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Debunking the real 9/11 myths
Editor’s note: This is Part 1 of an extensive report by researcher Adam Taylor that exposes the fallacies and flaws in the arguments made by Popular Mechanics in the latest edition of Debunking 9/11 Myths. We encourage you to submit your own reviews of the book at Amazon.com and other places where it is sold.
Introduction
 The revised version of Popular Mechanics’ book Debunking 9/11 Myths continues to defend myths that are scientifically impossible |
A decade has passed since the tragic events of September 11, 2001, and many people feel that we have still not had a real investigation into what really happened that day. Many believe that the investigations into the destruction of the three WTC skyscrapers by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) were either fraudulent or incomplete, and have joined the 1600+ architects and engineers at AE911Truth in calling for a real, independent investigation into the attacks. However, Popular Mechanics (PM) has been the primary cheerleader in the mainstream media in defense of the NIST reports ever since its book, Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up To the Facts, was published in 2006.
For the ten-year anniversary of 9/11, PM put out a second version of its book, which was updated in an attempt to dismiss new findings that corroborate the controlled demolition hypothesis. The main sections of the book that were revised are on the collapse of the Twin Towers and World Trade Center 7. This report demonstrates that PM has still not adequately explained the numerous anomalies surrounding the collapse of these three buildings that prove they were destroyed with explosives.
(Quotes from Popular Mechanics’ book are shown in red and with page numbers.)
World Trade Center Towers 1 & 2
The introduction to PM’s chapter on the collapse of the Twin Towers briefly discusses the main theory put forward by members of the 9/11 Truth movement regarding the Towers’ destruction: “The buildings were brought down intentionally—not by hijacked airplanes, but by government-planted bombs or a controlled demolition” (pg. 28). PM then goes on to give a few examples of people promoting this theory. One of the people they cite is a Danish writer named Henrik Melvang, who, according to PM, “markets his book and video claiming the Apollo moon landings were a hoax” (pg. 28). This is obviously an attempt on PM’s part to portray those who question the collapse of the Towers as conspiracy theorists who have irrational beliefs. PM also cites Morgan Reynolds, the former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor during President George Bush’s first term, as someone who believes that the Towers were destroyed through controlled demolition.
We must ask ourselves why PM would choose to cite these people as examples of those who question the collapse of the Towers. Why didn’t they cite anyone with experience in the fields of engineering and building construction? According to PM, it’s because the 9/11 Truth movement doesn’t have any technical credentials. In their 2011 book, they state that:
Though Reynolds and a handful of other skeptics cite academic credentials to lend credence to their views, not one of the leading conspiracy theorists has a background in engineering, construction, or related fields. (pg. 28-29)
This statement is by far one of the most remarkable passages in PM’s book. One need only look at what most consider the lead organization in the 9/11truth community, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, to see that there are currently over 1600 professional architects and engineers with backgrounds in engineering, architecture and building construction who question the destruction of the three WTC high-rise buildings. How can PM possibly have omitted over a thousand experts who agree that the Twin Towers and WTC7 were brought down with explosives? In PM’s entire 216 page book, there is not a single mention made of AE911Truth or its founder, architect Richard Gage, AIA.
 Popular Mechanics did a poor job of updating their book, leaving in claims from their 2006 version (excerpt shown above) that no leaders of the 9/11 Truth movement have backgrounds in engineering. They completely ignore the hundreds of engineers at AE911Truth who have examined the WTC evidence and are demanding a real investigation |
When one looks back at their 2006 book, we can see that this exact same statement appears on the exact same pages.
This fact shows how PM has decided to structure their new book: i.e., update it only where it benefits them. As we will see, this tactic is used more than once in PM’s grossly flawed book.
 The debate over the airplane crash at the Empire State Building is irrelevant because the design of the Twin Towers was far more robust than that of older high-rises |
1.1 The Empire State Building Accident
PM discusses the incident in 1945 where a B-25 bomber lost in the fog crashed into the side of the Empire state building. They claim that “some conspiracy theorists point to [this incident] as proof that commercial planes hitting the World Trade Center could not bring down the towers” (pg. 29). To counter this assertion, PM discusses the construction of the Towers compared to the construction of the Empire State Building and how the Towers’ structures “were in some ways more fragile” (pg. 30). They also quote structural engineer Jon Magnusson as saying that “These structures look massive, but they’re mostly air. They are air, punctuated with thin layers of concrete and steel” (pg. 30). While it is true that the Towers were mostly empty space by volume, this is true of any large skyscraper. The idea that the Towers were in some way less structurally sound than the Empire State Building is contradicted by a variety of technical sources, including this telegram written by Richard Roth, partner at Emery Roth & Sons, which was the architectural firm that designed the Twin Towers:
THE STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS CARRIED OUT BY THE FIRM OF WORTHINGTON, SKILLING, HELLE & JACKSON IS THE MOST COMPLETE AND DETAILED OF ANY EVER MADE FOR ANY BUILDING STRUCTURE. THE PRELIMINARY CALCULATIONS ALONE COVER 1,200 PAGES AND INVOLVE OVER 100 DETAILED DRAWINGS.
...
4. BECAUSE OF ITS CONFIGURATION, WHICH IS ESSENTIALLY THAT OF A STEEL BEAM 209' DEEP, THE TOWERS ARE ACTUALLY FAR LESS DARING STRUCTURALLY THAN A CONVENTIONAL BUILDING SUCH AS THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING WHERE THE SPINE OR BRACED AREA OF THE BUILDING IS FAR SMALLER IN RELATION TO ITS HEIGHT.
...
5. THE BUILDING AS DESIGNED IS SIXTEEN TIMES STIFFER THAN A CONVENTIONAL STRUCTURE. THE DESIGN CONCEPT IS SO SOUND THAT THE STRUCTURAL ENGINEER HAS BEEN ABLE TO BE ULTRA-CONSERVATIVE IN HIS DESIGN WITHOUT ADVERSELY AFFECTING THE ECONOMICS OF THE STRUCTURE.i
Interview with 9/11 truth activist Manny Badillo
Manny Badillo (right) with fellow 9/11 victim family member Bob McIlvane at Ground Zero
It's our great pleasure today to have Manny Badillo joining us via skype from New York.
Manny is one of the architects of the extremely effective Remember Building 7 campaign and was also instrumental in the NYC CAN initiative which garnered 80,000 signatures in a petition to re-open the 9/11 investigation.
During the interview Manny recounts the history of how he came to question the events of 9/11 after his uncle, who worked at Marsh & Mclennon was killed in the attacks. We discuss the recent intiatives in which Manny has been involved and the current state of the 9/11 truth campaign.
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Iraq: The legacy of deception
Most Americans are astonished to discover that right up to 9/11, the CIA was developing a "Real Politik" vision of Iraq that recognized the fast approaching collapse of U.N. Sanctions. The CIA was preparing for Peace---with a ruthless determination that the United States would capture the lion's share of spoils from Iraqi Reconstruction contracts in any post-sanctions period.
German pilots transporting medical supplies and doctors into Baghdad International Airport at the end of the Clinton Administration had blasted the myth of invincibility surrounding sanctions. To this day, those pilots are anonymous—but they changed the equation in total. Their courage honoring the Berlin Airlifts in the Cold War was quickly copied. Across Europe and the Arab world, activists began to organize humanitarian flights into Baghdad. On the Security Council, France and Russia argued strenuously that the ban on air travel had been self imposed, and the no-fly zone could not prohibit humanitarian flights.
By this time, UN sanctions had killed over 1.7 million Iraqis; wiped out literacy in a single generation; and created artificial starvation in the world's second most oil-rich nation. Iraq's world class hospitals that once rivaled London and New York had been ravaged. Sick of the misery, the global community refused to stay silent any longer.
The CIA saw the writing on the wall. International loathing for "genocide by sanctions" had reached such a peak of outrage that there was no possibility of re-crafting the hated policy. Secretary of State Colin Powell's vision of "smart sanctions" had come too late.
The CIA was determined to control the agenda for the advantage of the United States, however. And so quietly through my back channel, we undertook a proactive, covert dialogue over exactly what concessions Iraq would offer the United States, in exchange for lifting the sanctions. As a long-time opponent of sanctions myself, I was eager to get results.
That dialogue—even the existence of our back channel to Iraq's Embassy at the United Nations from 1996 to 2003—was strictly covert, kept close and precious— away from Washington pundits and think tanks whose ignorance would have smashed all progress on the rocks. Our dialogue was no less vigorous for that secrecy.
This was the CIA at its best. Nobody got soft on Saddam's government. By any measure, the CIA's demands far exceeded the U.N. mandate to eliminate Iraq's WMDs. If there was going to be peace, it would have to be rock solid, with zero chance that Baghdad would bite the United States in retaliation for those years of misery and death.
A Prosperous Peace for All
What emerged was a dynamic and comprehensive framework hammered out with Iraq's Ambassador Dr. Saeed Hasan and senior diplomats in New York.
The agreement required weapons inspections "with no conditions." But the deal accomplished much more. By February, 2001—nine months before 9/11—Baghdad authorized the FBI to send Terrorism Task Force into Iraq, with permission to conduct investigations and make arrests. After 9/11, Iraq sweetened its contribution with promises to hand over banking and financial documents on Al Qaeda figures. There's no question but that Iraq's cooperation qualified as the most substantial windfall in the War on Terrorism. Notably, it targeted actual terrorists--- not Islamic charities or frightened taxi drivers and plumbers with the wrong accents and ethnic coloring.
Every time Senator John McCain or Dick Cheney pounded the lectern on CNN, and demanded an interview with Al Anai, or other cooperation--- Iraq complied within hours.
Obama Signs the NDAA Citizen Arrest Act
Obama signing the National Defense Appropriations Act
Tonight we look at a variety of local and international stories, with a focus on the ominous passing of the National Defense Appropriations Act (NDAA). The Act allows for the military detention of American citizens without due process, about which writer and activist Naomi Wolf has this to say:
Our leaders appear to be supporting this bill thinking that they will always be what they are now, in the fading light of a once-great democracy — those civilian leaders who safely and securely sit in freedom and DIRECT the military. In inhabiting this bubble, which their own actions are about to destroy, they are cocooned by an arrogance of power, placing their own security in jeopardy by their own hands, and ignoring history and its inevitable laws. The moment this bill becomes law, though Congress is accustomed, in a weak democracy, to being the ones who direct and control the military, the power roles will reverse: Congress will no longer be directing and in charge of the military: rather, the military will be directing and in charge of individual Congressional leaders, as well as in charge of everyone else — as any Parliamentarian in any society who handed this power over to the military can attest.
Perhaps Congress assumes that it will always only be ‘they’ who are targeted for arrest and military detention: but sadly, Parliamentary leaders are the first to face pressure, threats, arrest and even violence when the military obtains to power to make civilian arrests and hold civilians in military facilities without due process. There is no exception to this rule. Just as I traveled the country four years ago warning against the introduction of torture and secret prisons – and confidently offering a hundred thousand dollar reward to anyone who could name a nation that allowed torture of the ‘other’ that did not eventually turn this abuse on its own citizens — (confident because I knew there was no such place) — so today I warn that one cannot name a nation that gave the military the power to make civilian arrests and hold citizens in military detention, that did not almost at once turn that power almost against members of that nation’s own political ruling class. This makes sense — the obverse sense of a democracy, in which power protects you; political power endangers you in a militarized police state: the more powerful a political leader is, the more can be gained in a militarized police state by pressuring, threatening or even arresting him or her.
I am joined in the second segment by John Bursill, who reports on some new research from the Journal of 9/11 Studies.
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What Caused the Ejections of Dust and Debris in the Twin Towers?
Q: What caused the "squibs"? Could they have been just puffs of dust being pushed out of the Towers by falling floors? Are they visual evidence of explosive charges?
A: The isolated ejections 20-60 stories below the demolition front appear to be composed of pulverized building materials, including concrete. There was no known mechanism by which pulverized building materials being created up at the zone of destruction could have been transported so far down through the building and to the exterior. Air conditioning vents would not have tolerated such pressures, and there was no other "channel" in the building to deliver “compressed air”.
There is no reason, on the “dust puff” theory, for such blasts to be as isolated as they were. Massive air pressure which would delivered by the (missing) “pile driver” down through the elevator hoist ways and out through a given floor would have broken most or all windows on that floor – not created the highly focalized pin-point ejections that are seen on the videos. The breakage of one or two windows on a given floor would not have relieved enough pressure across an entire floor area to prevent the breakage of many other windows nearby.
Images like this one reveal that the squibs were not
merely puffs of air, as they have the same hue
and consistency as pulverized solid building materials.
Another problem with the “dust puff” theory is that the pulverized building materials would not have been transported so quickly. Air would have been pushed ahead of such materials, resulting in transparent puffs of air flowing through the freshly broken windows.
Physicist David Chandler has also shown that some of these ejections came from the corners of the buildings. Since there are no windows on the corners, these ejections could not have been the result of air pressure.
Furthermore, calculations performed by Dr. Crockett Grabbe show that the horizontal ejection rate of the squibs is disproportional to the floor and debris descent speeds that are allegedly responsible for them. As Kevin Ryan has shown, the ejection speed of the squibs from the Towers also matches the speeds recorded for ejections caused by explosives.
As to these ejections appearing only after the collapse initiation, it should be noted that the North Tower's antenna dropped before any other building movement is seen, which is evidence that demolition devices were working on the core before any squibs were seen emerging out of the perimeter walls. There is also video showing that some of these ejections occurred even before the collapses began. See "Visible Explosion at World Trade Center" and "WTC1 collapse initiation - visible signs.
Thomas Kean: “aftershocks” from planes caused collapse of WTC Building 7
This muddle headed, government-appointed chair of the 9/11 Commission does not even know what his government found to be the cause of the collapse of WTC 7. For me, this is the final nail in the coffin of the "official" 9/11 narrative.
The ignorance and impudence of this man is breathtaking. He appears not the least bit concerned that he is making up stories about crimes against humanity that launched the world into wars that have in turn killed millions.
He doesn't know or care. That is reminiscent of the attitude of the Nazi war criminals who were hanged at Nuremburg.
There will be justice.
Occupy Building 7
November 19 and 20, 2011. In front of the rebuilt World Trade Center Building 7.
DEMAND an investigation into the destruction of World Trade Center Building 7 and the Twin Towers
September 11, 2001 - the The United States was hijacked and a permanent war was launched that will not end in our lifetime unless we the 99% stop it.
Ten years later the War on Terrorism has diverted trillions of dollars from more important uses and sunken our country into debt.
Building 7, which most people don’t know about, came crashing to the ground at 5:20pm on September 11th. Today, millions of citizens and 1,600 courageous architects and engineers are demanding an investigation into the suspect destruction of this skyscraper.
The government's absurd story that "normal office fires" felled this 47-story skyscraper is only the tip of the iceberg of the anomalies and inconsistencies we've been given about 9/11.
9/11 Theories: Expert vs. Expert
Why can't the experts get their stories straight? A condensed summary of all the conflicting expert theories that make no sense, purporting to explain the collapse of the twin towers.
The 9/11 Commission claims that we found ‘no evidence’
Kevin Ryan | 30 October 2011
http://digwithin.net/2011/10/30/no-evidence/
When Underwriters Laboratories fired me for challenging the World Trade Center (WTC) report that it helped create with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), it said “there is no evidence” that any firm performed the required fire resistance testing of the materials used to build the Twin Towers. Of course, that was a lie.
With this experience in mind, I checked to see how many times the 9/11 Commission Report used the phrase “no evidence,” and noted in particular the times the Commission claimed to have “found no evidence” or that “no evidence was uncovered.” I discovered that the phrase “no evidence” appears an amazing 63 times. An example is the dubious statement — “There is no evidence to indicate that the FAA recognized Flight 77 as a hijacking until it crashed into the Pentagon (p 455).”
Of these 63 instances, some variation of “we found no evidence” appears three dozen times. This seems to be an unusually high number of disclaimers begging ignorance, given that the Commission claims to have done “exacting research” in the production of a report that was the “fullest possible accounting of the events of September 11, 2001.”
The number of times these “no evidence” disclaimers appear in the report is doubly amazing considering how infrequently some of the most critical witnesses and evidence are referenced. For example, the FAA’s national operations manager, Benedict Sliney, who was coordinating the FAA’s response that day, appears only once in the narrative (and twice in the notes). And the FAA’s hijack coordinator, Michael Canavan, appears only twice in the narrative, with neither of those citations having anything to do with Canavan’s assigned role as the key link between the military and the FAA, a role whose failure the Commission says caused the attacks to succeed. Similarly, the testimony of FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, who says Bin Laden worked with the U.S. government up until the day of the attacks, is mentioned only once in the notes. William Rodriguez, the WTC janitor who has publicly testified to basement level explosions, is not mentioned at all despite having given testimony to the Commission.
It seems a good idea to look more closely at the instances in which the attorneys, myth experts and military intelligence operatives who wrote the 9/11 Commission Report said that they did not find evidence. Here are a few of the most interesting examples.
- “We found no evidence, however, that American Airlines sent any cockpit warnings to its aircraft on 9/11.” p11
- Concerning the hypothesis that one of the alleged hijackers was sitting in the cockpit jump seat since takeoff on Flight 93: “We have found no evidence indicating that one of the hijackers, or anyone else, sat there on this flight.” p12
- Within minutes of the second WTC impact, Boston Center asked the FAA Command Center (Benedict Sliney’s team) to advise aircraft to heighten cockpit security, but the Commission said: “We have found no evidence to suggest that the Command Center acted on this request or issued any type of cockpit security alert.” p23
- With respect to requests to warn aircraft to heighten cockpit security — “While Boston Center sent out such warnings to the commercial flights in its sector, we could find no evidence that a nationwide warning was issued by the ATC system.” p455
New theory explains collapse of Twin Towers
19 September 2011 | Svein Tønseth | Source
According to a theory advanced by a SINTEF materials scientist, a mixture of water from sprinkler systems and molten aluminium from melted aircraft hulls created explosions that led to the collapse of the Twin Towers in Manhattan.
Just before the two New York skyscrapers collapsed on September 11, 2001, powerful explosions within the building could be heard, leading many people to believe that overheated steel beams in the building were not the cause of the collapse.
The explosions fed the conspiracy theories that someone had placed explosives inside the towers.
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At an international materials technology conference in San Diego, the audience heard senior scientist Christian Simensen of SINTEF Materials and Chemistry (picture) present an alternative theory based on the physics of materials of what happened in the towers when they were attacked by the aircraft. The SINTEF researcher believes that his theory is much more likely to reflect the actual situation than the official explanation of the collapse.
In the wake of the conference Simensen had an article published in the journal "Aluminium International Today", describing his theory.
Explosive meeting of molten aluminium and water
Simensen believes that it is overwhelmingly likely that the two aircraft were trapped inside an insulating layer of building debris within the skyscrapers. This leads him to believe that it was the aircraft hulls rather than the buildings themselves that absorbed most of the heat from the burning aircraft fuel.
The SINTEF scientist believes that the heat melted the aluminium of the aircraft hulls, and the core of his theory is that molten aluminium then found its way downwards within the buildings through staircases and gaps in the floor – and that the flowing aluminium underwent a chemical reaction with water from the sprinklers in the floors below.
“Both scientific experiments and 250 reported disasters suffered by the aluminium industry have shown that the combination of molten aluminium and water releases enormous explosions,” says Simensen.
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Just before the two skyscrapers collapsed on September 11, 2001, powerful explosions within the building could be heard, Photo: Jim Collins / AP / SCANPIX |
“Explosions demolished the towers”
Simensen continues: “I regard it as extremely likely that it was these explosions that made the skyscrapers collapse by tearing out part of the internal structure, and that this caused the uppermost floors of the buildings to fall and crush the lower parts. In other words, I believe that these were the explosions that were heard by people in the vicinity and that have since given life to the conspiracy theories that explosives had been placed in the skyscrapers.”
Practical use
“Could your theory be used to protect human life and material values if other skyscrapers are ever hit by large aircraft?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact it could. One lesson is that we could develop means of rapidly emptying sprinkler systems in the floors under the point of impact. Another possibility would be to fire in a rocket carrying a fire-retardant that would overlie the aircraft body and prevent the metal alloy from becoming overheated.”
Day of unreality
It was in the morning New York time on September 11, 2001, when two Boeing 767 passenger planes flew into the World Trade Center’s “Twin Towers” in Manhattan in New York. One hour later, WTC2 collapsed, followed after half an hour by WTC1.
Neighbouring buildings were bombarded by flying debris when the towers collapsed. The 47-storey skyscraper called 7 World Trade Center also caught fire and collapsed several hours later at 17.20.
