What do you consider to be the main questions? Those were the two that stood out for me.

(1) The 9-11 Commission refused to examine the vast majority of evidence about 9/11, and even the former director of the FBI says there was a cover up by the 9/11 Commission

(5) Recently declassified documents show that in the 1960's, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also committing terrorist murders against U.S. citizens on American soil, and then blaming it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba

(12) A third world trade center building, called building 7, collapsed on the afternoon of 9/11, but was never hit by plane, fell at the same speed as if there were no floors or walls to cause resistance, contained only small fires before the collapse, and became the first steel-frame building in history to collapse due to fire alone

(13) USA Today stated that the FBI believed that bombs in the buildings brought the buildings down.

(15) The NY Fire Department Chief of Safety stated there were "bombs" and "secondary devices", which caused the explosions in the buildings

(16) NYC firefighters who witnessed attacks stated that it looked like there were bombs in the buildings. A NYC firefighter stated "On the last trip up a bomb went off. We think there was bombs set in the building"

(17) The head of a national demolition association stated that the collapse of the towers looked like a "classic controlled demolition"

(18) Eyewitnesses have testified that substantial explosions occurred well BELOW the area impacted by the planes, and -- according to some witnesses -- they occurred BEFORE the plane had even hit

(19) A police officer testified that there were numerous, HUGE explosions at the top of one of the twin towers 15 minutes apart, before the tower collapsed

(17) The head of a national demolition association stated that the collapse of the towers looked like a "classic controlled demolition"


I felt the same way. I still think that, if the collapse was caused by fire melting beams, there would have been much more twisting than actually happened. What is the liklihood of all the beams on one floor failing at the same time, thus causing an almost perfect vertical drop? Now multiply that by the number of floors. (I am aware that once a few floors started to drop, the lower ones would fail due to the increased weight, but for all of them to fall almost exactly right is hard to accept.)

Just to take World Trade center Seven.
Larry Silverstein, the owner of the WTC complex, admitted on a September 2002 PBS documentary, 'America Rebuilds' that he and the NYFD decided to 'pull' WTC 7 on the day of the attack. The word 'pull' is industry jargon for taking a building down with explosives.

Now if the building was "pulled" as he admits above, when were the "pulling" explosives put in to the building?

Could they have been put in in the ten hours after the collapse of WtC 1 & 2?

This demonstrates my point. How can I respond to this? I can't. And it drives me bonkers.

The thing about conspiracy theories is that they make so many assertions that the average person can't deal with them. For example, numbers 1 and 5 are things that I'd have to see an original source for, and even then, who would know? The source Fourbrick gives for number 2 says it is quoting a New York times article, but it is an online newspaper that I've never heard of, so I have no idea how reliable the info is. Also, even if they are true, again I would have to spend hours investigating - is it normal procedure to destroy a tape? What were the things the 9/11 commission rejected and why? Perhaps once I reserach it would make sense to me, and I'd agree with their decision not to include every scrap of evidence in this tremendous case. But again, I'm not an expert in any of this and I have other things to do. So I have to rely on the sources I think I can trust- local, national and international newspapers, the nightly news.

The rest of the points Fourbrick posts are opinions. I'm no expert in how buildings explode, so all I can do is rely on experts. But, the fact that some experts may have said it looks like controlled explosions doesn't mean much to me. They might have said that in the same way that I might look at a cloud and say, "That looks like my dad!" In other words, their words could be taken out of context and they may have been saying "I was amazed at how they fell because they looked like controlled explosions." Not meaning that an airplane explosion couldn't have done that, but just meaning that it was a pretty incredible explosion. Also, if it were so OBVIOUSLY a controlled explosion, then I think more than just 2 or 3 experts would be saying this. I think it would be front-page news, and I think you wouldn't be able to get the experts to shut up about it. Frankly, if it is a conspiracy, the people who understand explosions, airplanes, fire, how metal melts, whether an explosion that big could cause nearby buildings to collapse as well etc. well enough to be able to spot a fake (if it is as obvious as the experts mentioned here make it sound) would obviously have something to say about it, and the fact that we haven't heard large amounts of scientists and engineers speaking out about this, which would mean that either the conspiracy includes thousands and thousands of people, or that it really isn't that obviously a fake. If this was a fake, and if it was so easily spotted by "experts," then I would expect to see hundreds or thousands of experts speaking out. I don't.

This is why I dislike conspiracy theories. I can't argue with them. I'd have to do so much research to argue with them, and I'm not an expert in any of these things. Neither, I suspect, are the conspiracy theorists.

If there is really something suspect, why aren't universities and other research institutions dealing with them? If you believe that the US government is repressing its people to such an extent that even researchers are in on the conspiracy or are afraid to speak out, then I think that's insane, but even so, why not the British or the French or the German or the Canadian researchers?

The reason experts aren't dealing with this, I believe, is because there really isn't anything to be debated. The only people debating it are people who really don't know much at all about how steel melts or how a building falls or what happens when an airplane crashes full-speed into a skyscraper.

quote:

Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
What is the liklihood of all the beams on one floor failing at the same time, thus causing an almost perfect vertical drop?

DG, on September 11, 2001, while watching the events unfold, our Chief Engineer predicted the fall exactly as it happened several minutes later.

Fuse, I am sure that many engineers said about the same thing, just as I am sure that many saw the collapse as unusual, since the fire started on one side of the building, and thus, that side should be expected to have the earlier failure.

Another consideration - If a building is going to fall, there seems to be only two ways of doing it. Either it collapses, as the Trade Centers did, onto its own footprint, or it falls over sideways. With only two possibilities, random chance says that half of any group will select the right one. However, when I asked about the likelihood (No typo this time ) of the building collapsing as it did, I was also aware that even if there was only one chance in a million that it would happen that way, when you are speaking of just one event, odds are only numbers, and not predictions of reality.

I am not accepting any conspiracy theories about the attack on the WTC, but I do feel that more questions remained unanswered than answered.

Conspiracy theories often fail the 'Scotty Evil' test. In one Austin Powers movie, Scotty, listening to his dad's plan to extort money by building a huge laser in space, asks him why he doesn't just take the money needed to build the laser and invest it - he'd probably make more.

The conspiracy suggested (like faking the moon landings) is often an insanely complex way of achieving something that could be done more simply (for example, by actually sending people to the moon).

If 'They' wanted to fake a terrorist attack by destroying the WTC why would 'They' both bomb it and fly a plane into it? Surely one or the other would have done. If they wanted it to look like the plane crash alone had collapsed the building (but why?), then why were they so dumb that they didn't set the demolition charges on one side of the building only? They surely weren't worried about the extra damage that would be caused if the buildings toppled, instead of collapsing vertically.

Whatever the engineers say, this conspiracy theory doesn't make sense from the start.

quote:

Originally posted by DG:
What is the liklihood of all the beams on one floor failing at the same time, thus causing an almost perfect vertical drop? Now multiply that by the number of floors. (I am aware that once a few floors started to drop, the lower ones would fail due to the increased weight, but for all of them to fall almost exactly right is hard to accept.)

The buildings were struck well below their tops, so what fell already represented the weight of many intact floors combined.

I'm not an engineer, but I'd guess that since the entire static weight of the top section of the building is already directed straight downward, while the turning moment (torque) to tip or twist the whole top section of the building is so huge, the top section would tend to drop vertically once it began to fall -- regardless of whether structural failure was symmetrical or not. We're talking snapping, not buckling, of supports. One by one, every floor below fails as well with less and less resistance because of the increasing speed / momentum / kinetic energy of everything coming down above it. "Pancaking."

Also, isn't it reasonable that the jet fuel would soon become evenly distributed over the building's cross-section, thus softening beams fairly symmetrically? The ruptured side of the building did not lead to the collapse -- it was the intense fire inside. So the gaping hole on the building's exterior is a red herring. The pattern of catastrophic structural failure could have been fairly symmetric to begin with.

Either way the top section is not going to just "fall over" on its side.

I understand that the weigth of the top floors would cause a collapse for the floors above the impact floor, but since the buildings were struck on a side, and only one of them showed outside damage on two sides, we can safely say that the impact damage didn't go all the way through the building. In fact, it may have been stopped by the central core, which, as I recall, was the strongest part of the building. The other building was struck more at an angle, which could have given it a path that avoided the central core. Avoiding the central core may have allowed the plane to penetrate a side adjacent to the one struck.

You ask if it isn't reasonable to assume that the fuel was evenly distributed. On what do you base that assumption? While it makes a nice, neat way to put everything together, it seems to me that the opposite is much more likely to be true. A fire started in the middle of a building doesn't usually spread in a symetrical pattern. (Yes, I called a fire fighter.) Unless the jet's path went into the building exactly perpendicular to the side of the building, isn't it more likely that the fuel spread would not be evenly distributed, especially when the stronger central core is blocking some of the fuel's path?

Even if the fuel was distributed as you say, the fire still started at one point and spread. That means that the beams in that area would have been subjected to more heat, or longer heat. The melting process would have a head start at that point, and seemingly should have caused the beams to fail first, before the rest. Remember that the fuel was in the wings, or at least the majority of it, and the wings certainly would break off before they got very far into the building. The fuel would certanly spew out, but would be stopped by and walls that were still intact. Yes, there would be an expolsion of the fuel that would take down most of the walls, but you can't have it both ways. If the walls were knocked down by the explosion, then the fuel obviously coudn't have traveled past the walls before the expolsion, which indicates that the fuel didn't spread evenly.

If, in my previous post, it seemed that I meant that the impact and hole in the side caused the collapse, I apologize. That is most certainly not what I meant, therefor the impact and the hole in the side isn't in play, let alone a red herring. I also didn't meant that the building would fall over sideways like a tree.* I guess I should have said either it falls into its footprint or it doesn't.

Again, I am not saying that there is any kind of conspiracy covering up bombs in the building, the Bush-Saud connection, or the Jack Ruby-Mafia connection. What I am saying is that many many questions remain unanswered, that we have not been given all the pertinent facts, and that some of the official explanations just don't make sense.

*However, I have seen buildings that were meant to drop directly down, but were improperly planned or had an unknown structural weakness on one side, and the building did fall almost like a tree. I also saw a film clip of a smokestack demolition that went awry, and, again, it fell like a tree rather than drop straight down as planned.

I have a confession to make. My older brother, he's 90, was the superintendent of structural ironworkers on the constuction of the twin towers. My nephew was photographed from a helicopter erecting the 350 foot antenna on the roof of the northern tower. My brother insists to this day that those planes could have never brought those towers down. He believes there were explosives planted. And there is no use trying to convince him othewise. He knows, and I know, that he wouldn't tolerate shoddy or inferior work. I also believe, as an engineer - albeit an electrical one retired for 18 years, that what professor says is very likely true, and my big brother, bless him, is 90 years old and slightly prejudiced.

I agree with what professor says concerning the weight of the floors above where the plane struck would be directed vertically down, Whatever damage to the side of the impact might have happened would have resulted in a turning moment inward - only adding to the vertical load on the structure beloww. I believe that the fuel, which had the same velocity and momentum of the plane it was contained in, would tend to distribute uniformly, more or less, over the floor of the breached wall. The walls were essentially curtain walls and rather than rivets were supported or assembled with hight tensile strength bolts. I believe that postmortem investigators found that the bolts melted and sheared off - resulting in the progressive addition of each floor's weight above every remaining one.IMHO. Sorry big bro! The fault basically is that the buiding design was not the best for withstanding impact with a fuel loaded airplane.

quote:

Originally posted by DorianGreyed:
Again, I am not saying that there is any kind of conspiracy covering up bombs in the building, the Bush-Saud connection, or the Jack Ruby-Mafia connection. What I am saying is that many many questions remain unanswered, that we have not been given all the pertinent facts, and that some of the official explanations just don't make sense.

Which offocial explanations don't make sense?

Here are some sites that deal with why the WTC fell as it did. I think it makes sense.

http://www.civil.usyd.edu.au/wtc.shtml
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/wtc/collapse.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1540044.stm

The first one (an apparently Australian site, by the way) deals with which way the buildings fell:

quote:

This photograph shows the south tower just as it is collapsing. It is evident that the building is falling over to the left. The North Tower collapsed directly downwards, on top of itself. The same mechanism of failure, the combination of impact and subsequent fire damage, is the likely cause of failure of both towers. However, it is possible that a storey on only one side of the South Tower initially collapsed, resulting in the "skewed" failure of the entire tower.

While the ways the two towers fell were slightly different, the basic cause is similar for both - a large number of columns were destroyed on impact, and the remaining structure was gradually weakened by the heat of the fire. Not much significance should be taken from the fact that one tower fell in 45 minutes and the other in 90 minutes.

The gigantic dynamic impact forces caused by the huge mass of the falling structure landing on the floors below is very much greater than the static load they were designed to resist.

It also talks about the suspicion that some have about explosives having been used:

quote:

The way the building collapsed must have been caused by explosions

One demolition expert on the day of the collapse said it looked like implosion but this is not very strong evidence. Implosion firstly requires a lot of explosives placed in strategic areas all around the building. When and how was this explosive placed in the building without anyone knowing about it. Second, implosion required more than just explosives. Demolition experts spend weeks inside a derelict building planning an event. Many of the beams are cut through by about 90% so that the explosion only has to break a small bit of steel. In this state the building is highly dangerous, and there is no way such a prepared building could still be running day to day like WTC was.

I haven't yet read this article, called Debunking the 9/11 myths but thought I'd post it anyway.

A ten page article filled with information that a non-expert like me can't hope to remember well (as opposed to statements like "An expert said it looked like a controlled explosion," which is very memerable) explains why conspiracy theories make me crazy. They are impossible to deal with in a normal conversation, because the conspiracy theorist has easy-to-remember statements on his side, while all I have are pages and pages of things that I don't fully understand because I haven't studied engineering and the like.

Fourbrick... not many people are going to have time to go through and reply to each claim of conspiracy theorists about 9-11. Snopes.com does a good job. I read parts of the article about the structures.

As to the structural issues and the official reports that were generated to explain what happened, I know someone who worked on all of that. It is very simple to understand what happens if you want to... I suppose it's also very easy to confuse people that don't understand structures if that's the intent of the paper. Papers with titles such as "Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Collapse?" are not scholarly works even if the web page says the writers are "Scholars". They are attempts to find a conspiracy in the work of others... cutter charges were not needed to bring down the buildings. No conspiracy.

The frames of the buildings were incredibly light for a building that tall. It's that simple. The planes took out the bearing points of the open steel joists, blew off the fire proofing and obliterated the building core. The several floor collapse caused a pancake reaction that brought both the buildings to the ground. Furthermore the structural design of the building and the weight above the floors that were hit, meant that when the floors were taken out that the top of the building was floating - then turned to a wrecking ball dropped on the floors below. The planes hit in a very detrimental spot.

"The WTC towers were solidly constructed with 47 steel core columns and 240 perimeter steel beams. 287 steel-columns total. Many doubt that random fires/damage could cause them to collapse straight down (official theory), and suspect explosives."

I really don't know who these guys are but anyone who has seen steel fail at a high temperature knows that it makes little difference if there were 2,000,000 steel columns... it is about equivilent to trying to support a building with butter. This isn't very high level information so I think these guys are totally full of it if they can pretend that the jet fuel didn't have an enormous impact on the collapse... it's mind boggling to me.

Further more, my eyes never left the buildings after the planes hit and I can tell you that there was no sign of any problems caused by cutter charges. On a building of this type a cutter charge would definitely cause visible damage and I mean EVERYONE would have seen the damage. The exterior was light gauge steel... it would have been visible.

This building was a very very far cry from "solidly constructed"... I am so sorry that people have to read this kind of crap about a subject that is so sensitive and tragic.

I accept what you say about the planes hitting the building, but how does that explain the "pulling" (in the owner's own words- available now on tape,) of building seven. As was mentioned above, to be pulled, there would have had to have been explosives placed in the building prior to its being pulled. When were they?

Incidentally your comment about "read this..... about a subject that is so sensitive and tragic." is exactly why it should be discussed.

Silverstein said he suggested to the fire department to "pull it." Now, given that this is a property owner talking to the fire department, does it make more sense to interpret this as pulling the firefighters out or using what seems to be some jargon of a field that it isn't clear either are involved with?

For what it's worth, Silverstein has said he meant pull the firefighters out.

The only explosive in WTC 7 was the thousands of gallons of fuel oil in the building. The command post for New York City Emergency Management Team operations was located in that building. The oil was there to run generators and building necessities in the event of power outages.

The building was smoldering shortly after the Twin Towers fell. Once the building was known to be evacuated little else was done to save it as there were other things more important to do at the time. It was known to those on the ground once the fires started raging in the lower floors that morning it was only a matter of time before it fell. No conspiracy here.

1. Considering I go to boards like: http://www.godlikeproductions.com/index.php and do lots of reading I have to answer to the affirmative. However I believe half of what I read and have a reputation of being a "Debunker" there and elsewhere. Which leads to my answer to number 2.

2. You can not win an argument with a Conspiracy Theorist. Many have "logical" arguments for every aspect or point you can raise, failing a "logical" answer they will resort to calling you a Paid Government Debunker.

The Improbability Factor of any given event, when scrutinized becomes proportionally more improbable when the string of coincidence exceeds the limits of most peoples’ imaginations.

In the cases you sited there are strings, sometime long strings of coincidence which in hindsight are difficult to explain away with “just coincidence”.

A good deal of the “Conspiracy Theories” out there has some decent “logic” behind them, however that “logic” is most often based upon partial data or myth-representation of data. Considering that no-one has “first hand” information on all aspects of any given event thus requiring us to rely upon “official” information a conspiracy theory, in many cases, is just as valid as any given ‘official theory’, especially when dealing with the Lizard, elitist, Masonic Satanists who rule the world.

LOL

It would seem to me that there are indeed conspiracy theories which seem unbelievable.
One conspiracy theory is that Iraq, Saddam and Osama Bin Laden were involved in the 9-11 atrocities. Unfortunately because this conspiracy theory is one proposed by the U.S. Government, it no longer is a conspiracy theory but a fact.

Some,as David says, conspiracy theorists
"have "logical" arguments for every aspect or point that you can raise, failing a "logical" answer, they will resort to calling you (to paraphrase) a Lizard or Masonic Satanist believer."



For those who are interested in further discussion of this subject, can I suggest Re-open the 9-11 Investigation