|
FEBRUARY
2008
NEW BOOK BLOWS WHISTLE ON 911
COMMISSIONER DIRECTOR
AUGUST
2006
TAPES
UNDERMINE PENTAGON STORY OF 9/11 ACTIONS
PHILIP SHENON, NY TIMES - Newly disclosed
tapes offer evidence of the widespread confusion within the military
as the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were being carried out,
further undermining claims by the Pentagon that it moved quickly
to try to intercept and shoot down one or more of the hijacked
jets. . . The full collection of nearly 30 hours of tapes from
the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, were
released by the Pentagon last year to Michael Bronner, a producer
on the recent film "United 93," who described them
in detail in an article posted this week on the Web site of Vanity
Fair . . . The tapes demonstrate that for most of the morning
of Sept. 11, the airspace over New York and Washington was essentially
undefended, and that jet fighters scrambled to intercept the
hijacked planes were involved in a fruitless chase for planes
that had already crashed.
Although
much of the conversation in the tapes is heavy with military
jargon, it makes clear the terror of the morning, with military
air controllers trying to monitor the whereabouts of hijacked
planes bearing down on lower Manhattan and Washington.
"I
got an aircraft six miles east of the White House!" one
military commander is quoted as barking to a colleague. . .
9/11
FIREFIGHTERS' LUNGS AGED 12 YEARS THANKS TO 400 CHEMICALS AT
SITE
LIZ SZABO, USA TODAY - Working amid
the rubble of the World Trade Center may have aged the lungs
of firefighters and rescue workers by an average of 12 years,
a new study shows. "It's pretty shocking," says John
Balmes, a professor of medicine at the University of California
at San Francisco who reviewed the research, published today in
the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine,
but was not involved in writing it. . . Air pollution at Ground
Zero included more than 400 chemicals, according to the study.
JUNE
2006
BUSH
REGIME CLASSIFIED INFORMATION ON TOXIC EFFECTS OF 9/11
CORKY
SIEMASZKO, NY DAILY NEWS - With New Yorkers already fuming about
reports that the feds downplayed the danger of Ground Zero dust,
the White House gave EPA chief Christie Whitman the power to
bury embarrassing documents by classifying them "secret.".
. .
Although
the stated reason for Bush's directive is to keep "national
security information" from falling into enemy hands, advocates
for thousands of ailing Ground Zero heroes are convinced there's
a more sinister motive. "I think the rationale behind this
was to not let people know what they were potentially exposed
to," said Joel Kupferman of the New York Environmental Law
and Justice Project. "They're using the secrecy thing to
cover up their malfeasance and past deceptions.". . .
http://www.nydailynews.com/07-28-2006/news/local/story/438649p-369566c.html
APRIL
2006
HOW
AMERICAN AIRLINES FAILED ON 9/11
JAMES
RIDGEWAY, COUNTERPUNCH - On Flight 11, flight attendants Betty
Ong and Amy Sweeney were on the phone to American Airlines ground
personnel minutes after the hijacking began. Even though both
the FAA and the airlines had been warned more than 50 times in
the months preceding the attack, officials on the ground reacted
with skepticism and annoyance to Betty Ong's desperate call.
According
to one account by people who have listened to all the tapes,
American Airlines people were anxious to keep what was going
on secret. An American Airlines tape, according to Gail Sheehy
in the New York Observer, shows the managers were concerned about
keeping things secret. People who listened to the tapes said
there were statements including the following: "Keep it
close," "keep it quiet," "Let's keep this
among ourselves."
So in
those terrifying minutes before the first hit, two brave women
on the phone inside Flight 11 were calmly telling American Airlines
ground officials exactly what was happening.
The airline's
reaction: Nothing. It did absolutely nothing.
The managers
could have picked up a phone and told all their pilots what was
going on. Indeed they co told all pilots in the air what was
happening. They could have called officials in New York. There
is a real likelihood people at least could have evacuated the
second tower.
If someone
on the ground had acted, Flight 93, sitting on the Newark airport
tarmac, might well have avoided the hijack. . .
The 911
Commission report states it clearly: "As news of the hijackings
filtered through the FAA and the airlines, it does not seem to
have occurred to their leadership that they needed to alert other
aircraft in the air that they too might be at risk."
The 911
Commission found "no evidence…that American Airlines
ever sent any cockpit warnings to its aircraft on 911."
. . .
http://www.counterpunch.org/ridgeway04282006.html
DECEMBER
2005
THE
MISSING BLACK BOXES FROM THE WORLD TRADE CENTER
DAVE LINDORFF,
COUNTERPUNCH - One of the more puzzling mysteries of 9-11 is
what ever happened to the flight recorders of the two planes
that hit the World Trade Center towers. Now it appears that they
may not be missing at all. Counterpunch has learned that the
FBI has them. . .
All four
of the devices were recovered from the two planes that hit the
Pentagon and that crashed in rural Pennsylvania. In the case
of American Airlines Flight 77, which hit the Pentagon, the FBI
reports that the flight data recorder survived and had recoverable
information, but the voice recorder was allegedly too damaged
to provide any record. In the case of United Airlines Flight
93, which hit the ground at 500 mph in Pennsylvania, the situation
was reversed: the voice recorder survived but the flight data
box was allegedly damaged beyond recovery.
But the
FBI states, and also reported to the 9-11 Commission, that none
of the recording devices from the two planes that hit the World
Trade Center were ever recovered.
There
has always been some skepticism about this assertion, particularly
as two N.Y. City firefighters, Mike Bellone and Nicholas De Masi,
claimed in 2004 that they had found three of the four boxes,
and that Federal agents took them and told the two men not to
mention having found them. (The FBI denies the whole story.)
Moreover, these devices are almost always located after crashes,
even if not in useable condition (and the cleanup of the World
Trade Center was meticulous, with even tiny bone fragments and
bits of human tissue being discovered so that almost all the
victims were ultimately identified). As Ted Lopatkiewicz, director
of public affairs at the National Transportation Safety Agency
which has the job of analyzing the boxes' data, says, "It's
very unusual not to find a recorder after a crash, although it's
also very unusual to have jets flying into buildings."
Now there
is stronger evidence that something is amiss than simply the
alleged non-recovery of all four of those boxes. A source at
the National Transportation Safety Board, the agency that has
the task of deciphering the date from the black boxes retrieved
from crash sites-including those that are being handled as crimes
and fall under the jurisdiction of the FBI-says the boxes were
in fact recovered and were analyzed by the NTSB.
"Off
the record, we had the boxes," the source says. "You'd
have to get the official word from the FBI as to where they are,
but we worked on them here.". . .
For its
part, the FBI is still denying everything, though with curious
bit of linguistic wiggle room. "To the best of my knowledge,
the flight recording devices from the World Trade Center crashes
were never recovered. At least we never had them," says
FBI spokesman Stephen Kodak. . .
Why would
the main intelligence and law enforcement arm of the U.S. government
want to hide from the public not just the available information
about the two hijacked flights that provided the motivation and
justification for the nation's "War on Terror" and
for its two wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, but even the fact
that it has the devices which could contain that information?
. . .
http://www.counterpunch.com/lindorff12202005.html
NOVEMBER
2005
BRITISH
CIVIL ENGINEERING JOURNAL FINDS FAULT WITH OFFICIAL STUDY OF
WTC COLLAPSE
GEORGE
WASHINGTON BLOG SPOT - BYU Physics professor Steven Jones has
stated that the government agency tasked with examining the collapse
of the World Trade Centers did not investigate any anomalies
in the collapse of the buildings, failing to even examine any
evidence regarding the buildings' impossible near free-fall speeds
and symmetrical collapses, apparent demolition squibs, the fact
that the buildings turned to dust in mid-air, the presence of
molten metal in the basement areas in large pools in all of the
buildings, or the unexplained straightening out of the upper
34 floors of the South Tower after they had precipitously leaned
over and started toppling like a tree.
I just
ran across an article from a respected civil engineering trade
journal which backs up Professor Jones' claim that the government
did not really examine the conditions immediately prior to collapse
or the collapses themselves. Specifically, the article from the
journal of the 180-year old UK Institution of Civil Engineers
states:
"World
Trade Center disaster investigators are refusing to show computer
visualizations of the collapse of the Twin Towers despite calls
from leading structural and fire engineers."
The article
goes on to state "a leading U.S. structural engineer said,
'By comparison [to the modeling of fires] the global structural
model is not as sophisticated' . . . The software used has been
pushed to new limits, and there have been a lot of simplifications,
extrapolations and judgment calls . . . it would be hard to produce
a definitive visualization from the analysis so far.'"
In other
words, the U.S. structural engineer is saying that even the non-visual
computer models which NIST used to examine why the trade centers
collapsed are faulty.
http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2005/11/professor-jones-is-right-government.html
JAMES
RIDGWAY, BUZZ FLASH, NOVEMBER 2005 - At one of its public hearings,
the [9/11] Commission and its audience listened to the emotional
tape-recorded words of Betty Ong, one of two flight attendants
on American Airlines Flight 11 who had calmly provided blow-by-blow
accounts of the first hijacking as it happened. As their phone
calls were relayed to American Airlines headquarters, they were
met first with disbelief, and then with warnings from AA managers
to "keep this quiet" and "keep this among ourselves."
American did not immediately alert the FAA, local flight control
centers, the military, the FBI, or even its own pilots. This
was before the other planes were seized, and before one of them
had even left the ground. It was long before workers in the World
Trade Tower Two were told not to evacuate because they were in
no danger from the "accidental" plane crash at the
other tower.
How many
hundreds or thousands of lives might have been saved if the airline
had quickly passed on the information provided by these courageous
flight attendants? And why, for that matter, had the airlines
not taken action to prevent or respond to such hijackings, even
after receiving countless warnings in the spring and summer of
2001? The 9/11 Commission staff made copious inquiries into what
happened at American Airlines. These inquiries are mentioned
in passing in the report's footnotes. The full contents of these
staff inquiries were classified and will not be made public for
years.
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/05/11/con05439.html
FEBRURY
2005
THE
FIVE UNANSWERED QUESTIONS ABOUT 9/11
James Ridgeway
The 9/11
Commission Report is widely declared to be the definitive account
of the most devastating attack ever to take place on American
soil, but in truth the most vital questions about 9/11 have not
been asked:
*Why wasn't
a decade of warnings and hundreds of previous deaths enough to
improve airline security? Whose interests does the FAA really
protect?
*Why was
Dick Cheney running the country from a secret bunker on 9/11?
Where was Donald Rumsfeld? And how did the Bush administration
plot to use the attacks to advance their policy goals?
*With
al-Qaeda firmly on the radar for years, why were the FBI and
CIA, the world's premier intelligence services, unable to see
this coming?
What did
ISI, the Pakistani intelligence organization, know, when did
they know it, and whom did they tell? How did U.S. allies in
the region help pave the way for these attacks?
*Why didn't
this "independent" commission find anyone accountable
for more than 2,700 civilian deaths? Why are so many of their
findings still classified?Which questions did they ask-and which
did they ignore?
An ever-growing
number of facts casts clouds of suspicion over the actions and
motivations of many key government officials and agencies. The
5 Unanswered Questions cuts through the official accounts and
political "spin" to the questions that lie at the heart
of this American tragedy. Currently the Washington correspondent
for the Village Voice, James Ridgeway has authored over fifteen
books and co-directed the films Blood in the Face and Feed. He
has also written for Harper's, The Economist, New York Times
Magazine, The Nation, The New Republic, Parade, Ramparts, and
The Wall Street Journal.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=
1583227121/progressiverevieA/
JUNE
2005. . .
STUDY
DOWNPLAYS HUGE FIREPROOFING FAILURE, INDIFFERENCE TO CITY CODE
IN WTC DISASTER
THE
REVIEW has been a lonely voice pointing to professional evidence
from architects, engineers and fire experts that the World Trade
Center disaster was far greater than it had to be due to the
failure to observe city building codes and to grossly inadequate
fireproofing.
To
accept this view would, however, would be to recognize that the
World Trade Center was built in massive disregard of safety standards
and would call into question the behavior of prominent New York
City figures including the Rockefeller family. It would become
not just an act of terrorism but the biggest building scandal
since the Shirtwaist Triangle Fire in the early 20th century.
To
put it simply: the evidence - including that buried in the NY
Times story of a new study of the collapse - points to an incident
that might have killed hundreds - but not thousands - if the
buildings had been properly constructed.
We
pick up the Times story a full 17 paragraphs in:
NY TIMES
- The trade center was built by the Port Authority, which is
not subject to any building codes. Despite promises by the Port
Authority to "meet or exceed" the New York City code,
the federal investigation found that the trade center had fewer
exit staircases than required and that the Port Authority never
tested the fire resistance of the floors. It also found no evidence
that a rigorous engineering study supported the authority's repeated
public assertion that the towers could stand up to the impact
of a fully loaded commercial airliner. . .
The three-year,
$16 million federal investigation was broken into two primary
parts. Using computers to reconstruct the attack, engineers found
that when the towers were struck, they redistributed load to
surviving columns. Once the fire weakened those remaining, extremely
stressed columns, whose fireproofing had been knocked off by
the planes, the structures collapsed, the report says.
That research
found no flaw in the design of the towers that was a critical
factor in the collapse, Dr. Sunder said.
As the
computer reconstruction of the towers proceeded, others worked
on a second inquiry: identifying weaknesses in building codes.
. .
At least
some elevators in tall buildings should be built with more robust
shaft walls and with electrical systems that will not fail if
exposed to water, the report says, so that they can be used to
evacuate people who cannot descend long distances and to take
firefighters to high floors.
The investigation
also raised hard questions about the usefulness of a century-old
furnace test that measures the fire resistance of structural
components. Last summer, the National Institute of Standards
and Technology arranged a furnace test of a 17-foot piece of
steel and concrete floor, the standard requirement at the time
that the towers were erected. The floor passed the test. However,
the tower floors were built not with 17-foot lengths of floor,
but with 35- and 60-foot lengths. When a 35-foot length was tested
in the furnace, the floor failed the fire-rating requirement.
[Not made
clear in the Times story is how critical using more closely spaced
uprights encased in concrete or terra cotta blocks, rather than
just fireproofing, would have been. In fact, the 1993 bombing
of the same building occurred in at its bottom - built according
to traditional standards - which is perhaps why the buildings
were still around on September 11]
NOVEMBER
2004
EXPERT QUESTIONS WTC STEEL MELTING
THEORY
911 TRUTH
- An executive of the company that certified the steel used in
the construction of the World Trade Center has questioned the
common theory that fuel fires caused its collapse, in a letter
to the head of the government team that has spent two years studying
how the trade center was built and why it fell. The author of
the letter, Kevin Ryan, is site manager at Environmental Health
Laboratories in South Bend, Indiana, a division of Underwriters
Laboratories, the product-compliance and testing giant. Because
UL certified the WTC steel for its ability to withstand fires,
its performance on September 11 is obviously of concern to the
company.
Ryan sent
his letter to Frank Gayle, deputy chief of the Metallurgy Division
at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He later
forwarded it in an e-mail to David Ray Griffin, author of the
New Pearl Harbor, and Catherine Austin Fitts, who is a member
of the 911Truth.org board. Griffin asked for and received permission
to forward the letter for Web distribution. 911Truth.org called
Ryan today to confirm his authorship. . .
A chemist
by profession, Ryan said he is acting in the hope of receiving
a public response from Gayle. Given the impact of September 11
on events around the world, Ryan said, everyone needs to know
the full truth of what really happened on that day. He added
that he considers Gayle to be a good scientist and an honest
person.
KEVEN
R RYAN TO FRANK GAYLE - Having recently reviewed your team's
report of 10/19/04, I felt the need to contact you directly.
As I'm sure you know, the company I work for certified the steel
components used in the construction of the WTC buildings. In
requesting information from both our CEO and Fire Protection
business manager last year, I learned that they did not agree
on the essential aspects of the story, except for one thing -
that the samples we certified met all requirements. They suggested
we all be patient and understand that UL was working with your
team, and that tests would continue through this year. I'm aware
of UL's attempts to help, including performing tests on models
of the floor assemblies. But the results of these tests appear
to indicate that the buildings should have easily withstood the
thermal stress caused by pools of burning jet fuel.
There
continues to be a number of "experts" making public
claims about how the WTC buildings fell. One such person, Dr.
Hyman Brown from the WTC construction crew, claims that the buildings
collapsed due to fires at 2000F melting the steel. He states
"What caused the building to collapse is the airplane fuel
burning at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The steel in that five-floor
area melts." Additionally, the newspaper that quotes him
says "Just-released preliminary findings from a National
Institute of Standards and Technology study of the World Trade
Center collapse support Brown's theory."
We know
that the steel components were certified to ASTM E119. The time
temperature curves for this standard require the samples to be
exposed to temperatures around 2000F for several hours. And as
we all agree, the steel applied met those specifications. Additionally,
I think we can all agree that even un-fireproofed steel will
not melt until reaching red-hot temperatures of nearly 3000F.
Why Dr. Brown would imply that 2000F would melt the high-grade
steel used in those buildings makes no sense at all.
The results
of your recently published metallurgical tests seem to clear
things up, and support your team's August 2003 update as detailed
by the Associated Press, in which you were ready to "rule
out weak steel as a contributing factor in the collapse".
The evaluation of paint deformation and spheroidization seem
very straightforward, and you noted that the samples available
were adequate for the investigation. Your comments suggest that
the steel was probably exposed to temperatures of only about
500F, which is what one might expect from a thermodynamic analysis
of the situation.
However
the summary of the new NIST report seems to ignore your findings,
as it suggests that these low temperatures caused exposed bits
of the building's steel core to "soften and buckle".
Additionally this summary states that the perimeter columns softened,
yet your findings make clear that "most perimeter panels
(157 of 160) saw no temperature above 250C". To soften steel
for the purposes of forging, normally temperatures need to be
above 1100C. However, this new summary report suggests that much
lower temperatures were be able to not only soften the steel
in a matter of minutes, but lead to rapid structural collapse.
This story
just does not add up. If steel from those buildings did soften
or melt, I'm sure we can all agree that this was certainly not
due to jet fuel fires of any kind, let alone the briefly burning
fires in those towers. That fact should be of great concern to
all Americans. Alternatively, the contention that this steel
did fail at temperatures around 250C suggests that the majority
of deaths on 9/11 were due to a safety-related failure. That
suggestion should be of great concern to my company.
There
is no question that the events of 9/11 are the emotional driving
force behind the War on Terror. And the issue of the WTC collapse
is at the crux of the story of 9/11. My feeling is that your
metallurgical tests are at the crux of the crux of the crux.
Either you can make sense of what really happened to those buildings,
and communicate this quickly, or we all face the same destruction
and despair that come from global decisions based on disinformation
and "chatter."
Thanks
for your efforts to determine what happened on that day. You
may know that there are a number of other current and former
government employees that have risked a great deal to help us
to know the truth. I've copied one of these people on this message
as a sign of respect and support. I believe your work could also
be a nucleus of fact around which the truth, and thereby global
peace and justice, can grow again. Please do what you can to
quickly eliminate the confusion regarding the ability of jet
fuel fires to soften or melt structural steel.
DECEMBER
2004
THE 9/11 QUOTE YOU PROBABLY MISSED,
TOO
[This
quote from the 9/11 Commission report was just brought to our
attention. We could not find it in either the Washington Post
or the NY Times although the Palm Beach Post, Seattle Times and
two Seattle weeklies ran the story. When we put the phrase "to
keep someone from taking a plane" into Google we came up
with only 48 responses.]
MARTIN
BRIGHT, GUARDIAN, SEP 11 - In August 2001, the Minneapolis office
of the FBI contacted headquarters in Washington to request a
warrant to search the laptop computer of Zacarias Moussaoui,
a French national with known Islamic extremist views being held
in the Midwest city on immigration charges.
An intelligence
investigation into Moussaoui had been instigated after agents
learned he had taken flying lessons at the Pan Am International
Flight Academy in Eagan, Minnesota, as 'an ego-boosting thing'.
They found he had an inexplicable $32,000 in his bank, was planning
to sign up for martial arts training and buy a global positioning
receiver. He paid $9,000 to be trained how to fly an airliner
from London Heathrow to New York's John F Kennedy and showed
particular interest in the workings of aircraft doors. The field
office concluded he was 'an Islamic extremist preparing for some
future act in furtherance of radical fundamentalist goals'.
But when
a supervisor at Minneapolis pushed the request for a warrant,
headquarters complained he was just trying to get people 'spun
up.' The supervisor, now furious, said this was precisely his
intention and he was 'trying to keep someone from taking a plane
and flying it into the World Trade Centre'. Washington said this
was not going to happen and they had no evidence Moussaoui was
a terrorist.
OCTOBER
2004
BLACK BOXES WERE FOUND AT WORLD
TRADE CENTER
WILL BUNCH,
PHILA DAILY NEWS CAMPAIGN EXTRA - Two men who worked extensively
in the wreckage of the World Trade Center claim they helped federal
agents find three of the four "black boxes" from the
jetliners that struck the towers on 9/11 - contradicting the
official account. Both the independent 9/11 Commission and federal
authorities continue to insist that none of the four devices
- a cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the
two planes - were ever found in the wreckage.
But New
York City firefighter Nicholas DeMasi has written in a recent
book -- self-published by several Ground Zero workers -- that
he escorted federal agents on an all-terrain vehicle in October
2001 and helped them locate three of the four.
His account
is supported by a volunteer, Mike Bellone, whose efforts at Ground
Zero have been chronicled in the New York Times and elsewhere.
Bellone said assisted DeMasi and the agents and that saw a device
that resembling a "black box" in the back of the firefighter's
ATV.
Their
story raises the question of whether there was a some type of
cover-up at Ground Zero. Federal aviation officials - blaming
the massive devastation - have said the World Trade Center attacks
seem to be the only major jetliner crashes in which the critical
devices were never located.
A footnote
to the 9/11 Commission Report issued this summer flatly states:
"The CVRs and FDRs from American 11 and United 175"
- the two planes that hit the Trade Center - "were not found."
And officials
for the FBI - which oversaw the cleanup at Ground Zero - and
the New York City Fire Department repeated this week that the
devices were never recovered.
SEPTEMBER
2004
9/11 AND TWA 800: THE UNREPORTED
STORY
NICK WELSH,
INDEPENDENT - In his book Peter Lance claims that in 1996, high-ranking
FBI and Justice Department officials turned a deliberate blind
eye on documentary evidence provided by a high-ranking mob snitch
that a key Al Qaeda terrorist, Ramzi Yousef, behind bars for
the original bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, was actively
plotting to blow up what turned out to be TWA Flight 800, which
exploded 13,000 feet in the air above Long Island in the summer
of 1996, killing all 230 passengers and crewmembers on board.
After a 16-month investigation, the FBI blamed that tragedy on
mechanical failure. Given that Yousef's uncle, Khalid Shaikh
Mohammed, was one of the masterminds behind the September 11
plot, Lance contends the FBI blew yet another golden opportunity
to prevent 9/11 from ever occurring. . .
In 1995,
a Philippine colonel named Rodolfo Mendoza informed American
authorities that he'd obtained a confession from Abdul Murad,
a close associate of Yousef's, who revealed then that Yousef
- in addition to assassination plots against the Pope and President
Bill Clinton - was working on plans to send a hijacked airliner
crashing into one or more of six possible targets in the United
States. These included the Pentagon, the World Trade Center,
a nuclear power plant, the Sears Tower in Chicago, and the Transworld
Building in San Francisco. No date was set. In addition, Mendoza
said Murad told him that Yousef had enrolled his accomplices
in flight-training schools. Lance claims Mendoza's warning clearly
establishes the official beginning of the 9/11 plot in 1995,
not 1998 as outlined in the 9/11 Commission's report. . .
When the
TWA Flight 800 blew up, investigators found trace explosives
favored by Yousef on the plane, but rejected sabotage as a cause
in favor of mechanical failure. Lance suggests that decision
was based solely on political considerations rather than the
forensic evidence. . . Lance contends that high-ranking officials,
like Jamie Gorelick - now the FBI's chief counsel - shut down
the criminal investigation into the crash of TWA Flight 800 for
fear that their outstanding cases against various mobsters would
unravel.
 PROGRESSIVE REVIEW
SPECIAL REPORT
The World Trade Center's Dirty Secret
[The
first story below, column one in Sunday's Times, involves a matter
the Review has been following since the month after the attack
on the WTC. Even this report, however, does not suggest the depth
of the scandal - the possibility that most of the deaths at the
WTC were not due to the crash of the planes but to the grossly
negligent construction of the buildings in violation of fire
standards dating back as far as 60 years. Involved are not merely
design flaws, as one might gather from the Times article, but
the deliberate circumventing of city fire codes by having the
World Trade Center exempted from them. To get some sense of the
seriousness of the matter, compare the understated Times report
with the criminal charges filed in the recent Rhode Island music
hall fire or with last century's Shirtwaist Triangle fire. We
have also included earlier accounts to give a better picture
of this largely suppressed story]
JAMES GLANZ, NY TIMES - Hundreds of
buildings nationwide with fireproofing similar to that used in
the World Trade Center could be far more prone to structural
damage during major fires than previously thought, according
to preliminary calculations by federal investigators.
The investigators
are studying the precise causes of the World Trade Center collapse.
Their work includes calculations of how heat moves through steel
building components with small gaps or imperfections in fireproofing
insulation. Their inquiry, which is still in its early stages,
shows that during a fire such flaws can act as sluice gates for
heat, allowing it to enter the steel, where it becomes trapped,
weakening the structure.
Countless
buildings put up since the 1960's have used the same type of
lightweight, fluffy, spray-on fireproofing to protect their steel.
Photographic evidence of the trade center suggests that this
material, which is easily damaged, had gaps and possibly larger
missing sections. Experts say similar problems are also found
in ordinary high-rises. . .
"When
we entered into this investigation, there clearly was a concern
with explaining why buildings that looked like they would stand
forever came down," said Richard G. Gann, a senior research
scientist at the Building and Fire Research Laboratory of the
Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology
in Gaithersburg, Md. That is where this $16 million investigation
into the sequence of structural failures that led to the collapse
of the World Trade Center - buildings that looked as if they
would stand forever - is being conducted. . .
Officials
with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which built
the trade center, have claimed in the past that no matter how
well the steel was protected, the planes probably knocked off
much of the fireproofing where they struck. Other experts have
disputed that contention, saying that poorly applied and maintained
fireproofing could have played a role in the collapses.
Only the
cores of the twin towers, which held the elevators and escape
stairwells, were built like traditional high-rises, with clusters
of relatively heavy steel columns and beams linked together in
a cagelike matrix. Beyond that, the 110 floors in each tower
contained roughly an acre of open space each, uncluttered by
vertical support columns. . .
Spray-on
fireproofing replaced the use of heavier materials, like terra-cotta
blocks, after World War II, and became extremely common in the
1960's, when the World Trade Center went up. The fireproofing
used on the trade center trusses was a mixture of mineral fibers
and cement-like materials called binders.
SAN
JOSE BUSINESS JOURNAL, OCTOBER 2001: The two towers of the World Trade
Center may have collapsed because the planes which crashed into
them this morning scraped away protective coatings on steel beams
allowing incredibly intense fires to soften supporting beams,
according to a San Jose State University professor who has worked
on buildings of similar size. While not drawing a conclusion
as to the cause of the collapse, a Stanford University professor
has estimated the intensity of the fires, likening them to the
explosion of an atomic bomb. "The planes hitting the sides
of the buildings probably did not do that much structural damage,"
says Kurt McMullin, professor of civil engineering at San Jose
State.
"The
impact of the jets probably knocked a lot of fireproofing off
[the steel girders]," he says. "Losing the glass windows
allowed the fire to travel to several floors. It just led to
a complete collapse of the steel frame which then dropped all
the floors above. "We design buildings to withstand high
intensity fires for a limited time," he says. "[But]
once steel becomes hot it becomes soft and it loses its strength."
The buildings, engineered to withstand the force of a hurricane,
should have been able to withstand the impact of the planes,
he says.
JOSEPH
J. REBANDO, RETIRED BATTALION CHIEF IN LETTER TO NY DAILY NEWS - All new high
rise buildings in NYC should be constructed under the 1938 building
code, requiring all structural steel to be insulated by several
inches of concrete and plaster. All components must be able to
withstand fire and heat at elevated temperatures for four hours.
This would provide ample time for evacuation and mitigate the
total collapse of the structure.
BILL MANNING, FIRE ENGINEERING MAGAZINE
- 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. 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. . .
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.
Hoping beyond hope, I have called experts to ask if the towers
were the only high-rise buildings in America of lightweight,
center-core construction. No such luck. I made other calls asking
if these were the only buildings in America with light-density,
sprayed-on fireproofing. Again, no luck - they were two of thousands
that fit the description. . .
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. . .
As things
now stand and if they continue in such fashion, the investigation
into the World Trade Center fire and collapse will amount to
paper- and computer-generated hypotheticals. However, respected
members of the fire protection engineering community are beginning
to raise red flags, and a resonating theory has emerged: The
structural damage from the planes and the explosive ignition
of jet fuel in themselves were not enough to bring down the towers.
Rather, theory has it, the subsequent contents fires attacking
the questionably fireproofed lightweight trusses and load-bearing
columns directly caused the collapses in an alarmingly short
time. . .
The builders
and owners of the World Trade Center property, the Port Authority
of New York-New Jersey, a governmental agency that operates in
an accountability vacuum beyond the reach of local fire and building
codes, has denied charges that the buildings' fire protection
or construction components were substandard but has refused to
cooperate with requests for documentation supporting its contentions
. . .
Clearly,
there are burning questions that need answers. Based on the incident's
magnitude alone, a full-throttle, fully resourced, forensic investigation
is imperative. More important, from a moral standpoint, for the
safety of present and future generations who live and work in
tall buildings-and for firefighters, always first in and last
out-the lessons about the buildings' design and behavior in this
extraordinary event must be learned and applied in the real world.
To treat the September 11 incident any differently would be the
height of stupidity and ignorance. The destruction and removal
of evidence must stop immediately. The federal government must
scrap the current setup and commission a fully resourced blue
ribbon panel to conduct a clean and thorough investigation of
the fire and collapse, leaving no stones unturned.
PROGRESSIVE
REVIEW
- Largely ignored by the ordinary media is a key question about
the September 11 disaster: did it have to be that bad? The answers,
however, are being sought by firefighters, engineers and architects.
A case in point is Jim Malott, a San Francisco architect who
has followed the World Trade Center since it first took shape,
chronicling its history in words and photos. Mallot was also
an officer aboard U.S.S. Enterprise, where he witnessed more
than one fiery jet plane crash.
In the
November/December 2001 issue of Designer/Builder, Mallot gives
a deeply disturbing interview to Kingsley Hammet who writes:
"Prior to the advent of the World Trade Center towers, high-rise
buildings shared two vital characteristics. They were supported
by a grid of steel columns, generally spaced about thirty feet
apart, and each interior column was encased in a tough cladding
of concrete to create a fireproof skin designed to withstand
a four-hour inferno. (The four-hour fire rating is the code rule
for the columns and major beams in any large building.) As designed
by architect Minoru Yamasaki, New York's Twin Towers incorporated
neither of these traditional features. And as far as Malott is
concerned, it was the failure of their substitutes - not the
initial crash, not the exploding jet fuel, and not the subsequent
fire alone -that lead to their collapse and the enormous loss
of life . . . "As Malott watched the tragedy unfold, he
surmised that the sequence of events went something like this.
when the planes slammed into the exterior of the buildings, the
fuselages and engines broke through a number of the outside columns
while the wings disintegrated as though being forced through
a cheese grater. The bodies of the planes crashed across the
unobstructed floors, smashed into the central cores of the buildings,
and blew the sheetrock off the supporting columns and from around
the stairwells, completely destroying the elevator shaft wails.
Thus, in the first seconds, the four-hour-rated fireproofing
was stripped from the steel core structures and with it went
all hope that the buildings could survive a fire. "After
an hour of this inferno, the now-naked steel columns of the central
core at the impact floors were heated to about 1,600 degrees,
which is the point at which steel loses almost all of its structural
strength. The relatively skimpy floor system, with hung sheetrock,
small-diameter steel bar joists, and the thin layer of concrete,
offered little barrier to the raging flames despite having been
rated as fire-resistant for four hours. Three floors may have
collapsed within the impact area, further tearing fireproofing
away from the core columns.
Once the
first couple of core columns began to buckle, Malott speculates,
they threw all of their load not onto a neighboring ring of strong
columns protected with fireproofing (which in this design did
not exist), but onto the adjacent columns in the exposed core,
which were similarly denuded of fireproofing by the initial impact
and also were failing under the intense heat. 'The outside of
the building did not fail. It did not get hot enough,' Malott
says. 'It was the core that failed.'
"It's
time now to go back and rethink the entire concept of the high-rise
structural system, Malott says. Buildings such as the World Trade
Center towers cannot be built to minimum code specifications
And architects must now truly consider the impact of a fully
loaded aircraft or other impact/explosion/fire combination striking
another tower. Future high-rise buildings must be designed with
a redundant system of interior support columns so no failure
of any critical part - be it the core, the skin, or the floor
-leads to the catastrophic collapse of the entire building .
. .
"Ever
since the World Trade Center became the global icon of capitalism,
most high-rise buildings in America have followed its lead and
wrapped their steel columns in some combination of mineral wool
and gypsum board rather than concrete, leaving them susceptible
to potentially devastating pancake failure not in four hours,
for which they are theoretically fire rated, but in less than
an hour . . . "It's interesting to note that while the enormous
bomb that exploded in the parking garage of the World Trade Center
in 1993 killed six people, injured almost 1,000, caused a massive
fuel fire, and collapsed two garage floors, it did relatively
little structural damage to the tower because the basement columns
were encased in concrete . . .
"A
building of this scale, in Malott's opinion, should never have
been built in this way. The best proof is what happened to the
102-story Empire State Building when rammed by a B-25 in 1945.
The plane, loaded with gasoline, hit between the seventy-eighth
and seventy-ninth floors. The resultant fire burned for twenty-four
hours and gutted five stories of the building. But the accident
did not cause any catastrophic collapse of the structure because
the tower had been built around a grid of interior columns and
everyone had been clad in concrete."
[DESIGNER
BUILDER 2405 MacLovia Lane, Santa Fe, NM 87505]
[The
story below, so far as we know, was the first time the corporate
media has let its audience know that the collapse of the World
Trade Center towers might have been due to improper construction
rather than to the impact the planes. . . But while the Shirtwaist
Triangle fire early in the last century (which killed 150 people)
produced major building reforms, the whole tendency since September
11 has been to ignore the culpability of those responsible for
the towers' construction.]
CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY WASHINGTON
POST JUNE 2002
-
Fireproofing failures -- rather the impact of the plane crashes
-- probably caused the World Trade Center towers to quickly collapse,
architects and engineers told a federal panel. "The insulation
is going to turn out to be the root cause," said James G.
Quintiere, a professor at University of Maryland's Fire Protection
Engineering Department who analyzed the fireproofing in the two
towers. Neither tower, he found, had fireproofing thick enough
to withstand the fire's blast furnace intensity for two hours,
which is considered the minimum needed for those on the upper
floors to escape the towers. "A two-hour fire resistance
is right on the ragged edge," Quintiere said. The North
Tower, which had 1 1/2-inch-thick fireproofing, fell in 104 minutes,
and the South Tower, with its 3/4-inch-thick fireproofing, collapsed
in 56 minutes . . . "There needs to be a change in the way
buildings are inspected," said Roger G. Morse, an architect
who specializes in forensic investigations of building disasters
and has studied the World Trade Center. Typically, he said, inspectors
examine fireproofing before construction is completed, and the
work is often damaged in the final construction. In the case
of the World Trade Center, he said, construction workers apparently
failed to apply asbestos properly to some beams 30 years ago.
He found that asbestos had peeled off the core columns up to
the 78th floor. No asbestos was applied above the 78th floor,
because federal regulations changed and prohibited its application.
Instead, workers on the upper floors applied a non-asbestos fireproofing
that was not as fire resistant. With better fireproofing, Morse
said, the towers "probably would have held up a little longer."
Most experts said the problems are not unique to the World Trade
Center, which was regulated by the Port Authority of New York
and New Jersey. "It could happen anywhere," Morse said.
"The situation at the Trade Center wasn't the worst that
I've seen." Several experts spoke of a national problem
in high-rise buildings. "The fire service has seen a consistent
weakening in fire safety," said Vincent Dunn, a retired
New York City fire chief and fire safety consultant. He ran through
a list of several New York City building fires where spray-on
fireproofing did little to prevent the structure's destruction.
He described climbing through these buildings after fires and
found "nothing left up there but bent, warped, twisted steel.
There's no spray-on [fireproofing] left."
HEATING,
PIPING, AIR-CONDITIONING ENGINEERING MAGAZINE - Steel loses
30 percent of its strength at 1000 F and 80 percent of its strength
at 1400 F. These are temperatures that can be reached within
5 min. on unprotected steel in a standard fire. Steel collapse
in a fire is impossible to predict and often occurs instantaneously
DEPUTY CHIEF VINCENT DUNN RET. - After the 767
jet liner crashed into the world trade center building creating
the worst terror attack in history, a fire burned for 56 minutes
inside the World Trade Center building number two. The top 20
floors of the building collapsed on the 90 floors below. The
entire one hundred and ten-story building collapsed in 8 seconds
. . . After a fire burned inside WTC tower number one for 102
minutes, the top 30 floors collapsed on the lower 80 floors.
And the entire one hundred and ten stories of this building collapsed
in 10 seconds. You can say the reason they collapsed was they
were struck with a 185 ton jet airliner and the 24,000 gallons
of jet fuel caused a fire of 1500 to 2000 degrees F which weakened
the steel and cause the collapse. Or you can take a closer look
at the buildings construction of the WTC buildings. And ask yourself
why did these structures collapse so fast and so completely.
The answer can be found by examining high-rise construction in
New York City over the past 50 years In terms of structural system
the twin towers departed completely from other high-rise buildings.
Conventional skyscrapers since the 19th century have been built
with a skeleton of interior supporting columns that supports
the structure. Exterior walls of glass steel or synthetic material
do not carry any load. The twin towers are radically different
in structural design as the exterior wall is used as the load-bearing
wall . . .
The most
noticeable change in the modern high-rise construction is a trend
to using more steel and shaping lightweight steel into tubes,
curves, and angles to increase its load bearing capability. The
WTC has tubular steel bearing walls, fluted corrugated steel
flooring and bent bar steel truss floor supports. To a modern
high rise building designer steel framing is economical and concrete
is a costly material . . . Architects, designers , and builders
all know if you remove concrete from a structure you have a building
that weights less. So if you create a lighter building you can
use columns, girders and beams of smaller dimensions, or better
yet you can use the same size steel framing and build a taller
structure . . .
If you
reduce the structure's mass you can build cheaper and builder
higher. Unfortunately unprotected steel warps, melts, sags and
collapses when heated to normal fire temperatures about 1100
to 1200 degrees F. The fire service believes there is a direct
relation of fire resistance to mass of structure. The more mass
the more fire resistance. The best fire resistive building in
America is a concrete structure. The structures that limit and
confine fires best, and suffer fewer collapses are reinforced
concrete pre WWII buildings such as housing projects and older
high rise buildings like the empire state building, The more
concrete, the more fire resistance; and the more concrete the
less probability of total collapse. The evolution of high-rise
construction can be seen, by comparing the Empire State Building
to the WTC. My estimate is the ratio of concrete to steel in
the Empire State Building is 60/40. The ratio of concrete to
steel in the WTC is 40/60. The tallest building in the world,
the Petronas Towers, in Kula Lumpur, Malaysia, is more like the
concrete to steel ratio of the Empire State Building than concrete
to steel ratio of the WTC . . .
A plane
that only weighted 10 tons struck the Empire State Building and
the high-octane gasoline fire quickly flamed out after 35 minutes.
When the firefighters walked up to the 79 floor most of the fire
had dissipated. The Empire State Building in my opinion, and
most fire chiefs in New York City, is the most fire safe building
in America. I believe it would have not collapsed like the WTC
towers. I believe the Empire State Building, and for that matter
any other skeleton steel building in New York City, would have
withstood the impact and fire of the terrorist's jet plane better
than the WTC towers. If the jet liners struck any other skeleton
steel high rise, the people on the upper floors and where the
jet crashed may not have survived; there might have been local
floor and exterior wall collapse. However, I believe a skeleton
steel frame high rise would not suffer a cascading total pancake
collapse of the lower floors in 8 and 10 seconds . . .
Perhaps
builders should take a second look at the Empire State Buildings
construction. There might be something to learn when they rebuild
on ground zero. The empire state building has exterior Indiana
limestone exterior wall, 8 inches thick. The floors are also
8 inches thick consisting of one-inch cement over 7 inches of
cinder and concrete. All columns, girders and floor beams are
solid steel covered with 1 to 2 inches of brick terracotta and
concrete. There is virtually no opening in the floors. And there
are no air ducts of a HVAC heating cooling and venting system
penetrating fire partitions, floor, and ceilings. Each floor
has its own HVAC unit. The elevators and utility shafts are masonry
enclosed. And for life safety there is a 4-inch brick enclosed
so-called "smoke proof stairway". This stairway is
designed to allow people to leave a floor without smoke following
them and filing up the stairway. This is accomplished because
this smoke proof stairway has an intermediate vestibule, which
contains a vent shaft. Any smoke that seeps out the occupancy
is sucked up a vent shaft . . .
Builders
hailed the New York City building code of 1968 as a good performance
code. However, some fire chiefs decried it as a law that substituted
frills for real construction safety. The asbestos spray on coating
of steel trusses used in the WTC towers was considered by Chief
of the New York City Fire Department, at the time, John T. O'
Hagan to be inferior to concrete encasement of steel . . . The
WTC started construction in the 1970s. And the WTC towers built
by the Port Authority of New York did not have to comply with
the minimum requirements of the new 1968 performance building
code.
ARCHITECTURAL RECORD, INTERVIEW
WITH FIRE LIEUTENANT GREGORY GARGISO - Our teachings on high-rise structures
go like this:
o They
are broken down into three major construction groups; lightweight,
medium weight and heavyweight and these designations coincide
almost directly with groups according to years.
o Almost
all the heavyweights were built before 1945, the medium weights
from '45 to '68 and the lightweights from '68 to present.
o It's
not too far a leap from this to deduce that your heavyweights
are your Empire State, your Woolworth Building, your Equitable
Insurance Building. 20 to 25 pounds per cubic foot. Limestone
faced, heavy steel skeleton encased in concrete or block and
tile.
o Your
lightweights are 8 to 10 lbs per cubic foot, and include of course
the Trade Center, the World Financial Center, the JP Morgan building.
The newest high-rises in town, basically.
o The
middleweights are a bit more elusive, maybe because this group
to me are the least aesthetically pleasing. They are 10 to 20
pounds per cubic foot. The Pan Am Building (or Met Life as it
is now), One Bankers Trust Plaza, The UN Building. So guess which
one the firefighters like to fight the fires in the most. Well,
you guessed it, the heavyweights. Not because we're hopeless
romantics in love with the architecture of the early 20th Century.
Why then?
Because they perform under stress. You see, we are interested
in results. It's all fine and well that a particular partition
is supposed last against a fire X amount of hours in a controlled
laboratory test, or that a curtain wall is not supposed to allow
fire to pass from one floor of a high-rise to the next. But in
the organized chaos of firefighting, the knuckle dragging grunt
work, the 100 or more variables thrown into the mix, the controlled
yelling to orchestrate men into action against the Red Devil,
the race against time, the sheer physical logistics, they don't
usually do what they were designed to do . . .
Stairwells
protected by concrete and steel instead of sheetrock would have
resulted in lower casualities at the WTC. Walls were obliterated
and doorjambs jammed as the building settled into its death throes,
barring escape for many. What if power remained on and the elevators
stayed operational? High-rise buildings in New York built between
1945 and 1968 were required to have a "fire tower,"
a stair in a shaft open at top and separated from the floor space
by a vestibule with two doors at each end. This is a tremendous
advantage to fleeing occupants psychologically as well as physically
. . .
INTL NETWORK FOR TRADITIONAL BUILDING, ARCHITECTURE
& URBANISM - A series of unrelated design assumptions
about structure, fire proofing and escape - some dating from
the 1920s - exacerbated the World Trade Centre collapse, it was
claimed. Giving evidence on 6 March to the US House of Representatives
Committee on Science, Dr Arden L. Bement, Jr, Director of the
National Institute of Standards and Technology of the US Department
of Commerce, explained some of the issues which NIST would examine
if commissioned to undertake a National Building and Fire Safety
Investigation. "Current building design practice does not
consider fire as a design condition . . . They do not represent
real fire hazards in modern buildings. They also do not consider
the fire performance of structural connections or of the structural
system as a whole, or the multiple performance demands on fire
proofing materials", Bement explained. Continuing, he argued
that progressive collapse had become a problem in modern structures
because of their smaller margin of safety. Many lacked the reserve
capacity to accommodate abnormal loads, ironically due to increased
efficiency in the use of building materials and refinements in
analysis techniques.
New York's
fire chief long ago warned against the use of lightweight steel
floor trusses and sprayed fire protection (both thought to have
been used at the WTC). Many firefighters are said to believe
that they are safer fighting fires in traditional early 20th
century buildings - which have durable concrete fire protection
to steel elements - than in flimsy "semi-combustible"
modern tower blocks.
[INTBAU
is a British organization under the patronage of the Prince of
Wales]
JOHN SEABROOK, NEW YORKER - The second generation
of tall buildings, which includes the Metropolitan Life Building
(1909), the Woolworth Building (1913), and the Empire State Building
(1931), are frame structures, in which a skeleton of welded-
or riveted- steel columns and beams, often encased in concrete,
runs through the entire building. This type of construction makes
for an extremely strong structure, but not such attractive floor
space. The interiors are full of heavy, load-bearing columns
and walls, and, as you move toward the center of these buildings,
the more cryptlike they feel. Charlie Thornton, of the Manhattan-based
structural-engineering firm of Thornton-Tomasetti Engineers,
a leading designer of the structures of modern high-rises, said
to me recently, "A building like the Empire State Building
is way over-designed and overbuilt. The building didn't need
all that support. Those engineers didn't understand loads the
way we understand them-they used slide rules to work them out,
whereas we have computers-and so they erred on the side of caution."
. . .
As the
new high-rises sprouted, some New York City firefighters began
to point out that the same innovations that make these buildings
more economical to erect and more pleasant to inhabit also make
them more vulnerable to fire. In 1976, the New York City Fire
Commissioner, John O'Hagan, published a book entitled "High
Rise Fire and Life Safety," in which he called attention
to the serious fire-safety issues in most high-rise buildings
constructed since 1970, referring to such buildings as "semi-combustible."
Unlike the earlier generation of skyscrapers, which used concrete
and masonry to protect the structural steel, many of the newer
buildings employed sheetrock and spray-on fire protection. The
spray-on protection generally consisted of either a cement-like
material that resembles plaster or a mineral-fiber spray, such
as the one used to protect the floor joists in the World Trade
Center.
O'Hagan
pointed out that, even when these spray-ons are properly mixed
and applied to the steel (which must be clean), they are much
less dense than concrete and can be easily knocked off. The swaying
of the cables in the elevator shafts has been known to dislodge
the fire protection from the columns in the cores of these buildings,
and the coating used on floor supports is often removed by workers
who install the ducts and wiring inside the hollow floor. The
questionable performance of the fire protection used in these
buildings, combined with the greater expanse of lightweight,
unsupported floors, O'Hagan said, created the potential for collapse,
of the individual floors and of the entire structure. He also
pointed out that the open spaces favored by modern developers
allowed fires to spread faster than the compartmentalized spaces
of the earlier buildings, and that the synthetic furnishings
in modern buildings created more heat and smoke than materials
made out of wood and natural fibers.
ETHICAL SPECTACLE, FEB 2002 [From an article by three NYC firefighters]
- There are many, many questions to be asked by us about the
World Trade Center collapse and its implications on high-rise
firefighting across the nation. Some questions are political,
many are technical, others are philosophical. Here are a few
(in no particular order) to think about:
- Given
the typical resources of most fire departments, can we be expected
to handle every high-rise fire thrown at us? When was the last
time your city manager asked you for a complete list of resources
that you need to fight a high-rise fire, including personnel?
. . .
- Beware
the truss! Frank Brannigan has been admonishing us for years
about this topic. It has been reported that the World Trade Center
floors were supported by lightweight steel trusses, some in excess
of 50 feet long. Need we say more?
- Modern
sprayed-on steel "fireproofing" did not perform well
at the World Trade Center. Haven't we always been leery about
these materials? Why do many firefighters say that they would
rather fight a high-rise fire in an old building than in a modern
one? . . .
The largest
loss of firefighters ever at one incident . . . The second largest
loss of life on American soil . . . The first total collapse
of a high-rise during a fire in United States history . . . The
largest structural collapse in recorded history. Now, with that
understanding, you would think we would have the largest fire
investigation in world history. You would be wrong. Instead,
we have a series of unconnected and uncoordinated superficial
inquiries. No comprehensive "Presidential Blue Ribbon Commission."
No top-notch National Transportation Safety Board-like response.
PROGRESSIVE
REVIEW, MARCH 2002 - some serious questions raised by engineers
and architects about the quality of the World Trade Center's
construction. They weren't the only ones surprised to find a
plane crash causing so great a catastrophe. In a videotape of
Osama bin Laden released by the administration late last year,
bin Laden - who has a background in construction - made these
remarks:
OBL: (...Inaudible...)
We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy
who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated
that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors.
I was the most optimistic of them all. (...Inaudible...) due
to my experience in this field, I was thinking that the fire
from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the
building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the
floors above it only. This is all that we had hoped for.
NY TIMES, MAY 2003 - Federal investigators studying
the collapse of the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001, say they now
believe that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the
government agency that built the towers, never performed the
fundamental tests needed to determine how their innovative structures
would perform in a fire. The preliminary finding, if it holds
up, will undermine decades of public assurances by the Port Authority
that the twin towers met or exceeded the requirements of New
York City's building code, and therefore would be structurally
safe in a large fire.
The codes
are based on tests of each building component in furnaces that
subject the structures, and the fireproofing insulation that
protects them, to the harsh conditions of a major fire. Investigators,
speaking at a news conference near ground zero, said their findings
about the fire tests were an important development in their examination
of one theory for why the buildings collapsed when and how they
did: that the huge fires set by burning jet fuel weakened the
lightweight floors of the towers, and that the failure of at
least several floors in each building set off a chain reaction
culminating in the total collapse of the complex.
The investigators
have said that it is unclear whether, even if the tests had been
done and the buildings been found to have met standards, the
lightweight floor structures, called trusses, and the fluffy
fireproofing on them could have been expected to withstand the
intense fires of Sept. 11. But the absence of the central tests
has robbed the investigators of the ability to even say whether
the buildings performed as their designers had specified in their
original plans and as the city's codes required of other buildings
like them.
TWIN TOWERS 'NEVER FIRE-TESTED'
NY TIMES
- Federal investigators studying the collapse of the twin towers
on Sept. 11, 2001, say they now believe that the Port Authority
of New York and New Jersey, the government agency that built
the towers, never performed the fundamental tests needed to determine
how their innovative structures would perform in a fire. The
preliminary finding, if it holds up, will undermine decades of
public assurances by the Port Authority that the twin towers
met or exceeded the requirements of New York City's building
code, and therefore would be structurally safe in a large fire.
The codes are based on tests of each building component in furnaces
that subject the structures, and the fireproofing insulation
that protects them, to the harsh conditions of a major fire.
Investigators,
speaking at a news conference near ground zero, said their findings
about the fire tests were an important development in their examination
of one theory for why the buildings collapsed when and how they
did: that the huge fires set by burning jet fuel weakened the
lightweight floors of the towers, and that the failure of at
least several floors in each building set off a chain reaction
culminating in the total collapse of the complex. The investigators
have said that it is unclear whether, even if the tests had been
done and the buildings been found to have met standards, the
lightweight floor structures, called trusses, and the fluffy
fireproofing on them could have been expected to withstand the
intense fires of Sept. 11.
NIKOS A. SALINGAROS, PLANETIZEN
-
I believe that the 9/11 event raises disturbing questions about
the failed responsibilities of those professions. Two reasons
are: (1) a prominent modernist architectural symbol (the Twin
Towers of the World Trade Center) was specifically targeted to
be attacked and destroyed; (2) the leading terrorists (Mohamed
Atta and Osama bin Laden) had an architecture - urbanist - construction
background. Writing with Michael Mehaffy, I earlier proposed
that the third world -- and the Islamic world in particular --
feels a rage towards the United States, at least in part due
to the modernist architectural and urban models we have introduced
to those countries, which have destroyed their traditional built
heritage. Atta was a professional planner who was said to be
outraged over the desecration of traditional Islamic cities by
modernist architecture and planning. Of course, Atta was a criminal,
but how many ordinary people in traditional cities of the third
world share those feelings?
The architect
and urbanist Léon Krier recently made an eloquent statement
about the absurdity of what many of our professional architects
and urbanists do. He argues that the events of 9/11 burst the
bubble of a monumental architectural deception. Nevertheless,
one year later, the same architects who were fashionable before
the 9/11 tragedy are still asked to design mono-functional mega-towers,
and are acting as if nothing had really happened on that day
to affect their profession. One has only to look at the unrepentantly
modernist and postmodernist proposals for reconstructing the
Twin Towers to see this. Their monstrous, tortuous forms deliberately
shock us and unbalance our human sensibilities. . .
My co-authors
and I tried to raise the frightening possibility that the West
has become identified with a nihilistic architecture whose hegemony
has erased humane built form around the world. In doing so, it
replaces living traditions with alien and dysfunctional forms
that recreate images of crude 1920s machines and industrial buildings.
More than the buildings themselves, however, we are misusing
our technological authority and economic might to insert such
seductive design images into weaker societies' educational and
media systems. Our industrial and cultural exports come bundled
with destructive architectural visions. All the world copies
what we do, so we have a moral responsibility to practice a humane
architecture and urbanism.
Al-Qaeda
is driven by an intolerant fundamentalism that would destroy
free and democratic government. As we fight them to preserve
democracy and basic human rights, we must also recognize and
eliminate our own "geometrical fundamentalism". When
the history of this societal struggle between conflicting ideas
comes to be written, ours should be the side that championed
the freedom for human beings to connect to their built environment,
and protected this basic right from being suppressed by an intolerant
architectural dogma.
JUL
2004
OFFICIALS HID POST-9/11 POLLUTION
FROM PUBLIC
NY POST
- An Environmental Protection Agency memo claims city and federal
officials concealed data that showed lower Manhattan air was
clouded with asbestos after the World Trade Center collapse.
And officials sat on the alarming information even as they told
the public it was safe to return downtown, the internal memo
says.
Testing
by the city Department of Environmental Protection showed the
air downtown had more than double the level of asbestos considered
safe for humans, claimed federal EPA environmental scientist
Cate Jenkins, who supplied the memo to The Post. The data, which
Jenkins says she culled from state records, appear damning.
MAY
2004
WHISTLEBLOWER SAYS FBI WAS WARNED
FIVE MONTHS BEFORE 9/11
JAMES
RIDGEWAY, VILLAGE VOICE - Details of a Florida drug case may
well shed light on the claims of an FBI translator who says the
agency covered up evidence warning of the 9-11 attack. Sibel
Edmonds, the translator, said in an interview Monday with the
Voice that the Florida case illustrates the issues and evidence
she has been trying to make public for two years. . .
Among
the Farsi translators working for the FBI, she said, it was common
knowledge that a longtime, highly regarded FBI "asset"
placed in Afghanistan told the agency in April 2001 that he had
information from his contacts there that bin Laden was planning
a major attack, involving the use of planes, in one or another
of big American cities-Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York among
them. The agents who took down the information from the spy wrote
up reports and sent them to their superiors. That was the last
the agents heard of the matter.
Edmonds
said she had heard the details of the Afghan asset story in an
unclassified meeting at the Capitol, but she cannot talk about
the specifics because of a Justice Department gag order that
classifies as secret what she has to say. She said, however,
that "there are a lot of activities in the U.S. A lot of
money . . . and these activities involve money laundering, drugs,
a support network for terrorism . . . people in high places .
. . [people] in the political arena."
Cybercast
News Service, part of the conservative watchdog Media Research
Center, reports that Mehrzad Arbane, an Iranian convicted of
drug smuggling and suspected of money laundering and smuggling
people from the Middle East into the U.S., told an associate
who had become a government informant in October 2001 that he
"may have smuggled two of the hijackers who flew planes
into the towers in New York on September 11, 2001." Arbane
was convicted May 13 in a Florida federal court of importing
cocaine. He is expected to stand trial in New York for harboring
illegal aliens, including two from Iran. . .
Whether
the U.S. is tracing the connections between Arbane and the hijackers
is not known. However, Ecuador is one of the countries from which
Arbane is believed to have operated, and Deputy Secretary of
State Richard Armitage told a House Foreign Operations appropriations
subcommittee in April 2002 that along the border between Ecuador
and Colombia, "we have got . . . a bit of a problem with
Al Qaeda itself and some Hezbollah elements." Armitage added,
"Frankly we are afraid as we squeeze Colombia, with hopefully
the assistance and support of the Congress, that like a balloon,
some of the problems might balloon out in other areas. We want
to do what we can to try to keep Ecuador from ballooning out."
Most of
the government's efforts to stop terrorists from entering the
country are focused on airports and ports. Using drug dealers
to smuggle terrorists adds a new dimension to the problem. Drug
sales such as the trade in opium from Afghanistan are often used
to help finance terrorist groups. . .
THE WEEKEND BEFORE SEP 11
CURTIS
L. TAYLOR AND SEAN GARDINER, NEWSDAY, SEP 11 20001 - The World
Trade Center was destroyed just days after a heightened security
alert was lifted at the landmark 110-story towers, security personnel
said yesterday. Daria Coard, 37, a guard at Tower One, said the
security detail had been working 12-hour shifts for the past
two weeks because of numerous phone threats.
MY
DOG ATE THE 9-11 AIR CONTROLLER TAPE
BRASSCHECK
-
he New York Times reports that an on-the-scene, eye witness account
of what *really* happened on 9-11 recorded by at least six air
controllers who were working the New York air lanes that day
was destroyed without anyone making a transcript or even listening
to it. The reason given for the destruction of evidence? The
air controllers were not in the right frame of mind to give accurate
statements. Here's how the tape was destroyed in case anyone
thinks it was one of those bureaucratic oversights:
"The
taping began before noon on Sept. 11 at the New York Air Route
Traffic Control Center, in Ronkonkoma, on Long Island, but it
was later destroyed by an F.A.A. quality-assurance manager, who
crushed the cassette in his hand, cut the tape into little pieces
and dropped them in different trash cans around the building,
according to a report made public today by the inspector general
of the Transportation Department."
APRIL
2004
RECOVERED
HISTORY
THE
WEEKEND BEFORE SEP 11
CURTIS
L. TAYLOR AND SEAN GARDINER, NEWSDAY, SEP 11 20001 - The World
Trade Center was destroyed just days after a heightened security
alert was lifted at the landmark 110-story towers, security personnel
said yesterday. Daria Coard, 37, a guard at Tower One, said the
security detail had been working 12-hour shifts for the past
two weeks because of numerous phone threats. But on Thursday,
bomb-sniffing dogs were abruptly removed. "Today was the
first day there was not the extra security," Coard said.
"We were protecting below. We had the ground covered. We
didn't figure they would do it with planes. There is no way anyone
could have stopped that." Security guard Hermina Jones said
officials had recently taken steps to secure the towers against
aerial attacks by installing bulletproof windows and fireproof
doors in the 22nd-floor computer command center.
NORAD HAD SIMULATED WTC ATTACK
STEVEN
KOMAROW AND TOM SQUITIERI, USA TODAY - In the two years before
the Sept. 11 attacks, the North American Aerospace Defense Command
conducted exercises simulating what the White House says was
unimaginable at the time: hijacked airliners used as weapons
to crash into targets and cause mass casualties. One of the imagined
targets was the World Trade Center. In another exercise, jets
performed a mock shoot down over the Atlantic Ocean of a jet
supposedly laden with chemical poisons headed toward a target
in the United States. In a third scenario, the target was the
Pentagon - but that drill was not run after Defense officials
said it was unrealistic, NORAD and Defense officials say.
NORAD,
in a written statement, confirmed that such hijacking exercises
occurred. It said the scenarios outlined were regional drills,
not regularly scheduled continent-wide exercises. . . A White
House spokesman said Sunday that the Bush administration was
not aware of the NORAD exercises. But the exercises using real
aircraft show that at least one part of the government thought
the possibility of such attacks, though unlikely, merited scrutiny.
. . On April 12, a watchdog group, the Project on Government
Oversight, released a copy of an e-mail written by a former NORAD
official referring to the proposed exercise targeting the Pentagon.
The e-mail said the simulation was not held because the Pentagon
considered it "too unrealistic."
OTHER 9/11 INVESTIGATIONS
BRASSCHECK
- Into what deep, dark media hole has Yossef Bodansky fallen?
Bodansky was (is?) director of the House Task Force on Terrorism
and Unconventional Warfare. Not a flake. Not an outsider.
In 1993,
a book of his published in mass market paperback form "Target
America: Terrorism Today" detailed the intentions of 'Islamists'
to someday use hijacked planes as missiles. According to the
book there were actual training programs in place to prepare
people to accomplish this very exacting mission.
The disappearance
of this book from the 9-11 discussion has been total. It started
immediately after the attacks and continues up to today. As if
that were not strange enough, Bodansky also wrote another book
which, while it was briefly a New York Times bestseller, has
also mysteriously gone missing in action.
Title:
"Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America" Interesting
title especially since the 'asleep at the wheel' crowd claims
they didn't know we were at war with the guy. . . "The Man
Who Declared War on America" was in the works long before
the September 11 attacks. After a brief - and studiously superficial
- flurry of press appearances, Bodansky, the book and his detailed
research into matters you'd think the news media would be clamoring
for became a grand non-issue.
Some possibilities:
1. Author
Bodansky doesn't want to become rich and famous - he writes for
the love of it - so he is deliberately avoiding the news media
so he can work in modestly compensated obscurity.
2. The
news media has somehow gotten 'the word' that Bodansky is one
of 'those people' who doesn't merit air time (i.e. everyone who
has something pertinent to say about the state of the nation.)
The great
9-11 media mystery for me is why is this establishment guy who
made very detailed predictions both about the practicalities
of a plan attack and the intentions of 'Bin Laden' completely
off the media radar?
My other
favorite unanswered questions:
- Who
warned Mayor Willie Brown not to fly the week of September 11th?
Right after the attack, he said someone had, but now he won't
name the name - and no one is pressing him too hard.
- Who
authorized and coordinated the special flights of over 120 mostly
unnamed Saudis from the US immediately after September 11th when
US air space was closed to all commercial air traffic?
- Oh,
and what happened to that multi-multi-billion dollar air defense
system we all pay for. You know the one that normally challenges
any jet or large plane that strays from its flight path and does
not respond to inquiries. It's not like they don't know what
to do when this happens, but on 9-11, they did nothing.
WHAT DID ASHCROFT KNOW AND WHEN
DID HE KNOW IT?
JAMES
RIDGEWAY, VILLAGE VOICE - Like most of the Bush cabinet, Attorney
General John Ashcroft took commercial jets when he traveled.
But on July 24, 2001, he changed that practice and began flying
in chartered government jets. Asked by CBS News at the time about
the change, the Justice Department cited a "threat assessment"
by the FBI and said Ashcroft had been advised to travel only
by private jet for the remainder of his term.
"There
was a threat assessment, and there are guidelines. He is acting
under the guidelines," an FBI spokesman said. But as CBS
went on to report, "Neither the FBI nor the Justice Department,
however, would identify what the threat was, when it was detected,
or who made it.". . . When asked if he knew details of the
threat or who might have made it, Ashcroft said, "Frankly,
I don't. That's the answer."
911
Research -
Some 185,101 tons of structural steel have been hauled away from
Ground Zero. Most of the steel has been recycled as per the city's
decision to swiftly send the wreckage to salvage yards in New
Jersey. . . . Last month, fire experts told Congress that about
80% of the steel was scrapped without being examined because
investigators did not have the authority to preserve the wreckage.
The bulk
of the steel was apparently shipped to China and India. The Chinese
firm Baosteel purchased 50,000 tons at a rate of $120 per ton,
compared to an average price of $160 paid by local mills in the
previous year. . .
Given
that the people in charge considered the steel garbage, useless
to any investigation in this age of computer simulations, they
certainly took pains to make sure it didn't end up anywhere other
than a smelting furnace. They installed GPS locater devices on
each of the trucks that was carrying loads away from Ground Zero,
at a cost of $1000 each. . .
MARCH
2004
IF
RICE WON'T TESTIFY, CALL WILLIE
BRASSCHECK
- The day of 9-11, then mayor of San Francisco Willie Brown,
announced that he had been warned not to fly the week of 9-11
by his 'airport security advisor.' When asked about specific
alerts, the head of San Francisco airport security said no such
alert had been issued. So who was it who warned Willie Brown
not to fly that week?
Before
joining the Bush White House, Condoleezza Rice was an executive
of San Francisco-based Chevron and a member of numerous boards
of prominent Bay Area businesses and non-profits. Rice and Brown
certainly know each other and she is the most likely source of
the information Brown cited. (Brown has refused to disclose his
source.)
FEBRUARY
2004
SOME QUESTIONS TO BUSH
FROM THE FAMILY STEERING COMMITTEE
[Excerpts]
1. As
Commander-in-Chief on the morning of 9/11, why didn't you return
immediately to Washington, D.C. or the National Military Command
Center once you became aware that America was under attack? At
specifically what time did you become aware that America was
under attack? Who informed you of this fact?
2. On
the morning of 9/11, who was in charge of our country while you
were away from the National Military Command Center? Were you
informed or consulted about all decisions made in your absence?
3. What
defensive action did you personally order to protect our nation
during the crisis on September 11th? What time were these orders
given, and to whom? What orders were carried out? What was the
result of such orders? Were any such orders not carried out?
4. In
your opinion, why was our nation so utterly unprepared for an
attack on our own soil?
5. U.S.
Navy Captain Deborah Loewer, the Director of the White House
Situation Room, informed you of the first airliner hitting Tower
One of the World Trade Center before you entered the Emma E.
Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Florida. Please explain
the reason why you decided to continue with the scheduled classroom
visit, fifteen minutes after learning the first hijacked airliner
had hit the World Trade Center.
6. Is
it normal procedure for the Director of the White House Situation
Room to travel with you? If so, please cite any prior examples
of when this occurred. If not normal procedure, please explain
the circumstances that led to the Director of the White House
Situation Room being asked to accompany you to Florida during
the week of September 11th.
7. What
plan of action caused you to remain seated after Andrew Card
informed you that a second airliner had hit the second tower
of the World Trade Center and America was clearly under attack?
Approximately how long did you remain in the classroom after
Card's message?
8. At
what time were you made aware that other planes were hijacked
in addition to Flight 11 and Flight 175? Who notified you? What
was your course of action as Commander-in-Chief of the United
States?
9. Beginning
with the transition period between the Clinton administration
and your own, and ending on 9/11/01, specifically what information
(either verbal or written) about terrorists, possible attacks
and targets, did you receive from any source?
10. As
Commander-in-Chief, from May 1, 2001 until September 11, 2001,
did you receive any information from any intelligence agency
official or agent that UBL was planning to attack this nation
on its own soil using airplanes as weapons, targeting New York
City landmarks during the week of September 11, 2001 or on the
actual day of September 11, 2001?
11. What
defensive measures did you take in response to pre-9/11 warnings
from eleven nations about a terrorist attack, many of which cited
an attack in the continental United States? Did you prepare any
directives in response to these actions? If so, with what results?
12. As
Commander-in-Chief from May 1, 2001 until September 11, 2001,
did you or any agent of the United States government carry out
any negotiations or talks with UBL, an agent of UBL, or al-Qaeda?
During that same period, did you or any agent of the United States
government carry out any negotiations or talks with any foreign
government, its agents, or officials regarding UBL? If so, what
resulted?
13. What
was the purpose of the several stops of Air Force One on September
11th? Was Air Force One at any time during the day of September
11th a target of the terrorists? Was Air Force One's code ever
breached on September 11th?
14. Was
there a reason for Air Force One lifting off without a military
escort, even after ample time had elapsed to allow military jets
to arrive?
15. Who
approved the flight of the bin Laden family out of the United
States when all commercial flights were grounded, when there
was time for only minimal questioning by the FBI, and especially,
when two of those same individuals had links to WAMY, a charity
suspected of funding terrorism? Why were bin Laden family members
granted that special privilege - a privilege not available to
American families whose loved ones were killed on 9/11?
16. Please
explain why no one in any level of our government has yet been
held accountable for the countless failures leading up to and
on 9/11?
OCTOBER
2003
THE STRANGE BEHAVIOR OF FIVE ISRAELIS ON
SEPTEMBER 11
NEIL MCKAY,
SUNDAY HERALD - There was ruin and terror in Manhattan, but,
over the Hudson River in New Jersey, a handful of men were dancing.
As the World Trade Center burned and crumpled, the five men celebrated
and filmed the worst atrocity ever committed on American soil
as it played out before their eyes. Who do you think they were?
Palestinians? Saudis? Iraqis, even? Al-Qaeda, surely? Wrong on
all counts. They were Israelis ­ and at least two of them
were Israeli intelligence agents, working for Mossad, the equivalent
of MI6 or the CIA.
Their
discovery and arrest that morning is a matter of indisputable
fact. To those who have investigated just what the Israelis were
up to that day, the case raises one dreadful possibility: that
Israeli intelligence had been shadowing the al-Qaeda hijackers
as they moved from the Middle East through Europe and into America
where they trained as pilots and prepared to suicide-bomb the
symbolic heart of the United States. And the motive? To bind
America in blood and mutual suffering to the Israeli cause.
After
the attacks on New York and Washington, the former Israeli Prime
Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was asked what the terrorist strikes
would mean for US-Israeli relations. He said: "It's very
good." Then he corrected himself, adding: "Well, it's
not good, but it will generate immediate sympathy [for Israel
from Americans]."
SEPTEMBER
2003
TWENTY QUESTIONS ABOUT SEPTEMBER
11
[The
questions that Bunch discusses in his article]
WILLIAM
BUNCH, PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS - There are dozens of unanswered
questions about the 2001 attacks, but we've narrowed them down
to 20 - or 9 plus 11.
1. What
did National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice tell President
Bush about al Qaeda threats against the United States in a still-secret
briefing on Aug. 6, 2001?. . .
2. Why
did Attorney General John Ashcroft and some Pentagon officials
cancel commercial-airline trips before Sept. 11?. . .
3. Who
made a small fortune "shorting" airline and insurance
stocks before Sept. 11?. . .
4. Are
all 19 people identified by the government as participants in
the Sept. 11 attacks really the hijackers?. . .
5. Did
any of the hijackers smuggle guns on board as reported in calls
from both Flight 11 and Flight 93?. . .
6. Why
did the NORAD air defense network fail to intercept the four
hijacked jets?. . .
7. Why
did President Bush continue reading a story to Florida grade-schoolers
for nearly a half-hour during the worst attack on America in
its history?. . .
8. How
did Flight 93 crash in western Pennsylvania?. . .
9. Was
Zacarias Moussaoui really "the 20th hijacker"?. . .
10. Where
are the planes' "black boxes"?. . .
11. Why
were Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials so quick to link
Saddam Hussein to the attacks?. . .
12. Why
did 7 World Trade Center collapse?. . .
13. Why
did the Bush administration lie about dangerously high levels
of toxins and hazardous particles after the WTC collapse?. .
.
14. Where
is Dick Cheney's undisclosed location?. . .
15. What
happened to the more than $1 billion that Americans donated after
the attack?. . .
16. What
was the role of Pakistan's spy agency in the Sept. 11 attacks
and the subsequent murder of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl?. .
.
17. Who
killed five Americans with anthrax?. . .
18. What
happened to the probe into C-4 explosives found in a Philadelphia
bus terminal in fall 2001?. . .
19. What
is in the 28 blacked-out pages of the congressional Sept. 11
report?. . .
20. Where
is Osama bin Laden?. . .
AUGUST
2003
The indispensible
Memory
Hole has
come up with this startling guide to sheriffs issued in 2000:
"The manual was given to people who participated in the
training program of the same name, which taught local law enforcement
how to deal with terrorist attacks."
JULY
2003
BUSH USES SADDAM-TYPE 'MINDERS' FOR INTERVIEWS
NY TIMES
- The federal commission investigating the Sept. 11 terror attacks
said today that its work was being hampered by the failure of
executive branch agencies, especially the Pentagon and the Justice
Department, to respond quickly to requests for documents and
testimony. ... At a news conference, Mr. Kean described the presence
of "minders" at the interviews as a form of intimidation.
"I think the commission feels unanimously that it's some
intimidation to have somebody sitting behind you all the time
who you either work for or works for your agency," he said.
"You might get less testimony than you would. We would rather
interview these people without minders or without agency people
there," he said.
GEORGE
BUSH STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS - Saddam Hussein has not credibly
explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide. The
dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary; he is deceiving.
From intelligence sources we know, for instance, that thousands
of Iraqi security personnel are at work hiding documents and
materials from the U.N. inspectors, sanitizing inspection sites
and monitoring the inspectors themselves. Iraqi officials accompany
the inspectors in order to intimidate witnesses.
JUNE
2003
THE QUESTIONS
OVER BUSH'S behavior on September 11 escalate with a video recently
obtained by the Memory Hole which shows George Bush being approached
by Andrew Card, presumably with information about the attack,
and then the president sitting passively for five minutes as
the children in the classroom perform. Says Bob Harris on This
Modern World, "When the footage ends, he's still not moving,
although we can hear the press being told the photo-op is over.
Eyewitness accounts indicate that he continued to do virtually
nothing for at least another several minutes."
MAY
2003
WHAT DID BUSH REALLY DO ON SEPTEMBER
11 AND WHEN DID HE DO IT?
[This
is an amazing compilation from scores of sources concerning the
many still unexplained aspects to the president's behavior on
September 11, 2001. It is quite long but mesmerizing and a reminder
of how much passes us by in normal news coverage
CENTER
FOR COOPERATIVE RESEARCH - Why, at 9:03 a.m. - fifteen minutes
after it was clear the United States was under terrorist attack
- did President Bush sit down with a classroom of second-graders
and begin a 20-minute pre-planned photo op? No one knows the
answer to that question. In fact, no one has even asked Bush
about it. Bush's actions on September 11 have been the subject
of lively debate, mostly on the internet. Details reported that
day and in the week after the attacks - both the media reports
and accounts given by Bush himself - have changed radically over
the past 18 months. Culling hundreds of reports from newspapers,
magazines, and the internet has only made finding the "truth"
of what happened and when it happened more confusing. In the
changed political climate after 9/11, few have dared raise challenging
questions about Bush's actions. A journalist who said Bush was
"flying around the country like a scared child, seeking
refuge in his mother's bed after having a nightmare" and
another who said Bush "skedaddled" were fired. We should
have a concise record of where President Bush was throughout
the day the US was attacked, but we do not.
JAMES RISEN , NY TIMES, NOVEMBER
2001 -
The Central Intelligence Agency's clandestine New York station
was destroyed in the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center,
seriously disrupting United States intelligence operations while
bringing the war on terrorism dangerously close to home for America's
spy agency, government officials say.
The C.I.A.'s undercover New York station was in the 47-story
building at 7 World Trade Center, one of the smaller office towers
destroyed in the aftermath of the collapse of the twin towers
that morning. All of the agency's employees at the site were
safely evacuated soon after the hijacked planes hit the twin
towers, the officials said. The intelligence agency's employees
were able to watch from their office windows while the twin towers
burned just before they evacuated their own building.
Immediately
after the attack, the C.I.A. dispatched a special team to scour
the rubble in search of secret documents and intelligence reports
that had been stored in the New York station, either on paper
or in computers, officials said. It could not be learned whether
the agency was successful in retrieving its classified records
from the wreckage.
MAY 2002
[The
Washington Post, along with other conventional media, continues
to low ball what appears to be a major scandal: the highly combustible
construction techniques used in skyscrapers in recent decades.
But issues raised by such publications as Designer-Builder, Fire
Engineering, and the Progressive Review are now cropping up elsewhere,
including in the New Yorker]
||| BILL
MILLER WASHINGTON POST - The twin towers of the World Trade Center
sustained massive structural damage after two hijacked jets crashed
into the 110-story buildings on Sept. 11, and the steel eventually
buckled under the enormous heat generated by fires caused by
spreading jet fuel, a federal team of engineers has concluded
in a report to be released today. Saying it was "remarkable"
that the towers remained standing as long as they did, the engineers
warned that it "may not be technically feasible" or
cost-effective to design structural safeguards to protect other
skyscrapers from toppling in similar attacks.
Although
the report found that the World Trade Center met building standards,
it urged a national study to examine broader issues such as the
quality of fireproofing materials, placement of emergency exit
stairwells, evacuation procedures and firefighter response. New
standards might be needed to evaluate fire resistance along with
changes in building codes, the report said.
. . .
The report found that automatic sprinklers and other fire-suppression
systems were disabled by the impact of the crash, that top exit
stairwells were cut off by the crash, and that much of the fireproofing
meant to protect steel became dislodged. Meanwhile, "fireballs"
from ignited jet fuel engulfed much of the buildings' contents. |