Mysteries of the Twin Towers

Will the National Commission reveal the truth?

by Rodger Herbst, BAAE, ME

The attacks of September 11, 2001 are fueling the Bushadministration's preemptive wars abroad, as well as a programmaticattack on civil liberties at home, yet they still have not beenadequately investigated. In January 2002, both President Bush and VicePresident Cheney individually asked Tom Daschle that inquiries belimited to the congressional intelligence committees.The resultinginquiry, following damaging revelations, was effectively shut down byDick Cheney when he denounced it as a source of a "National SecurityAgency leak". The inquiry was not permitted to tell the full story, tomake the President accountable, or to propose legislation for reform.(Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists March-April 2003 "Slow Walked andStone Walled" by John Prados.)

Title VI of Public Law 107-306 established a new CongressionalNational Commission, to examine and report upon the facts and causesof the attacks, and build upon the investigations of other entities.This commission, charged with completing its work prior to the 2004presidential election, has already suffered delays, and will be hardpressed to finish its work in the allotted time. The cause of thecollapse of the towers has not been determined, and the subject hasnot even been explicitly included in the charter of the newcommission.

On December 25, 2001 The New York Times reported that some of thenation's leading structural engineers and fire-safety experts believethe investigation into the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC)was inadequate, and are calling for a new, independent andbetter-financed inquiry. Experts critical of the investigationincluded some who actually took part in it. The team of some 20investigators had inadequate financial and staff support, had beenprevented from interviewing witnesses, and had even been unable toobtain basic information such as detailed blueprints of the buildings.(NYT, 12/25/01 www.nytimes.com/2001/12/25/nyregion/25TOWE.html)The City of New York continues to hold hundreds of documents and audiotapes recording the response of emergency services to the September 11attacks on the WTC. (NYT 7/23/02) New York State Supreme CourtJustice Richard Braun ruled in February 2003 that the city had notprovided sufficient reason for withholding these documents. The Cityof New York has appealed this ruling. (AP 2/6/2003)

Unofficial Comments

The WTC towers did not collapse because of the airplane impacts alone,because both towers stood for an hour or more after impact. Based onvideos and photographs of the collapse, experts came to variousconclusions. In an article dated October 4, 2001, Professor WilemFrischmann, of the Pell Frischmann Group and the City University,London, said that the aircraft puncturing of the outer steel shells ofthe towers would not in itself have caused the towers to fall.Although the explosion caused by the fuel-laden aircraft would havebeen intense, the lack of available oxygen inside the towers would,according to Professor Frischmann, have limited the fireball'stemperature to less than 1,000 Celsius, within the tower designlimits. The towers were designed to survive impact with a 707commercial aircraft and ensuing fires due to burning fuel, comparableto that of the 767 aircraft that struck the towers.

Professor Thomas Eager, professor of Materials Engineering andEngineering Systems at MIT, similarly concluded that the fire couldnot possibly have been hot enough to melt steel. His analysis has beenpublished by the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society.

"Fire has never caused a steel building to collapse," according toauthor Eric Hufschmid, "So how did a 56-minute fire bring down a steelbuilding as strong as the South Tower?...The Meridian Plaza fire inPhiladelphia was extreme, but it did not cause the building tocollapse. The fire in the South Tower seems insignificant bycomparison".(Eric Hufschmid, Painful Questions: An Analysis of theSeptember 11th Attack Endpoint Software 2002).

On August 2, 2002, discovery of a "lost" audiotape was reported. Thistape is important, because it established that firefighters actuallyreached the crash zone on the 78th floor of the south tower, that thecrash zone was not a raging inferno, and that the firefightersapparently believed they were in control of the situation.(www.nytimes.com/2002/08/04/nyregion/04WTC.html) and(www.guardian.co.uk/september11/story/0.11209.769307.00.html) Reports of explosions by members of the NYC Fire Department and othersalso appear in the mainstream media. Hufschmid, J. M. King, and othershave noted that the explosives theory explains very well the apparentremoval of all structural support from the lower floors, and the neatdemolition-like collapse of the towers. (www.serendipity.li/WTC.html)

Evidence for Explosives

There are witness accounts, and photographic and video evidenceavailable which suggest that explosions actually did occur within theTwin Towers prior to their collapse.

Teresa Veliz, who escaped from the 47th floor of the North Tower:noted : "The flashlight led us into Borders bookstore, up an escalatorand out to Church Street. There were explosions going off everywhere.I was convinced that there were bombs planted all over the place andsomeone was sitting at a control panel pushing detonator buttons. Iwas afraid to go down Church Street toward Broadway, but I had to doit. I ended up on Vesey Street. There was another explosion. Andanother. I didn't know where to run." (September 11: An Oral History,Dean E. Murphy, 2002, pp. 9-15)

On September 11 the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) interviewed oneof its New York-based reporters, Steve Evans: "I was at the base ofthe second tower...that was hit," Evans said. "There was anexplosion-I didn't think it was an explosion-but the base of thebuilding shook. I felt it shake...then when we were outside, thesecond explosion happened and then there was a series of explosions...We can only wonder at the kind of damage-the kind of humandamage-which was caused by those explosions-those series ofexplosions," he said.

Earthquake data was recorded by seismographs at Columbia University'sLamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, 21 milesnorth of the WTC. Quakes occurred mid way during each collapse, beforeany rubble even hit the ground. (www.serendipity.li/wot/bollyn2.htm:American Free Press)

The towers were about 1300 ft tall. Such a height produces a time ofnine seconds for an object to fall from the top of the towers. Thetower collapse lasted barely longer than this, which suggests that theunderlying structure was removed, allowing essentially free fall ofthe entire structure. Hufshmid's book shows frames from a videolooking up at the South Tower. The frames show the collapse"progressing floor by floor in a nearly perfectly balanced manner".After ribbons of dust blow out of the windows of one floor, they growinto larger dust clouds; meanwhile ribbons of dust blow out of thewindows of the next lower floor, and so on. Hufschmid speculates smallexplosive packages were set off in the upper floors first, andprogressively larger packages at successively lower levels. Detailed photos show debris, as well as the dust of pulverizedconcrete being ejected horizontally up to several times the width ofthe towers during the collapse. According to Hufschmid, concrete isonly pulverized in mid air in this manner by explosives.

The remarks of Mark Loizeaux, president of CDI of Phoenix, Maryland,add credence to a large, lower explosion: "pools of molten steel werefound...at the bottoms of the elevator shafts of the main towers, downseven [basement] levels... three, four, and five weeks later, when therubble was being removed" Construction steel has an extremely highmelting point of about 2,800* Fahrenheit.(www.serendipity.li/wot/bollyn2.htm: American Free Press)

The Official Assessment

The decision to rapidly recycle the 300,000 tons of steel columns,beams and trusses from the WTC in the days immediately after 9/11adversely effected the inquiry, and curiously no forensic examinationof the debris was permitted by the agency in charge, the FBI. On January 4, 2002: A firefighter trade magazine with ties to the NewYork Fire Department called the investigation into the collapse of theWTC a "half-baked farce." The article pointed out that the probe hasnot looked at all aspects of the disaster and has had limited accessto documents and other evidence. "The destruction and removal ofevidence must stop immediately." It concluded that a growing number offire protection engineers have theorized that "the structural damagefrom the planes and the explosive ignition of jet fuel in themselveswere not enough to bring down the towers." These fire engineeringspecialists adopted the notion of a failure of lightweight trussesconnecting building perimeter to load-bearing central columns. (NewYork Daily News, 1/4/02 2002/nydailynews010402.html)

Although the building's plans have not been accessible forinvestigation, photos of tower construction suggest that lateral steelfloor beams anchored the perimeter to the central columns, safelyenabling large lateral loads due to wind. Thus the "lightweight trusshypothesis" appears to be false.(www.nerdcities.com/guardian/WTC/wtc-demolition.htm)

On May 1, 2002: FEMA released its report of the WTC collapses. Itconcluded, "with the information and time available, the sequence ofevents leading to the collapse of each tower could not be definitivelydetermined." (FEMA study, 5/1/02 www.fema.gov/library/wtcstudy.shtm)A tiny fraction of the steel beams from the tower debris wereinspected. A NYT article of February 2002 noted that pieces of steelwere found that were "apparently melted and vaporized not solelybecause of the heat of fires, but also because of a corrosivecontaminant that was somehow released in the conflagrations."Recommendations in Appendix C of the FEMA WTC report noted: "Thesevere corrosion and subsequent erosion of samples 1 and 2 constitutean unusual event. No clear explanation for the source of the sulfurhas been identified."

Surviving physical evidence.

Not all of the evidence was lost. Dr. W. Gene Corley, who headed theFEMA-sponsored engineering assessment of the WTC collapse, noted that80 pieces of steel were saved. (www.serendipity.li/wot/bollyn2.htm:American Free Press)

Dr. Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl Professor Department of Civil andEnvironmental Engineering University of California, Berkeley testified"I have identified and saved some components of the structures thatappear to have been subjected to intense fire or impact of fast movingobjects. " (cryptome.org/wtc-hearing.htm) Some physical evidence istherefore still available, and could be further tested.

A "911 Citizens Watch" has been organized to monitor the progress ofthe current National Commission. Citizens Watch has also recentlygotten an opportunity to present key unanswered questions to theNational Commission, and intends to keep pressing until all questionsare adequately answered.

You are invited to participate in this process. Seewww.911citizenswatch.org and www.unansweredquestions.org.

WWW Washington Free Press