

How was the central steel core's integrity weakened, completely, through both towers? How did the steel above pass through the steel below it with so little resistance?"

Remember that collapse started with the equivalent of at least a 12 storey building dropping on to the lower lower section of the towers. Do you really expect the lower section to stand up to that dynamic load? The central core was very likely pulled apart sideways by the attachments to the floors, as the floors were knocked down. I am sure you have also seen a picture of part of the central core of one building, known as the 'spire' surviving for a short time as you think all should have.