Ny B7 Families Fdr- 2-11-04 Letter From James R Hanson- Wtc Destruction Questions- Controlled Demolition Evidence

Itomas HKean CHAIR

Date:

«e H. Hamilton VICE CHAIR.

jchaid Ben- Veniste

TO:

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tadeland 'red F.Fielding

FROM: Dianna Campagna

unie S. Gorelick bde Gorton

The attached correspondence from

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is being forwarded to you for i

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also been sent to Te

ones R. Thompson

have any questions, please call me on 331-4082. Thank you.

and consideration. A copy has for their information. If you

hilip D. ZelilsDw XECUT1VE DIRECTOR

TEL (202) 331-4060 FAX (202) 296-5545 www.9-1 lcommission.gov

9/11 Personal Privacy

James R. Hanson !

February 11, 2004 Thomas H. Kean, Chairman Lee H. Hamilton, Co-Chairman National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States 301 7th Street J8W Washington, DC 20407 Gentlemen: The enclosed report brings to attention an aspect of the 9/11 attack that has gone almost unnoticed, but which is in fact a central element in the atmosphere of deception which has accompanied that event. Many more people were involved in that episode than the 19 hijackers. Who were they? Watching Aaron Brown's interview with Governor Kean last week I was in a sense reassured, yet left with a feeling that his remarks did not match the scope of facts which many of us feel should come out. You said, Governor Kean, that the Commission will make recommendations to make the American people safer, "And if we do that well, that could even be more important than the part of the report that tells the authoritative story." I find this puzzling. The American people are as safe as we need to be if the present system is simply followed with honesty and diligence; our feeling of safety would come from knowing that our government is not our enemy, something we cannot tell from its flagrantly secretive nature. Thus "authoritative" is the key word —something that the Warren Commission report was not, because it was a lie prepared to calm (a word for manipulate) the American people. If we have a deep-seated problem of falsehood in our federal government, it should be revealed even if it does not promote safety. Government agencies with integrity promote the kind of safety we desire. I offer the enclosed report as a service to you and the other members of the commission so that your report will not be one scoffed at because of major unanswered questions that undermine your credibility. I note (as in my report) that the National Institute on Standards and Technology will not have its technical work done until June 30, nor its draft report until September 30, after your work presumably is finished. The NIST findings will be critical to determine why the buildings fell, not just for safety reasons, but to know whether their fall was devised other than by the aerial attack. If we have traitors in our midst, is this not an important part of the "full and complete account of the

circumstances surrounding the 9/11 terrorist attacks" as per your charter?" If the NIST comes to the conclusion that there is no way Building 7 could have fallen without human involvement other than the attacks on the towers, and that a law enforcement agency or agencies should investigate because of the implication, at the very least, of arson, and your work is "finished," from the point of view of historic importance your report will be relegated to the "better government" file, of note only as an example of the weakness of government commissions. The Warren Commission had the charter of determining who did the deed, but ducked it. If your commission does not include anything on the potential arsonists, how can your report be complete? I have been impressed by Kristen Breitweiser, who speaks for the New Jersey widows of 9/11, whom I have seen on television. Her comment on the Commission's work that appeared in a Washington Post article last month, after meeting with "several commission leaders" was "We've had it. It is such a slap in the face of the families of the victims. They are dishonoring the dead with their irresponsible behavior." I tend to take her seriously. Another widow, Mrs. Ellen Mariani, filed suit against the President and others in November for acts committed in "covering up" events of 9/11. I have the sinking feeling that Mrs. Breitweiser's disgust at the conflict of interest of your executive director, Mr. Zelikow, is because she knows more than I do about the line of communication through him to Condoleeza Rice and the ungodly assemblage currently befouling the White House. Mrs. Mariani is calling for an independent investigation of 9 / 1 1 . I had thought that was you. No?

Yours truly, Encl.

'9/11 P e r s o n a l P r i v a c y

James R. Hanson

We still don't know what happened on 9;/11

Twin towers, immense columns pridefully thrusting into the sky, the symbols of economic strength and vitality of the United States of America and of its largest city, are each struck\y a hijacked commercial airliner carrying unwitting passengers to their deaths. Shortly, incredibly, to the absolute amazement i o f everyone, structural engineers especially, the towers collapse into rubble. Can we believe our eyes? Lost in the rubble which has turned virtually to powder are the bodies of almost three thousand Americans. Struck by debris from the towers, the lower buildings that surround the towers are broken, set afire by; the falling debris from the towers, and destroyed. \t apart from the group of

is a seventh building, close enough to be struck by light debris, but not crushed like the others. However, it is afire,;: burning all day, until it, too, falls to the ground in a heap. \n another day, this fall

took the headlines. But no one died in this building.; Given the immense scope of the other destruction that day, its fall seemed of little moment, an asterisk. \t examined carefully, it

comparable with that of George Orwell's "1984," as one looks more closely Building 7 comes to resemble the "memory hole" of his fictional society. What facts, secrets, embarrassing Documents, damning evidence went to a dark eternity in that collapse, to become part of the dusty rubble that was carried away and disposed of, forever lost to human attention? \e attached report—"Th

an assembly of facts and observations to aid the person who wonders what the fact-finding commissions will come up with, or should come up with, if their findings are not suppressed. After two and a half years, a government study has begun which could be the key to understanding the tragedy of September 1 1 , 2001. \ am a retired attorne country's course that occurred following this disaster. It is my hope that we may find the truth, to which this report is dedicated.

James R. Hanson February 7,2004

THE STRANGE COLLAPSE OF BUILDING SEVEN Status report: February 7, 2004 James R. Hanson At 5:20 p.m. on September 1 1 , 2001 the 47-story Building 7 of the World Trade Center (WTC 7) began its sudden disintegration into a pile of rubble. The event seemed strange, yet strangely normal for a day such as that, seven hours after the north tower had done the same thing in a much more catastrophic and spectacular way, the second of the two towers struck by large aircraft and set afire with jet fuel. Thus far, their fall has been attributed partly to the impact that tore up structural members, leading to failure of supporting columns when lightweight steel cross-supports lost their integrity in the heat of the jet fuel fires. Amateur analysts suggest explosives as the cause; the professionals don't even tip their hats to that, although given the obsessive secrecy that has surrounded the event, it seems they should at least consider and reject it as a possibility, giving their reasons. All seven buildings in the World Trade Center complex were destroyed. The lesser buildings near the towers were crushed and burned. WTC 7, set apart from the others, did not suffer their damage, but burned and collapsed nonetheless. The New York Times and other media for months thereafter referred to WTC 7 as having been felled by burning debris. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), first to make an official report, referred to it in the same manner, yet in fact said that it did not know what had caused the fires in WTC 7, nor why it fell. I have studied the facts available in publications and in the media, including the internet, and including many photographs, in an attempt to make sense of the collapse of WTC 7. I am in the same position as FEMA—I find nothing to indicate how WTC 7 caught fire, or why it burned the way it did. It has been my conclusion, however, that burning debris ranks almost as low on a scale of probability as spontaneous combustion. I am tempted to say it was impossible, but my distance from the scene requires a degree of humility. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has the ball at this point. Its investigations are to "establish the likely technical causes of the building failures." (NIST Home Page http://wtc.nist.gov) Technical work is to be completed by June 30 for a draft report due September 30. On February 12 NIST will hold a public hearing in New York City as part of its information input for the studies; the next meeting of its Advisory Committee will be held the last week in April. On January 15 the committee responded to an article in Engineering News-Record entitled "Research May Never Pinpoint Sequence of Events on 9 / 1 1 " by letter which stated in part: "While we recognize that it is possible there may not be

1

a unique collapse sequence, we are not far enough along in our analyses to make that determination at this time." At the December 2, 2003 Advisory Committee meeting in Gaithersburg, Md. , it was reported that much of the "heavy lifting" still lay ahead, that information to investigate the tower collapse was complete, but not that for WTC 7. (http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/ncstmin_dec23.htm) The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) released a report in May, 2002 anticipating a later thorough investigation such as that of NIST. The FEMA report is informative, serving as a basic document. It provides useful facts, questions, and potential routes toward answers, but with all its detail, it does more to strengthen doubts concerning the destruction of WTC 7 than to dispel them. FEMA plans no further study, (http://www.fema.gov/ library/wtcstudy.shtm) Although NIST has spent a good deal of effort studying the towers' collapse, its contract for development of structural models and collapse hypotheses for WTC 7 was not awarded until October 27, 2003. It is WTC Project No. 6, entitled "Development of World Trade Center Building 7 structural models and collapse hypotheses." WTC 7 has not been the subject of discussion in the major media for some time, and of very little in any media. Because of the initial inconceivability of that day's events, the towers have been the focus of the principal conspiracy theories, with which NIST has been deluged. That the WTC 7 collapse has not been notable is understandable because of the spectacular nature of the collapse of the towers, and the fact that no one died in WTC 7, but its neglect is in itself a rather spectacular mystery. It was said that the failure of the towers was historic because no steelstructured building had ever fallen due to fire. In the examinations thus far, the factor of having a large aircraft full of jet fuel strike the building and demolish a good part of it at a particular spot has been prominent in attempts to explain why that collapse occurred. Many or most of those who have looked at the details believe that the jet fuel, without the huge impact damage, would not have caused the collapse. Yet the truly historic event from the standpoint of a steel-structured building being brought down by fire is the fall of WTC 7. It was not struck by an aircraft, nor was jet fuel present to cause the kind of fire which is the suspected ingredient in the towers' collapse. It contained some 40,000 gallons of diesel fuel to supply emergency electric generation, which is offered as serving the role that aviation fuel played in the towers. Reading this, one can picture a holocaust, but that picture is not accurate. Numerous fires burned gently at first, growing throughout the day: if from diesel fuel, from a leak rather than the rupture of a tank.

Damage from tower debris In its December 2003 progress report, NIST asked for photos or videos of the south face of WTC 7, to determine how the building may have been damaged. Their inventory includes 6,100 photographs and 5,726 video clips. Seeking photographs wherever I could, I experienced the same frustration. A photograph of the front of the building taken after the fall of the north tower is a bridge to other facts, a significant piece of evidence. Was it substantially damaged, or almost completely intact? Was its photographic potential so dull that no one thought to shoot it? If smoke obscured it much of the time, that may be the only picture available. WTC 6, burning, along with rubble that fell from it, was creating smoke that was being sucked up the front of WTC 7 as if it were a chimney, just as were the dust clouds from both tower collapses which behaved the same way, clearly seen in photographs. Figure 1-7 in the FEMA report (following page) is a map of the area overlain with circles to indicate the approximate radius of the landing of exterior columns and other heavy debris, and an outer, wider circle indicating the radius that received aluminum cladding and other light debris. Also indicated are special areas where debris deposit exceeded its circle. WTC 7 is well outside the heavy debris circle, but its south face is within the lighter debris circle; testimony of firemen confirmed that some windows were broken out in the south face, with some other facial damage, but no severe damage was reported, such as that to the next-door Verizon Building. The heaviest of the lighter debris consisted of lengths of aluminum cladding that covered the exterior supporting columns. Columns were 36-foot pieces of 14-inch square steel "boxes" attached to steel panels, three to a panel. In place, windows filled the spaces between columns. Cladding covered the columns in pieces which were uniformly about eleven feet long, so that when the building fell, they broke loose singly. Omnipresent in photographs, in flight they look like boards, light enough to have an aerodynamic quality. The steel columns, all with the same 14-inch square exterior, differed in weight and thickness, heavier from top to bottom, e.g. 101st floor 1/4 inch, 80th floor about 3/4 inch, at the very bottom between 3 and 4 inches. If any "flew," they were the higher and lighter ones, although they evidently still tended to depart attached in groups of three. Some did fly. Figure 1-7 depicts places in which columns landed outside the "heavy debris" circle, and even at or beyond the outer edge of the "lighter debris" circle, one being the front of the Verizon Building next door west of WTC 7. Neither was within the cluster of six World Trade Center buildings that circled the Plaza. Harder hit by north tower debris was the front of buildings in the World Financial Center across West Street. WFC 2 and WFC 3 were damaged at the lower level by heavy debris which also reached the all-glass Winter Garden between them, partly surrounding it.

The "X's" in Figure 1-7 do not necessarily mark single sets, but may be places where multiple sets fell. In photographs of the area between WFC 2 and WFC 3 the debris has the appearance of a sea of three-column sets, like rafts that washed into the area, the rushing sea splitting as it reached the round "nose" of the Winter Garden, making it look like a glass submarine emerging from the depths. The scene reminds one of an avalanche, but it is apparent that what in fact occurred was that a section of the exterior of Tower One which did not go down simultaneously with the main collapse, fell over, as would a tall tree, in a line precisely perpendicular to the tower's west wall. To reach the WFC buildings as it did, beyond even the lighter debris circle, it had to exceed 500 feet, which it did, reaching almost 600 feet to partly surround the Winter Garden. Puzzled at the anomaly of columns falling this far, I found the solution in a photograph by Steve McCurry in a book by Magnum Photographers entitled "New York September 11." In a series of four photographs in which McCurry caught the eight-second collapse of Tower One, with WTC 7 in the foreground almost totally blocking a view of the lower half of the tower, I couldn't figure out what the structure was that appeared beyond WTC 7 which hadn't been there in the first two photographs. It was a peculiar structure protruding behind the west end of the roof of WTC 7, resembling a stubby tower with tall poles reaching far to the sky. Its location was where the west exterior wall of Tower One had been seconds earlier. In the photograph, the immense dust clouds can be seen rolling out in all directions, giving one the impression that the main debris had just then "squashed" at the bottom. Measuring from the place where Tower One stood in the first photo, I found that the tallest "pole" reached to a spot 450 feet beneath the top of the tower (thus 800 feet from the ground), with a bulkier shape of fuzzy detail topping out at about 620 feet above ground level. This would be at about the 54th floor, the tip of the long, slender object reaching to the tower's 70th floor. If this structure then fell as if cut near the ground, like a 620-foot tree, it would reach far enough to smash into the fronts of WFC 2 and WFC 3, as it in fact did, extending beyond the nose of the Winter Garden that lay between them, to surround it with fairly solid debris (I measured this as 575 feet). Within a fraction of a second after this photograph, the wall of exterior columns was pushed over by the force of the debris just finishing its fall inside the tower. One can picture a whipping motion of this wall as one would throw a spear, the lighter end (your hand) moving the fastest, causing a segment to release and fly free to stick in WFC 3 at its 20th floor, causing the substantial damage that occurred at that spot. In their book "City in the Sky / The Rise and Fall of the World Trade Center," James Glanz and Eric Lipton write that what struck the building was a pair of steel columns hurled "with unimaginable force westward." (p. 282) This falling-tree phenomenon probably also accounts for the columns that struck the Verizon Building on its south face. Although that strike was not within the

perpendicular of the west wall of the tower, it is nonetheless best explained as having been flung from the same "crack-the-whip" motion of the exterior wall, its direction modified because it was attached at that corner to the north wall, its movement constrained by it. My purpose in going into this detail is to point out that severe damage at this distance was an exception to the general rule of the heavy debris circle. WFC 2 lost many windows from light debris; the 10th floor setback roof at the front contained the evidence, mostly lengths of cladding. There were a few pieces of cladding on the 25th floor setback roof. WFC 3 was also clobbered by light debris, some flying deeply into the building through windows— again, at a distance where its force was obtained from the whipping effect near the top of the "tree." None of that debris brought fire, which was associated with debris that fell within the "heavy debris" circle. FEMA's survey listed 56 buildings damaged to one degree or another. (Chap.7, p.3) To the south, Tower Two debris slightly exceeded the heavy debris circle with columns that struck and severely damaged 90 West Street and 130 Cedar Street, and the lower front of the much taller Bankers Trust Building, all just beyond the edge of the heavy debris circle. The first two of these three buildings caught fire, the only ones outside the Trade Center Plaza cluster that did so, other than WTC 7. These were low buildings (24 and 12 stories, respectively) which took heavy hits on their roofs, unlike the 40story Bankers Trust Building next door whose roof was beyond its reach. Whether this made a difference in reasons for catching fire, I do not know, but it is obvious that a building which takes a hit on its roof has been invaded in a much more vital way than one struck with downward-falling debris against a vertical surface, which was the case with WTC 7. Photographs show pieces of cladding on the Bankers Trust roof, near the front, within the lighterdebris circle. The only thing one can state with certainty at this time about damage to WTC 7 from the north tower collapse is that there has been no report of damage to the degree caused by heavy debris, which is not surprising, in that at its closest the building was 100 feet outside the heavy debris circle. FEMA does not show it to have been hit by high-flying columns as was WFC 3 and the Verizon Building. Witnesses reported seeing facial damage, such as broken windows. Photographs show pieces of cladding lying in the street, and it is reasonable to assume these eleven-foot aluminum channels smashed windows where they didn't hit masonry, although it is difficult to envision one entering a window its full length because at that distance it would have been falling downward against the vertical surface when it struck. If cladding did enter, it would have carried neither fire nor heat sufficient to start a fire. Fire accompanied heavy debris which brought burning debris with it. An example of heavy debris that contained no fire is the "tree"

that fell to smash the fronts of WFC 2 and 3. This was essentially composed of nothing but steel columns which were from levels where there was no fire. The fire closest to WTC 7 was across Vesey Street in WTC 6, which did not collapse. Why did it fall? The FEMA authors reiterate their admitted ignorance, referring to work that needs to be done to find out why WTC 7 collapsed. Still awaiting first word from NIST as to their theory, the fallback hypothesis that has been offered by some is that WTC 7 was destroyed intentionally, at a time when it would not be noticed because of the major calamity to which it would appear to be connected. It has been remarked that the way the building fell, the collapse resembled a commercial demolition. Given the elapse of so much time without information to the public, the unnecessarily hasty and illegal disposal of items critical to an informed investigation (see excerpt from Fire Engineering Magazine infra), the strange cloak of secrecy that was, and is, imposed on operations since day one, the reluctance of the Bush administration to create an investigatory body aggravated by its further tardiness in provision of evidence requested by the 9/11 Commission, it should surprise no one that there are critics who suggest motives for destruction of the building. (Discussed further below.) The fall of WTC 7 was not quite like a commercial demolition. (See http://www.implosionworld.com and http://www.howstuffworks.com.) But then, the perpetrators would not have needed or wished their work to be perfect, other than for the total destruction of its contents. WTC 7, half as tall and half again as wide as one of the towers, separated from adjacent buildings on all sides by city streets, when it fell caused major damage at its rear to the roof and corner of 30 West Broadway, owned by the City University of New York, and opened holes in the Verizon Building on its west, which would have been an embarrassnent to a building demolition expert, even though the collapse would set a world record for office building demolitions, surpassing the implosion of Hudson's Department Store in Detroit, at 439 feet, by several stories in height. The Post Office Building next door east of WTC 7 was relatively unscathed as was the Irving Trust Building across Barclay Street to its northwest. Other than that, its collapse left a great pile of rubble within a trapezoid formed by four streets, burying everything in a heap that burned for days— presumably inspired by diesel fuel. There were no deaths, no one to rescue, no bodies to be recovered— these being the reasons given for the haste to get the tower rubble out of the way. WTC 7's evacuation was begun after the first airplane struck the north tower, so that it must have been almost completely empty of people well before the time it caught fire. It seems that the early effort to remove debris would have been better devoted to the towers, given the stated reasons for haste.

FEMA admits that it doesn't know why WTC 7 fell, or, if it was because of the fire, what its source was, how the fire got started, or how it spread. "Although the total diesel fuel on the premises contained massive potential energy, the best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence. Further research, investigation, and analyses are needed to resolve this issue." (Chapter 5, p. 31) WTC 6, housing U.S. Customs, was in a position to run interference for the south face of WTC 7. The Godzilla-sized boiling cloud that chased terrified New Yorkers down the streets in the television footage we have seen was deflected by its nine stories, the main thrust of it missing WTC 7, although cluttering the streets on either side of it. The main debris from the north side of the tower fell well short of WTC 7, dropping into the middle of the Customs House, WTC 6, creating a chasm that went through to the basement. In photographs, it is apparent also that heavy debris fell beyond the chasm to knock pieces out of the edge of WTC 6's roof at Vesey Street. The lowest part of WTC 7 directly across from that part of WTC 6 was sheltered to a degree by the very broad, 95-foot-long pedestrian bridge that ran between the two buildings. WTC 3, 4, 5 and 6 were severely damaged by heavy, burning debris, essentially destroyed without collapsing other than a center section of Building 5, its failure thought due to fire. FEMA singles out the southwest corner of WTC 7 as most likely to have been damaged by debris, not far from the Verizon Building damage at a similar distance from Tower One. This corner was one of two hot spots in the WTC 7 debris found by the U.S. Geological Survey, measured several days after the collapse, most likely from rupture of one or more of the fuel tanks located there caused by the building collapse. The hotter spot was in the northeast part, which has been noted as an anomaly. It is this latter heat that appears most relevant, because the location is where the structural collapse had to occur to cause the building to come down as it did, and it is the place where FEMA attempted to find a source of heat sufficient to cause the collapse. It is clear from videos of the collapse that the initial failure occurred in the lower floors about a third of the way in from the east side of the building, causing a "kink" clearly visible on the north side of the building, running from the roof apparently all the way down the building, aggravating as the fall continued, so that east and west sides collapsed toward one another. There was a 6,000-gallon tank containing diesel fuel on the second floor between the low-rise elevators in the middle of the building, to serve the city's Office of Emergency Management on the 23rd floor, which was the only large quantity other than the 36,000 gallons in four tanks at ground level and below in the southwest corner, but as with those tanks, no facts are apparent to encourage a theory that it ruptured prior to the collapse. For a heat source in the location where the structural support had to fail to cause the observed collapse, FEMA suggested that there

would have had to be a breach in the fuel distribution piping to engines running specific electric generators. These would have started automatically when power went out at 9:59 a.m. as the south tower fell. WTC 7 would not have been struck by debris until the north tower fell at 10:28 a.m., so there would have been no collapse-related fire, if caused by debris, prior to that moment. Risers for the fuel oil distribution system from the tanks were in a utility shaft in the opposite (west) end of the building. Except for the part of the diesel oil distribution system serving the Salomon Smith Barney (SSB) generators, systems were in the west end where the generators were located, with relatively short horizontal distribution piping. (Chap.5, p.14) Of nine SSB generator sets on the 5th floor, all were in the west end of the building but four which were in the northeast, supplied by a 2 1/2-inch iron pipe contained in an outer welded black iron pipe 4 inches in diameter. The larger pipe was designed to contain leaks in the 2 1/2-inch pipe which if of sufficient quantity would fill a containment vessel, triggering shut-off of the pump. This sturdy pipe, which was the only medium by which diesel fuel would have been carried to any part of the east side of the building based on the facts offered by FEMA, traversed most of the length of the 5th floor along the north side of a concrete masonry wall, west to east, passing a 1 - to 2-story mechanical equipment room built around main truss elements, the failure of which is theorized as permitting the collapse. (The north side of the masonry wall is the side away from any potential debris damage.) Fire service personnel reported that fires were initially seen to be present on "non-contiguous" floors on the south side of the building at approximately floors 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, and 19, which given their early appearance connotes debris as the cause (which I find unlikely). A photograph taken at 3:36 p.m. shows a thick cloud of smoke coming up the south face, obscuring the entire side of the building, with small amounts emanating from the 27th and 28th floors at the west face near the corner. The south face would have been viewable as soon as the dust had settled from the collapse of Tower One, this being the photograph that NIST does not have in its collection. After each tower collapse, a dust cloud rose higher than WTC 7 and obscured its face for some minutes (the first had cleared when the north tower fell). In later photos, where there had been a dust cloud covering it, there appears to be a white cloud that is presumably smoke, in one photo appearing to emanate from a single level clear across the front of WTC 7. This does not necessarily signify that WTC 7 was on fire. Across the street, WTC 6 was burning, with rubble in the street, and both the dust and the smoke rose up the face of WTC 7 in a chimney effect caused by the steady northwest wind which blew across its sharpangled southwest corner to create a low-pressure area at the building's south face. Smoke seen coming up from the ground floor level at the southwest corner brings the large diesel fuel tanks to mind which are located there, but diesel oil produces dark smoke

due to its carbon content when combustion conditions are not ideal, as inside a building, where oxygen supply would become increasingly limited. Fires on floors 7 and 8 are visible in a color photograph of the east side of the building made at 3 o'clock. In the photo no windows on that side of the building are open or broken. Also through a window on that side, one can see a fire on the 12th floor. A photograph taken later that day shows flame and smoke pouring out of the same 12th floor windows, evidently broken out by the fire—which may explain broken windows that show in other photographs late in the day. (One writer suggests that windows may have been broken out intentionally to supply oxygen.) On the north, FEMA says that photographs and videos show that fires were located on the 7th, 8th, 11th, 12th, and 13th floors; on the west face, the 29th and 30th floors. No visible fires were reported on the 1st to 5th, 9th, 14th to 18th, 20th to 26th, and 31st to the top of the building. A mystery arises in the appearance of these fires in non-contiguous spots all over the building, giving the appearance of someone busily setting them wherever there was something to get burning. There were no fires on the vacant floors 14, 15, 16, and 17, although fires were spotted just above and below these floors, on 13 and 18. The fires seemed small from outside, some growing throughout the day. There were clearly lots of fires, and there was lots of diesel oil in the building. A superficial survey of the event would leave one with the impression that it would be a wonder if the building did not fall down, given all that fuel. But the tanks were in places where they would not be ruptured to initially fuel the fire, nor would the fire outside the tanks cause their rupture until the collapse caused them to split, and some didn't break even then. The FEMA report-writer theorizes that diesel fuel could have been the source of the fire if a fuel line were broken. As noted, the fuel lines were double-walled iron pipe, which would have required a major whack for both to break in one blow. Assuming that the pump started automatically when the building lost power, and a pipe was severed as a result of the collapse of Tower One in a way that the containment-vessel trigger did not turn off the flow, a fire that burned long enough and hot enough to affect a major steel supporting member if it was near one or two of the critical trusses on the east side of the building. The pipe ran past this critical area, the mechanical equipment room that housed the main trusses on the 5th floor. At 75 gallons per minute, which the pump would provide if the line were broken, SSB's 6,000-gallon tank would empty in three hours. In FEMA's hypothetical, with a partial leak at 30 gpm the tank would not empty until it had flowed for seven hours. The oil would need to pool under the leak here and somehow be set afire. (Diesel oil is flammable at 160 degrees F. From a 10

City of Columbus fire captain I learned that in training exercises if diesel oil is to be set afire, unlike the case of gasoline whose fumes will start even from static electricity, a match will go out if touched to the oil, so that a fusee is used.) The truss inside the mechanical equipment room could be reached by the heat from the fire if the door to the room was left open, or if the door failed due to the heat. This is not known. There is one more "if" to be placed in front of all this: the building would have fallen if the loss of one or both of the trusses at that point would have had that effect, which is a question for the NIST study. As with the towers, WTC 7 had exterior support columns all the way around its perimeter, which were intact when the fire started. FEMA also noted that WTC 7 did not have the light horizontal members that are being particularly examined for the towers' collapse, but were much shorter and of heavier steel. As previously noted, the foregoing scenario is offered by FEMA as the most likely, although unlikely, to have occurred. FEMA: "Further investigation is required to determine whether the preceding scenarios did or could have actually occurred." (p. 30) FEMA has set the stage by spelling out a major investigation, one that should be unusually intriguing for engineers, fire protection agencies, those with building code responsibilities, and, I must add, crime investigators and politicians. If it was arson, it is ultimately political. The problem of evaluating fires lower than the 6th floor, which would be necessary for the building collapse, is that the floors are windowless with louvers which would not have afforded a direct line of sight between the open floor space and the louvers. On record, no one saw any breakage in that area that would have allowed any notable interior damage. The other yawning question is why the fires could not have been fought. Water was said to be limited because of a broken 20-inch main on Vesey Street. "In addition, firemen made the decision fairly early on not to attempt to fight the fires, due in part to the damage to WTC 7 from the collapsing towers." (p. 21) The building had a sprinkler system and standpipes, of limited effect. If there was no water to fight fires, it is one thing, but if there was water, the excuse that fires could not be fought because of "damage to WTC 7 from the collapsing towers" is another. The FEMA report at one point states that there was no manual firefighting effort, that is, firemen manning hoses. That very well could be the case if the 20-inch main was the only source of water for the building. Fireboats were brought in to pump water from the Hudson River for the tower fires. It was no farther to pump for WTC 7 than it was for WTC 4 and 5. If the limitation was the number of fireboats, however, there is no question that the tower fires had priority. I do not have the information to analyze this further. 11

The murder of Building 7 as a "whodunnit" Times articles concerning 9/11 that refer to WTC 7 refer to the "strange collapse" (11/29) and "mystery." Engineers find it "one of the deepest mysteries their profession has faced." (Science Times section, by James Glanz, 12/4/02.) At this point we are left with the FEMA report admission that "the best hypothesis has only a low probability of occurrence. Further research, investigation, and analyses are needed to resolve this issue." (p. 31) According to an article in the September 22, 2002 issue of the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, Larry Silverstein, builder and owner of WTC 7 (also owner of the towers and WTC 4 and 5) was told by the fire department on the afternoon of 9/11 that WTC 7 was going to collapse. Silverstein, who had just finalized a 99-year lease on the Twin Towers six weeks earlier, lost four members of his staff in the tower collapse, escaping death himself only because a meeting with Port Authority officials scheduled that morning to be held on the 88th floor of the north tower was cancelled at the last minute. It is surprising to learn that someone knew the building would fall, contrary to longstanding engineering assumptions and historic precedent. Hysteria would be another explanation, but not when the building falls within an hour or so after the warning is given. WTC 7 stands out for a number of reasons. The other buildings of the World Trade Center were so close to the towers that their loss was unavoidable. Something different had to happen for WTC 7 to be included in the disaster. Numerous other buildings were pelted with the same kind of debris that struck WTC 7 without catching fire. WTC 7 suffered no structural damage of any significance, making it the historic standout. We could scarcely believe the horror of the towers' collapse, struggling to rationalize it because of the great damage caused by being struck by large airplanes and a huge amount of jet fuel. Any trauma to WTC 7, including the fire, was so gentle and inauspicious as to make its demise seem magical. It did not have the structural weakness that the engineers are citing to justify their belief that fire may have caused the towers' collapse—long beams of steel too thin to resist the heat of a jet fuel fire. There was no "pancake" collapse to explain the exceptional fall as with the towers; the failure occurred at about the 5th floor, and for reasons yet unexplained, the interior and exterior columns that supported the building also failed from the 5th floor to the top so that nothing was left but a segment of skeletal steel structure resting atop the burning rubble. If it was brought down by a commercial demolition, none of this would be odd. The seismograph at Columbia University showed that the collapse took 18 seconds, compared with 8 seconds for Tower One and 10 seconds for Tower Two, even though WTC 7 was less than half as 12

tall. (Chap. 1, p. 10) Since it fell much more slowly, shouldn't much of the building have remained intact, albeit broken, instead of turning into a pile of rubble like the towers? Someone computed that the 15-story top segment of Tower One, above the break, was doing 180 mph when it hit the ground, which may explain why it was smashed into unidentifiable powder. (Does it?) But in the case of WTC 7, doing the math, when the 47th floor hit the ground it was doing only 44 mph at the most, unless due to retardation by structural integrity its fall was closer to the average speed of its fall, 22 mph. In other words, if you drop a 47-story building six floors to the ground, does the whole building disintegrate? That's what an intentional demolition with explosives looks like, so they can haul it away more easily, but they have to place explosives around very cannily to get that result. If the building were being brought down to destroy evidence, the objective would be to create a pile of unidentifiable rubble. That neighboring buildings were damaged would make it look less contrived. This is an explanation Howstuffworks web site:

of demolition

by

explosives

from

the

"Blasters approach each project a little differently, but the basic idea is to think of the building as a collection of separate towers. The blasters set the explosives so that each 'tower' falls toward the center of the building, in roughly the same way that they would set the explosives to topple a single structure to the side. When the explosives are detonated in the right order, the toppling towers crash against each other, and all of the rubble collects at the center of the building. Another option is to detonate the columns at the center of the building before the other columns so that the building's sides fall inward." There are any number of ways a building can be brought down, but "Generally speaking, blasters will explode the major support columns on the lower floors first and then a few upper stories. In a 20-story building, for example, the blasters might blow the columns on the first and second floor, as well as the 12th and 15th floors. In most cases, blowing the support structures on the lower floors is sufficient for collapsing the building, but loading columns on upper floors helps break the building material into smaller pieces as it falls. This makes for easier clean-up after the blast." For steel columns, blasters use RDX-based explosive compounds which expand at a high rate of speed (e.g. 27,000 feet per second). "Instead of disintegrating the entire column, the concentrated, high-velocity pressure slices right through the steel, splitting it in half." (http://science.howstuffworks.com/building-implosion.htm) Wires connect the explosives to detonaters at a safe distance from the building, but if WTC 7 was felled by insiders, as has been alleged, they likely had military skills in remote detonation. 13

Those who desire no inquiry will surely charge that this is fanciful. It would seem that any argument could be settled by examination of the piece of truss, or two trusses, that had to be sliced through in order to create the precise type of collapse that occurred. Let us examine those pieces of steel. Unavailable, you say? This doesn't leave "the authorities" in a good light. As the editor of Fire Engineering pointed out, this was a crime scene. A stack of coincidences can only be piled so high before it collapses of its own weight. This is not the place to go into the cloud of very normal suspicion that has been created by our own government concerning its actions both before and after 9/11. It has been noted in the present atmosphere that the person who gives his government his unquestioning trust has dedicated his future to tyrannical control. The chain by which the dog was tied up after his past invasions of the chicken coop is found to be broken. The chickens are missing. There are fresh chicken bones in the yard, feathers in a trail between the chicken coop and the dog house. The dog lies contentedly, the picture of innocence. Small chicken feathers stick to the blood smears around his face. Yet, dog may be as innocent as he appears, noble beast guarding his master's house. Another dog did the dirty work while this fine one slept (for he bears no wounds of a fight). It is a pure coincidence that a link in his chain has been pulled open, setting him free. If he found pieces of fresh chicken in his yard, what would you expect him to do, even if in his innocence he dragged feathers toward his dog house, leaving a false trail. The neighbors have seen no other dog in the area. The break in the chicken coop wire is at the same place it was before, when dog was caught in the act, and forgiven, but thereafter chained. The conclusion that dog has done the deed cannot be ignored, casually dismissed, or not considered. Was he guilty? What thinketh the reader? Dog with a bad rep: the CIA WTC 7 was an office building, beginning at the 7th floor. There was some office space on the 3rd floor, plus a lobby, conference room and cafeteria, but the building was peculiar in that most of the floors beneath the 7th contained transformers, generators, fuel storage, switchgear, and within the west side, loading docks. The transformers belonged to the Consolidated Edison power system for the area, and were in place well before WTC 7 was built around them in 1987. There is no indication that any of the electric generators or their switchgear contributed to the fire, unless diesel oil was involved, that being the only fuel yet proposed as responsible for maintaining a fire of sufficient temperature and duration to heat steel to the breaking point. An early tenant, still officed in the building on September 1 1 , was Salomon Smith Barney (SSB), occupying the top - 17 office floors.

14

The most likely fire source identified in the FEMA report (above) was the fuel line for the company's emergency generators on the 5th floor. A number of financial companies were in the building— Standard Chartered Bank, Federal Home Loan Bank of New York, First State Management Group, ITT Hartford Insurance Group, Provident Financial Management, American Express Bank International— occupying various floors from 7 to 27. But the peculiar importance of the building, and possible significance for our study, can be seen in the presence of notable federal agencies. The Central Intelligence Agency had an undercover establishment that was not identified by name (referred to as "clandestine" by the New York Times) on the 25th floor along with offices of the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Defense. The IRS also had the 24th floor; New York City's Office of Emergency Management had the 23rd; floors 1 1 , 12, and 13 held offices of the Securities and Exchange Commission; floors 9 and 10 the U.S. Secret Service. The seven-story heap of burning debris that was WTC 7 a significant wound in government, in the ashes of records, and files that left a good-sized memory hole operations including enforcement actions of an unknown importance.

represented documents, in federal number and

The CIA aroused the most interest among conspiracy analysts, as it should, given its history. The Times said that this station is believed to have been the largest and most important CIA domestic station outside the Washington area, and that its destruction seriously disrupted United States intelligence operations. (11/4/2001) That article reported that all of the agency's employees were safely evacuated soon after the hijacked planes hit the twin towers, and it was thought that because of well-rehearsed procedures, classified documents would have been effectively destroyed, although a special team scoured the debris after the attack in search of secret documents. "The agency's New York station was behind the false front of another federal organization, which intelligence officials requested that the Times not identify. The station was, among other things, a base of operations to spy on and recruit foreign diplomats stationed at the United Nations, while debriefing selected American business executives and others willing to talk to the CIA after returning from overseas. The agency's officers in New York often work undercover, posing as diplomats and business executives... " (Times 11/4/2001) The office was deeply involved in counterterrorism efforts, according to the article, handling investigations of the 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa and the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen. As with the attack on the towers, those events were characterized by serious failures in security, of which there had 15

been plenty of forewarning, and complaints by State Department staff. The Cole incident resembled the collapse of WTC 7 in the shrugging of shoulders by the Clinton administration—and the media. The ship could have been refueled at sea, the normal practice, but instead tempted fate by anchoring in a port known to be Osama bin Laden's home town and a major terrorist center. U.S. Navy requirements for ship security there did not meet Navy standards, and even these lesser precautions were not followed by the captain. Fourteen American sailors died, yet there was no board of inquiry, and the captain was not punished—unlike the submarine skipper who surfaced under a Japanese boat full of students shortly before that, drummed out of the service. With the Cole, it was just U.S. sailors. Further investigation of that incident would at the very least be impaired, as it would with an unknown number of other cases. In a publication analyzing the 9/11 attack entitled "Painful Questions" Eric Hufschmid does an imaginative job of suggesting possibilities, based on photographs and circumstances. Whether supportable or not, it would be useful for anyone who would be a detective in this case. The Times noted that the occupants of the CIA quarters would have had a view of the twin towers burning. Hufschmid noted that it was perfect as a command center for the terrorist strike, although he is picturing the city's Office of Emergency Management on the 23rd floor, which had been expensively reinforced in many ways as a "bunker" to withstand a disaster, able to supply its own water, air and electricity, with the aforementioned 6,000-gallon tank for diesel fuel. (Criticized by the fire department, the city enclosed the tank with eight-inchthick masonry.) The FEMA report shows the occupant on the next floor up as the IRS, but this in fact may have been a secret CIA location. HufSchmidt's theory, which is technically feasible, is that the CIA from that perfect vantage point controlled the aircraft that struck the towers. The aircraft involved in all the attacks, Boeing 757's and 767's, have electronic controls which can be overridden from the ground, flown, and landed securely without pilots. (Other planes, such as the Boeing 747, do not.) The path of Flight 11 to Tower One brought it from the north directly over WTC 7 to strike the tower. Flight 175's route from the south would have taken it precisely to WTC 7 if Tower Two had not been in the way. It has also been pointed out that Flight 77 first overflew the Pentagon, then made a sharp drop of several thousand feet while making a complete circle to hit the west side of the Pentagon precisely at ground level, a remarkable (impossible) feat for an unskilled pilot. Again, if the aircraft was being taken over from the ground upon arrival at its target, and if the ground control had to bring it in on a line toward it, as hypothesized in the twin towers situation, the controller would have had an ideal spot inside the Pentagon. I got out a map of the Pentagon published in the Times and laid a ruler from the point struck by the airplane, following 16

its direction of entry, and it took me across the building straight to Donald Rumsfeld's office. I don't really think they would be doing that from Rumsfeld's office. However, we know that instead of going to the National Military Command Center on the next floor, where national emergencies are supposed to be centrally controlled, he stayed in his office "making telephone calls" after the second tower was hit, and when Flight 77 plowed into the Naval Command Center on the other side of the building, he said he thought it must be a bomb. Complete surprise to him, even though the FAA, NORAD, the FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service, and Dick Cheney down in the subbasement control room at the White House knew it was on the way. The question arises also for Flight 93. Where was the remote control target for that one? The secure location was the Pentagon. Was it about to be hit again, and is that why there was a sudden, panicky effort to get interceptors aloft to shoot it down, because someone big enough discovered the plan and intervened to say "enough"? If the 9/11 Commission doesn't come up with a complete and detailed analysis of what happened that day, it will have failed in its mission. The fall of Flight 93 is a patent mystery, not clarified by the story of onboard heroics. The residents near Shanksville will show you where they found pieces of the airplane miles away from the huge hole in the ground, where it went straight in. In the accepted theory, there was no reason for pieces to come off miles from the crash site. No story yet told credibly explains that event. This is a "Building 7" phenomenon—on its face, with the facts that are apparent, it doesn't fit the explanation being accepted by the media and passed on to us for truth. Let's start with this theory and work back: Flight 93 was shot down by the interceptor that followed and caught up with it, in this case, unlike the others, at supersonic speed. If the reader has no doubts about the reasonability of the U.S. defense reaction to the four hijacked aircraft, he should, if the 9/11 Commission is permitted to reveal the FAA records that were so instantly sequestered by the FBI, make a study of the times involved and attempt to rationalize them as an honest defense reaction. An article in the Times for 9/12 told of Mayor Giuliani hearing of the jet crashes while at 50th Street and Fifth Avenue and going immediately to the 23rd floor Emergency Command Center, but there finding that "officials" had decided the building should be evacuated. So he and several other top officials walked over to nearby city offices at 75 Barclay Street, when the south tower fell, "making clear that the neighborhood was unsafe," whereupon they went searching for other quarters. Hufschmidt points out that the "Axis of Good" thus had the whole day in WTC 7 to do as they pleased. He said that CNN reported that someone reported a fire at 4:10 p.m., and that others said they were told, between 4 and 5 p.m., that they should get away from the building because it was 17

going to collapse. Hufschmidt's theory: the Axis of Good left the bunker at about 4 p.m., one of them making a phone call to the fire department to create an official record that the building was truly on fire, and as they walked away from the building told people to stay away. Again, this is just a theory, but it works as a model until we receive some reliable facts upon which we may evaluate it for ourselves. I do not recommend "Painful Questions" as authority, nor for accuracy or rationale, only as ideas for a detective to enable thinking "out of the envelope." Some of HufSchmidt's theories are obviously erroneous, given later-acguired information. In fairness, one can say the same thing about the Axis of Good, and they are the ones hiding the facts. And the Securities and Exchange Commission? There were no fires seen on the floors housing the CIA, IRS, DOD, or the city's OEM bunker. However, fires were spotted on floors 9 to 13, housing the U.S. Secret Service and the Securities and Exchange Commission, and below that the American Express Bank International on 7 and 8. On September 14 American Express ran an ad in the Times assuring its clients that it maintained multiple electronic records of all accounts and transactions at several secure locations around the country. "Your data and records are safe with us." Not so the SEC. By 9/11, the Enron angst had been noted. Jeffrey Skilling, who had been CEO for six months, on August 15 had announced his resignation "for personal reasons," which followed a fall in share prices during the year. He said that things were fine with the company. It had been riding high the year before, as one of the largest contributors to George W. Bush's presidential campaign. The Times on June 3, 2001 : "Kenneth L. Lay, the chairman, has close ties to Mr. Bush, as he did to Mr. Bush's father, and he has had considerable access to the White House." The administration's energy strategy suggested that the federal government exercise more power over electricity transmission networks, a longtime Enron goal, the article said. Mr. Bush selected two people for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission who were favored by Enron. Karl Rove, Lawrence Lindsey, and I. Lewis Libby reported that they had divested themselves of their Enron holdings, all noted by the Times to be millionaires. Two days before the WTC attack, September 9, Alex Berenson began his "Market Watch" column with: "Something is rotten with the state of Enron." Two days later, this ominous cloud merged inconspicuously with a larger one. Whether the 320 staffers at the Northeast Regional Office of the SEC were working on anything to do with Enron, may be unlikely. The fraud was only the most serious in a rash of delinquencies in high corporate office. Enron was only the flagship. The damage to 18

the SEC is described in the 9/28 issue of the Times: "All the employees escaped unharmed on Sept. 1 1 , but the offices were destroyed, as were files containing depositions, trading records and other documents for several hundred cases. They ranged from a sweeping investigation into initial public offerings underwritten by major brokerage firms, like Credit Suisse First Boston, to the commission's pursuit of what it calls boiler-room operations. "That's not all. Informal notes from interviews and jottings on documents or memo pads that helped the S.E.C. build cases were also destroyed—not to mention Rolodexes full of contacts. In a few cases, securities lawyers say critical pieces of evidence were probably destroyed, too." Former SEC lawyers say that staff will have to rethink hundreds of cases, including about 100 now in litigation. One was quoted: "If you analyzed three to four years of insider trading, looking at monthly statements, it's going to be very, very difficult. The emphasis of the office had been accounting fraud and earnings management that misled investors—i.e., the Enron problem. While I can envision the CIA covering its tracks by blowing up a building, I cannot produce in my mind a credible scenario for bringing down the house just to hide some corporate defalcation, although one does not know what to picture, or how extensive it might have been, had some set of investigations continued. It's just one of those things that is connected by fate, if not by human decision. There were fires on all three floors occupied by the SEC, no doubt including case files. If one knew of the likelihood that WTC 7 would collapse, in advance of the 9/11 attack, he might devise to have his files, or those of his friends, transferred to that office. Who would have the motive? Who would have the power? This is a can of strange worms, is it not? Perhaps the WTC 7 tenant that should be brought into the sunlight is the Department of Defense, for it is the agency, with its defense-industry friends, that had the most to gain from the attack in a financial and political sense. The Secret Service is shown in the FEMA report occupying two floors: should it be classed with the CIA in terms of clandestine activities? Someone may also have thought the Internal Revenue Service had something in its files that would be embarrassing to be brought out, but that agency puts so much in computer files that a critical loss from the WTC 7 collapse would be highly unlikely. Should we let the mayor's office off the hook? The city only recently let NIST see its communications records. If this were a fictional mystery story, we would learn in the last chapter that the villain was Salomon Smith Barney, which has been virtually invisible, with 18 floors of equipment, records, and files lost. There were firms in the towers 19

that lost more, including personnel, so SSB gets no attention. I see it as useless to hope that such things will be investigated. My priority would be a thorough and honest investigation of how WTC 7 caught fire, and why it collapsed. This is not a slight thing. For some reason, this and the'towers' collapse, to say nothing of the crash at the Pentagon, were considered off limits to inquiry and investigation. Admission was tightly limited, making it difficult for the volunteer civil engineers who came to preserve evidence, which was quickly disposed of as if those in charge wished it not to be seen. The FBI seized the FAA records of communications to NORAD and to Washington and to other traffic control centers, which the 9/11 Commission apparently has by now, in that it says it has all the records it needs. Chairman Kean this week told Aaron Brown on CNN that at least some person on the Commission has seen every document they have requested, but before being content with that, one should check with the New Jersey widows who are the foremost searchers for the truth of 9/11. The visible part of the Commission's study has concerned only airline security and immigration activities. It wants to quiz the President, the White House staff, and top defense officials (I hope to see their own explanation of their strange, sluggish, uninformed reaction), but thus far its invitation has not been honored. Surely the NIST, in its investigation for purposes of finding what went wrong so that buildings may be more safely built, will let us know if they find something more than negligence. The important thing about WTC 7, which is a white elephant in the government explanation, is that if anyone with a recognized voice concludes that the collapse was rigged, it will mean that massive frauds on the people do not have to stay buried for historians to speculate upon decades from now. It will also mean that collapse of the towers should be viewed from a different point of view—that our starting assumption should be that the dog is up to his old tricks. In the motion picture "The Truman Show" an insurance salesman named Truman Burbank (Jim Carrey) is outside his typical American subdivision house in Smallville on a bright, summery day when without warning a theater spotlight crashes onto his driveway in front of him. He is at first startled, then baffled, looking up into the empty blue sky. He quickly turns back to what he was doing. In the background shortly thereafter we hear an authoritative news-announcer voice laughingly describing a passing airplane dropping parts all over town. Truman does not recognize this opening clue that his world, in which he had lived from childhood, was different from what he had always thought. (My evaluation of The Truman Show as modern morality play is not original. I discovered that it has its own website, which describes if as "a story that reveals an essential truth about what is happening to society in the 20th Century." To that I would only add: the 21st. See http://www.transparencynow.com/truman.htm) 20

In the incident on September 1 1 , 2001, in Manhattan, on a bright, summery day, while the national consciousness was directed at the ruins of the two towers and the sight of firemen and rescue workers scrambling over the heaps of rubble in the hopes of finding someone alive, seven hours after the destruction of the other buildings, a 47-story building at the edge of the complex suddenly crashed to the ground. An authoritative news-announcer voice came on to explain that another Trade Center building, having caught fire from burning debris, had collapsed, finishing the set. Just another day in Smallville. The uniquely indispensable nature of disaster evidence Bill Manning, editor of Fire Engineering Magazine, was furious about the hurried disposal of debris, declaring it illegal. From his January, 2002 editorial: "Did they throw away the locked doors from the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire? Did they throw away the gas can used at the Happyland Social Club Fire? Did they cast aside the pressure-regulating valves at the Meridian Plaza Fire? Of course not. But essentially, that's what they're doing at the World Trade Center." (Disposal, at that time less than half done, was completed in April of that year.) "For more than three months, structural steel from the World Trade Center has been and continues to be cut up and sold for scrap. Crucial evidence that could answer many questions about high-rise building design practices and performance under fire conditions is on the slow boat to China, perhaps never to be seen again in America until you buy your next car. "Such destruction of evidence shows the astounding ignorance of government officials to the value of a thorough, scientific investigation of the largest fire-induced collapse in world history. I have combed through our national standard for fire investigation, NFPA 921 , but nowhere in it does one find an exemption allowing the destruction of evidence for buildings over 10 stories tall. ... "Fire Engineering has good reason to believe that the 'official investigation' blessed by FEMA and run by the American Society of Civil Engineers is a half-baked farce that may already have been commandeered by political forces whose primary interests, to put it mildly, lie far afield of full disclosure." The reason that editor Manning is upset about the loss of evidence is that it is only through "mistakes" such as fires that occur when they shouldn't have that adequate precautions can be taken for building in the future. Especially strange collapses such as that of the towers, and of WTC 7, are the most significant, because it means that something that intelligent people, building within fire codes, had done very wrong. If the fault cannot be found, it is 21

destined to happen again. This is the whole point of the book "To Engineer is Human" by Henry Petroski, professor of civil engineering at Duke University, pointing out that the development of engineering techniques and standards has come from human error. In New York City this subject has been taken very seriously for more than a century of skyscraper construction. A history of skyscrapers is presented graphically in the January, 2003 issue of Civil Engineering, beginning with the New York World tower in 1890. Following came the Masonic Temple in 1892, and the Manhattan Life building in 1894, which was the first to reach 400 feet. Park Row in 1899 was still under 500 feet. By 1907 the Metropolitan Life Building had passed 700 feet, in an atmosphere of growing doubt as to the wisdom of building so far into the sky. New York City's fire chief, Edward F. Croker, in connection with an article in the Sunday New York World for September 22, 1907 wrote: "I have always contended that a fifteen-story than 150 feet in height should be the limit from serious fire. Above that height there appalling fire, and the higher the buildings danger."

building of no more for absolute safety is a chance for an are, the graver the

His reasoning: "The apparatus of the Fire Department is effective at a little above 150 feet. To fight a fire in the 30th or 40th story of a building is impossible from the street, and building appliances are more or less inefficient." His conclusion: "While New York City may never have a great fire that will sweep away the top layer of its skyscrapers, it is an ever-present danger. Attempts to make the buildings absolutely fireproof may succeed, but the one sure way to avert a great disaster will be to put a limit on the height of buildings and keep it there." In re-reading those three paragraphs, I am unable to contend that any one of them is untrue. If one dismisses it as impractical advice, he must do so with the assumption that there will be intelligent building codes, conscientiously enforced, which means that fire anomalies, especially, must be analyzed. The World article resulted from a meeting called by the Building Codes Revision Committee, at which the president of the New York Board of Fire Underwriters, George W. Babb, warned that the city had already exceeded the safety limit for skyscrapers by hundreds of feet. He said that he did not believe in the theory that tall buildings formed a barrier against fire spreading from building to building, but on the contrary, "we claim that those immense structures will collapse as readily as any other class if certain conditions prevail during the conflagration." The article noted that a previous chief had expressed the same belief ten years earlier. 22

The full-page graphics of the article are dramatic: in the midst of a field of skyscrapers and fire there are two identical towers, both beginning to break and topple at the same point relatively as that of the south tower of the WTC. The writer concludes: "Of course it is not to be supposed that Chief Croker' s men cannot attack a fire raging in a sky-scraper more than 150 feet above the ground. It is well known that they will undertake to fight any fire anywhere, above ground or below, and if ever a fire breaks out 500 feet above the ground level in the Singer Building, or 600 feet above the street level in the Metropolitan Life Building, they will undertake to extinguish it. (Ed: How well we know that!) But ... it is apparent that the difficulties and dangers confronting not only the firemen, but all the big and little buildings in that district, will be enormous." I guess we've always known that. But prior to September 1 1 , 2001 this would have seemed more quaint than apocryphal. The importance of Building 7 The significance of the investigation of the collapse of Building 7 of the World Trade Center on the afternoon of 9/11, for me, is that the collapse looks contrived. If that is so, doesn't it mean that some group with an inside government track knew that the twin towers would be attacked—not only attacked, but collapse, which surprised everyone? Was someone that smart about how the towers were constructed and what the effect of large aircraft striking them would be? When one fell, it wasn't a unique event, a fluke. They fell in an almost identical way, which makes it appear that someone had that figured out, that they would both come down. This was an impressive piece of work—to destroy all seven buildings of the World Trade Center. Did someone know it would work that way—all depending upon getting particular people onto particular aircraft at the right time, people for whom boarding an aircraft was no certainty due to their illegal status and foreign identity? An anonymous military intelligence officer quoted by the Times said: "We couldn't do that." Another said that the extremely professional way the event could have been pulled off required the involvement of a government agency. To ensure that 19 foreigners, nine of them illegals, got aboard four particular flights required an arrangement that overcame the rules; and if the towers had to fall down for the project to succeed, without fail, they would be rigged with explosives, which is what it looks like in photographs. If someone had figured out how to bring down WTC 7 with explosives, making it look like a fire had done it, and that could not have been planned and prepared for in the seven hours between the tower collapse and the collapse of WTC 7, whoever did it had to know that the north tower would collapse. Was the knowledge of the perpetrators so precise that 23

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