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September 11th Conspiracies - Other Considerations

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WTC 7: Conspirator's Motives

One of the alleged motives conspiracy theorists give to the demolition of WTC 7 is that they needed to destroy secret documents. Some of which may convict them of the crime itself. Since the CIA and Secret Service had offices in Building 7, could they have been trying to hide documents from investigators?

First of all, when you have incriminating evidence stored on hard drives at your home, do you erase the hard drives or do you blow up your house with bombs? This seems like a simple question to answer, but apparently not for conspiracy theorists.  Paper is a bit harder to get rid of. It takes a little longer, but why not take the incriminating papers along with you the night before and they chuck them in the back of a wood chipper? That does seem ridiculous but yet it's more plausible than the hypothesized motive for "pulling" building 7. Something noteworthy is that they DID find hard drives and recovered files from the wreckage. So this isn't exactly a flawless method of eliminating evidence.

Second point, the CIA only leased about half the office space on ONE floor. (1) The secret service had leased floors 9 and 10. (2) Doesn't seem like much to hide. Why didn't they send a group of computer specialists during those midnight bomb plantings and erase the hard drives then. After all, the only people on floors 9, 10 and half of floor 25 would be the CIA and the Secret Service. They wouldn't have to hide their dirty work from the janitors because what do they know? They could have deleted everything the night before, or even after the first plane hit in case for some reason they needed a distraction.

Third point, the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) has stated: "we are confident that we will not lose any significant investigation or case as a result of the loss of our building in New York. No one whom we have sued or whose conduct we have been investigating should doubt our resolve to continue our pursuit of justice in every such matters." (3) Some investigations were delayed, but most of the destroyed paperwork and computer files were either stored on back up hard drives off site.

"The Commission's records related to examinations of all securities firms are maintained electronically in a central database, and were unaffected by the tragedy. Electronic copies of examination reports and deficiency letters are maintained off-site for investment advisers, investment companies, broker-dealers and transfer agents. Records relating to open examinations will be reconstructed from records that exist at registrants' offices and from other sources."  (4)

Lastly, the massive conspirators have managed to cover up all of their evil work intimidating FEMA, NIST, Purdue University, Demolition Inc., the FDNY, American Airlines, and NORAD etc. but yet they need to hide documents from some other agency that will foil their plans Who may this agency be?

1) http://www.fema.gov/pdf/library/fema403_ch5.pdf    (Page 2)
2) http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/trade.center/tenants7.html
3) "SEC & EEOC: Attack Delays Investigations"
By Margaret Cronin Fisk, National Law Journal, September 17, 2001
4) http://www.sec.gov/news/testimony/092601tshlp.htm



Claim: The World Trade Center was brought down by explosives


One of the most striking characteristics of an explosive is the very loud sound which results from it. This is what conspiracy theorists were missing in all of the videos of the collapses.  Sure there was explosions inside the building before its collapse, but this is what is to be expected when an large building is set on fire. Explosions would also be recorded at local seismic stations, but yet fail to do so on 9/11. (1) This led some conspiracy researchers to look for an alternative solution. Thermite, Thermate, and Nanothermite have been proposed by Professor Steven Jones,  a retired physicist from BYU.  (2)


Thermite is not explosive, but does ignite and produce high temperatures. When ignited thermite can give off temperatures around 4500 degrees F. It is present in sparklers and has a similar flaring up effect.  Thermate is a variation of thermite used in grenades that burns at higher temperatures. So what's wrong with these two options? Neither has ever been used to demolish a building, so there's no evidence that this would even work. Several tests done on steel beams indicate that thermite/thermate does not even weaken it. (3) (4) Here are some of the anomalies conspiracy researchers have rounded up and connected to thermite/thermate:



1), molten steel
2) the long burning fires under the WTC
3) the high temperatures
4) evidence of nano-sized chips in the World Trade Center dust.

First of all, molten steel and long lasting fires don't have any connection to thermite/ thermate or any conventional explosive. It is not even confirmed if molten steel was present the only evidence that would suggest that is anecdotal. The molten steel witnesses would not be able to tell what kind of metal it was, or if it was molten. Looks can be deceiving as steel can oxidize at 1800°F, in which the steel can look molten.

Since thermite burns up in a couple of seconds, this doesn't look like a good explanation for month long fires.  Despite the fact that thermite and thermate can remain lit underwater and in enclosed spaces (5),there's no way any of the thermite varieties could have kept burning for months underground at their peak temperatures. Then how come the debris at the WTC burned so long? The amount of combustible material and fuel left over under the debris pile was enormous.

"It is no mystery why the fire has burned for so long. Mangled steel and concrete, plastics from office furniture and equipment, fuels from elevator hydraulics, cars and other sources are all in great supply in the six-story basement area where the two towers collapsed. Water alone rarely can quench this kind of fire, which will burn as long as there is adequate fuel and oxygen and as long as heat cannot escape, fire experts said." (6)

And if you think the WTC fires lasted for a long time, Australia has a natural underground coal fire that has been burning for 5500 years!

"The lack of oxygen underground means the fire burns slowly, and with 6 km of burnt area, the fire is estimated to be about 5,500 years old... The fire temperature reaches temperatures of 1,700°C deep beneath the ground." (7)

- The high temperatures weren't anywhere close to 4500 degrees F. The NASA images show that the fires were around 800 F. (8) This refutes the notion that there was molten steel, because steel melts at 2700 F.



The red/grey chips Steven Jones tested contain elements such as aluminum, sulfur, manganese, fluorine and 1,3 Diphenylpropane. What were they doing in the dust? Thermite? The truth is these elements were all by products of building materials lit on fire. The red/gray chips may have been the primer paint used on the columns as they have a striking resemblance in both structure and appearance.

"We can also say that because Kaolinite is present and that it is embedded in a Carbon based matrix with Rhomboidal Fe2O3 that a more likely explanation for the red material is paint." JREF(9)


The most commonly cited "mystery element" is  1,3 Diphenylpropane which is a byproduct of burnt computers. The RJ Lee Group did an environmental study on the WTC dust back in 2003 and found the exact same things Jones did.(10) It was the interpretation that differed.  The RJ Lee Group concluded that all of the elements can be accounted for by the buildings' materials(dry wall, paint, computers), while Steven Jones concluded that it couldn't be that, but was probably militarized explosives!


Nanothermite, the latest claimed mechanism for destruction is also a poor candidate.  It does exist, but it hasn't been used as an explosive, and is still being experimented with. This has been widely touted as the nail in the government's coffin because of a "peer reviewed study" which was allegedly discovered by Steven Jones, Niels Harrit and others in 2009. (11) For one, the journal only requires an 800$ fee for submission, and initial peer review was nonexistent.  Studies done by Norwegian scientists contradict Steven Jones' findings.


"My first impression here, a thing that they try to exclude, that is paint. It looks like paint. It – I'm tempted to say – almost smells like paint to. And what they describe of pigments, that is to say things you can actually find inside this here, that is also things you can actually find in paint. You can find all the components that constitutes here in a paint, so I wouldn't say they've excluded that well enough." -Ola Nilsen, who is a nano-scientist at the University of Oslo


"reminds me more of a ...I'm tempted to say... post-graduate thesis like the ones Master-students write, at least with regard to the type of techniques used in the analysis that is used in this paper, so that it scientifically, is no hold in their claim from my perspective." – Professor Tor Grande Institute of Material Technology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology


American Physicist Dr. Frank Greening had this to say about the plausibility of nanothermite being used to demolish the towers.


"I've already done a calculation, (see my post from a few days ago), of how much heat energy a layer of nano-thermite (such as the one allegedly found by Jones et al) could generate. And, by the way, you have not commented on this calculation as you said you would. Nevertheless, my conclusion was that Jones' chips would do no more than slightly warm a WTC column!"


And when he emailed Jones the results-


"So when I bounced my calculations and conclusions off Jones et al, all he could come up with was the suggestion that there were probably other explosives used in the WTC and the nanothermite chips were maybe just fuses!



Thus, after all the fuss about high-tech nano-thermites, we are back to good-old "bombs in the buildings" as the answer to how the buildings were destroyed." (12)

In addition, nanothermite could not just be painted on as some truthers have suggested. (13) It is created in high pressure and under tightly controlled conditions. It simply would not work if you painted it on. Plus how would they time the ignitions of the nanothermite?



In the we're back to square one. If nanothermite was just used as a fuse, then we have bombs which equals loud explosions. And just the idea that nanothermite would be used as a fuse is absurd. They have never in the history of controlled demolition used anything like nanothermite as a fuse. Why would they risk using an experimental thermitic material as a fuse for explosives?


1. http://www.vibrationdata.com/Newsletters/November2001_NL.pdf


2. http://stj911.org/


3. National Geographic Documentary: 9/11 conspiracy and science special


4. Tru TV's Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura. 9/11 episode


5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite


6. by Eric Lipton and Andrew C. Revkin, New York Times, November 19, 2001


7. http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/enviro/EnviroRepublish_786127.htm


8. http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0405/ofr-01-0405.html


9. http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=4607894&postcount=1694


10. http://www.nyenvirolaw.org/WTC/130%20Liberty%20Street/Mike%20Davis%20LMDC%20130%20Liberty%20Documents/Signature%20of%20WTC%20dust/WTC%20Dust%20Signature.Composition%20and%20Morphology.Final.pdf


11. http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM


12. http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/2009/05/response-to-harrit-jones-etal-from-dr.html


13. T. M. Tillotson, A. E. Gash, R. L. Simpson, L. W. Hrubesh, J. H. Satcher Jr., and J. F. Poco, "Nanostructured Energetic Materials Using Sol-Gel Methodologies," Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids, Vol. 285, pp. 338-345, 2001





Demolition claims part 2:

The 9/11 MIHOPers come in three flavors.(well we'll keep it to 3) We have the thermite/nanothermite/super thermite theory, the convential bomb theory and the space laser theory. The space laser theory falls apart for many reasons which is discussed elsewhere. The thermite theory, for the sake of this argument will be now called the silent theory. This is the more plausible choice of the three because there is no evidence of any explosions while the collapse is taking place, not the mention the abscence of flying glass, deafening bangs and seismic detections. The bomb theory we shall call the loud theory. Richard Gage who is the leader of the Architects and Engineers for truth, can't seem to decide which theory to adhere to. The same goes for a lot of the truth movement resulting in contradictory claims. So if you want to be consistent with your fantasy you have to pick ONE! Or maybe I spoke to soon. In light of the fact that nanothermite has about half the potential energy as fire, Steven Jones has actually said that the nanothermite was used as a fuse for convential explosives! So he is a dualist on terms of these explosive theories. The whole reason the thermite theory has been advanced was because of the lack of evidence, but now it seems that they don't care about that problem anymore. And why is this a surprise? They haven't managed to correct any of the other countless lies and misrepresentations that have accumulated during the first 5 years, why start now. But they do deserve some awards for their consistent incompetence and for their obedience to their numerous scholarly saviors. In conclusion, the controlled demolition hypothesis is an irrational idea to believe because the fires in the WTC buildings had far more energy than what would be produced by nanothermite or its variants. It is mere speculation that thermite could bring down a building, as it has never been used to demolish a building. The logistical problems with using thermite to demolish a building that large, and how they could have triggered a simultanous igntion is a huge problem that demolition experts have pointed out. This may be the reason that not a single demo expert in the world believes this hypothesis. Another glaring problem in both of these scenarios, is the fact that it would have taken several months and dozens of workers to set these things up, not to mention building 7. The loud theory is refuted because of the lack of evidence of loud explosions, which would have been heard up to a mile away and audible on all the videos, the visible flashes, and the fact that not a single NY citizen has been diagnosed with "blast lung" or impaired hearing on 9/11. To really understand what a demolition would have sounded and looked like, take a look at this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79sJ1bMR6VQ&feature=player_embedded


The towers fell at free fall speed
This is observably false. The debris (free fall) is clearly falling faster than the structure. NIST is often cited as giving the collapse times for the towers at 10 seconds, but if you look at the section and read it in context, they are really talking about the detached columns and debris. A video that truly debunks this claim can be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLShZOvxVe4


Verinage Demolition

The Verinage technique has been used frequently in France for the past few years. These demolitions demonstrate that total collapses are possible, and that you don't need explosives to
initate them. These demolitions are performed by using hydraulic pulleys and cables to pull in the columns, usually on one floor. When you remove the strength of one floor, the rest of the structure is not just one compact block. It is obviously made up of a bunch of smaller structures, which by themselves is not able to sustain the weight of the sections above. This is what happened on 9/11, only there wasn't any cables or pulleys. The fires weakened the steel to a point in which the columns were so bowed that the top sections began to tilt. This can be measured by looking at the antennas and comparing them before and during collapse. This tilt led to a series of successive failures on the floors below, and since the columns were no longer aligned, the structures lacked both the strength and balance to slow down the above structure. The weight of the upper sections was in the hundreds of thousands of tons, which is way past the limit of weight for an individual floor to hold. Once the collapse started, the total collapse was inevitable.
In conclusion, the verinage demolition demonstration is for sure a collosal embarassment for the 9/11 truth movement as it completely falsifies their beliefs. But cognitive dissonace works wonders. Some have speculated that it was in fact verinage demolition that was the fate of the three towers. Instead of employing Occam's razor, they prefer the more fantastical, illogical choice because it fits in with their worldview, and because they've spent so much time defending this nonsense, they just can't take off the blinders. Other "critics" of this argument claim that the verinage technique is strikingly different than the collapses of the towers. (2)Hmm.. Could this be because the towers are much bigger? Or because they fell due to fires weakening the steel? Or maybe they are structurally different in design and materials? There are so many factors different about the two that could create the "anomalies" CTs claim to have found, but the only one that matters in this case is that it is now demonstrably false that a total collapse is impossible. This is the whole point of bringing up verinage demolition, but the truth movement fails to acknowledge this. Its just like the creationists who when presented a intermediate fossil say: "Ha. Now there is two more missing links, one on each side of the one just discovered."  It can happen and it did, end of story.

Videos of Verinage Demolition:

Close up view showing the cables at work
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8i32e_d%C3%A9molition-d-immeuble-%C3%A0-vandoeuvre_news
Example 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY3nj728WPY
Example 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GNhEpHfgfI

1.
2.http://911debunkers.blogspot.com/2010/02/debunker-verinage-fantasies-are-bunk.html


Claim: The World Trade Center was brought down by explosives/thermite

One of the most striking characteristics of an explosive is the very loud sound which results from it. This is what conspiracy theorists were missing in all of the videos of the collapses.  Sure there was explosions inside the building before its collapse, but this is what is to be expected when an large building is set on fire. Explosions would also be recorded at local seismic stations, but yet fail to do so on 9/11. (1) This led some conspiracy researchers to look for an alternative solution. Thermite, Thermate, and Nanothermite have been proposed by Professor Steven Jones,  a retired physicist from BYU. (2)

Thermite is not explosive, but does ignite and produce high temperatures. When ignited thermite can give off temperatures around 4500 degrees F. It is present in sparklers and has a similar flaring up effect.  Thermate is a variation of thermite used in grenades that burns at higher temperatures. So what's wrong with these two options? Neither has ever been used to demolish a building, so there's no evidence that this would even work. Several tests done on steel beams indicate that thermite/thermate does not even weaken it. (3) (4) Here are some of the anomalies conspiracy researchers have rounded up and connected to thermite/thermate:

1), molten steel
2) the long burning fires under the WTC
3) the high temperatures
4) evidence of nano-sized chips in the World Trade Center dust.


First of all, molten steel and long lasting fires don't have any connection to thermite/ thermate or any conventional explosive. It is not even confirmed if molten steel was present the only evidence that would suggest that is anecdotal. The molten steel witnesses would not be able to tell what kind of metal it was, or if it was molten. Looks can be deceiving as steel can oxidize at 1800°F, in which the steel can look molten.

Since thermite burns up in a couple of seconds, this doesn't look like a good explanation for month long fires. Despite the fact that thermite and thermate can remain lit underwater and in enclosed spaces (5),there's no way any of the thermite varieties could have kept burning for months underground at their peak temperatures. Then how come the debris at the WTC burned so long? The amount of combustible material and fuel left over under the debris pile was enormous.

"It is no mystery why the fire has burned for so long. Mangled steel and concrete, plastics from office furniture and equipment, fuels from elevator hydraulics, cars and other sources are all in great supply in the six-story basement area where the two towers collapsed. Water alone rarely can quench this kind of fire, which will burn as long as there is adequate fuel and oxygen and as long as heat cannot escape, fire experts said." (6)

And if you think the WTC fires lasted for a long time, Australia has a natural underground coal fire that has been burning for 5500 years!

"The lack of oxygen underground means the fire burns slowly, and with 6 km of burnt area, the fire is estimated to be about 5,500 years old... The fire temperature reaches temperatures of 1,700°C deep beneath the ground." (7)

- The high temperatures weren't anywhere close to 4500 degrees F. The NASA images show that the fires were around 800 F. (8) This refutes the notion that there was molten steel, because steel melts at 2700 F.

The red/grey chips Steven Jones tested contain elements such as aluminum, sulfur, manganese, fluorine and 1,3 Diphenylpropane. What were they doing in the dust? Thermite? The truth is these elements were all by products of building materials lit on fire. The red/gray chips may have been the primer paint used on the columns as they have a striking resemblance in both structure and appearance. Your browser may not support display of this image.

"We can also say that because Kaolinite is present and that it is embedded in a Carbon based matrix with Rhomboidal Fe2O3 that a more likely explanation for the red material is paint." JREF(9)

The most commonly cited "mystery element" is 1,3 Diphenylpropane which is a byproduct of burnt computers. The RJ Lee Group did an environmental study on the WTC dust back in 2003 and found the exact same things Jones did.(10) It was the interpretation that differed.  The RJ Lee Group concluded that all of the elements can be accounted for by the buildings' materials(dry wall, paint, computers), while Steven Jones concluded that it couldn't be that, but was probably militarized explosives!

Nanothermite, the latest claimed mechanism for destruction is also a poor candidate. It does exist, but it hasn't been used as an explosive, and is still being experimented with. This has been widely touted as the nail in the government's coffin because of a "peer reviewed study" which allegedly discovered this "explosive" was produced by Steven Jones, Niels Harrit and others in 2009. (11) For one, the journal only requires an 800$ fee for submission, and initial peer review was nonexistent. Studies done by Norwegian scientists contradict Steven Jones' findings.

"My first impression here, a thing that they try to exclude, that is paint. It looks like paint. It – I'm tempted to say – almost smells like paint to. And what they describe of pigments, that is to say things you can actually find inside this here, that is also things you can actually find in paint. You can find all the components that constitutes here in a paint, so I wouldn't say they've excluded that well enough." -Ola Nilsen, who is a nano-scientist at the University of Oslo

"reminds me more of a ...I'm tempted to say... post-graduate thesis like the ones Master-students write, at least with regard to the type of techniques used in the analysis that is used in this paper, so that it scientifically, is no hold in their claim from my perspective." – Professor Tor Grande Institute of Material Technology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

American Physicist Dr. Frank Greening had this to say about the plausibility of nanothermite being used to demolish the towers.

"I've already done a calculation, (see my post from a few days ago), of how much heat energy a layer of nano-thermite (such as the one allegedly found by Jones et al) could generate. And, by the way, you have not commented on this calculation as you said you would. Nevertheless, my conclusion was that Jones' chips would do no more than slightly warm a WTC column!"

And when he emailed Jones the results-

"So when I bounced my calculations and conclusions off Jones et al, all he could come up with was the suggestion that there were probably other explosives used in the WTC and the nanothermite chips were maybe just fuses!

Thus, after all the fuss about high-tech nano-thermites, we are back to good-old "bombs in the buildings" as the answer to how the buildings were destroyed." (12)

In addition, nanothermite could not just be painted on as some truthers have suggested. It is created in high pressure and under tightly controlled conditions. It simply would not work if you painted it on. Plus how would they time the ignitions of the nanothermite?

In the we're back to square one. If nanothermite was just used as a fuse, then we have bombs which equals loud explosions. And just the idea that nanothermite would be used as a fuse is absurd. They have never in the history of controlled demolition used anything like nanothermite as a fuse. Why would they risk using an experimental thermitic material as a fuse for explosives?

  1. http://www.vibrationdata.com/Newsletters/November2001_NL.pdf

  2. http://stj911.org/

  3. National Geographic Documentary: 9/11 conspiracy and science special

  4. Tru TV's Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura. 9/11 episode

  5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermite

  6. by Eric Lipton and Andrew C. Revkin, New York Times, November 19, 2001

  7. http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/enviro/EnviroRepublish_786127.htm

  8. http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0405/ofr-01-0405.html

  9. http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=4607894&postcount=1694

  10. http://www.nyenvirolaw.org/WTC/130%20Liberty%20Street/Mike%20Davis%20LMDC%20130%20Liberty%20Documents/Signature%20of%20WTC%20dust/WTC%20Dust%20Signature.Composition%20and%20Morphology.Final.pdf

  11. http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM

  12. http://screwloosechange.blogspot.com/2009/05/response-to-harrit-jones-etal-from-dr.html