Jim Dwyer /New York Times Article
valis Fri, 09/01/2006 - 11:17pm
I think this guys is on our side, or he wouldn't have even bothered to write this article.
For the NY Times, this is probably as good as it's gonna get. For now.
By Jim Dwyer The New York Times
Published: September 1, 2006
U.S. moves to debunk 'alternative theories' on Sept. 11 attacks
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/09/01/news/conspiracy.php
QUOTE
NEW YORK Faced with an angry minority of people who believe the Sept. 11 attacks were part of a shadowy and sprawling plot run by Americans, separate reports were published this week by the State Department and a federal science agency insisting that the catastrophes were caused by hijackers who used commercial airliners as weapons.
The official narrative of the attacks has been attacked as little more than a cover story by an assortment of radio hosts, academics, amateur filmmakers and others who have spread their arguments on the Internet and cable television in America and abroad. As a motive, they suggest that the Bush administration wanted to use the attacks to justify military action in the Middle East.
Most elaborately, they propose that the collapse of the World Trade Center was actually caused by explosive charges secretly planted in the buildings, rather than by the destructive force of the airliners that thundered into the towers and set them ablaze.
The government reports and officials say the demolition argument is utterly implausible on a number of grounds. Indeed, few proponents of the explosives theory are willing to venture explanations of how daunting logistical problems would be overcome, such as planting thousands of pounds of explosives in busy office towers.
Nevertheless, federal officials say they moved to affirm the conventional history of the day because of the persistence of what they call "alternative theories." On Wednesday, the National Institute of Standards and Technology issued a seven-page study based on its earlier 10,000-page report on how and why the trade center collapsed. The full report, released a year ago, and the synopsis, in a question and answer format, are available online at http://wtc.nist.gov.
About a dozen researchers produced the new study over the last two months by assembling material from the longer report that addressed the conspiracy claims.
"With the fifth anniversary coming up, there seemed to be more play for the alternative viewpoints," said Michael Newman, a spokesman for the institute. "We have received e-mails and phone calls asking us to respond to these theories, and we felt that this fact sheet was the best means of doing so."
A nationwide poll taken earlier this summer by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that more than a third of those surveyed said the federal government either took part in the attacks or allowed them to happen. And 16 percent said the destruction of the trade center was aided by explosives hidden in the buildings. The survey questioned 1,010 adults by telephone and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points. Details are available at http://newspolls.org.
The demolition theory has managed to endure what would seem to be enormous obstacles to its practicality. Controlled demolition is done from the bottom of buildings, not the top, to take advantage of gravity, and there is little dispute that the collapse of the two towers began high in the towers, in the areas where the airplanes struck.
Moreover, a demolition project would have required the walls of the towers to be opened on dozens of floors, followed by the insertion of thousands of pounds of explosives, fuses and ignition mechanisms, all sneaked past the security stations, inside hundreds of feet of walls on all four faces of both buildings. Then the walls presumably would have been closed up.
All this would have had to take place without attracting the notice of any of the thousands of tenants and workers in either building; no witness has ever reported such activity. Then on the morning of Sept. 11, the demolition explosives would have had to withstand the impacts of the airplanes, since the collapse did not begin for 57 minutes in one tower, and 102 minutes in the other.
Those who believe in the demolition theory remain unpersuaded by government statements new or old, and the officials who issued the would-be rejoinders say they are not surprised.
"We realize that this fact sheet won't convince those who hold to the alternative theories that our findings are sound," Newman said. "In fact, the fact sheet was never intended for them. It is for the masses who have seen or heard the alternative theory claims and want balance."
Newman was correct that the institute's reports would not convert those who favor the demolition theories, said Kevin Ryan, who is the coeditor of an online publication, www.journalof911studies.com, that has published much of the material arguing that the government's accounts are false.
"The list of answers NIST has provided is generating more questions, and more skepticism, than ever before," Ryan said.
Newman said, "NIST respects the opinions of others who do not agree with the findings in its report on the collapses of WTC1 and WTC2."
The State Department report, which officials said was written independently of the NIST synopsis, is titled, "The Top Sept. 11 Conspiracy Theories" and says, "Numerous unfounded conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11 attacks continue to circulate, especially on the Internet." Produced by an arm of the State Department known as a "counter-misinformation team," the report is dated Aug. 28 and appears as a special feature on the department's Web site, at http://usinfo.state.gov/media/misinformation.html.
The report brought to light one little-known detail about the morning: a private demolition monitoring firm, Protec Documentation Services, had seismographs at several construction sites in Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Those machines documented the tremors of the falling towers, but captured no ground vibrations before the collapses from demolition charges or bombs, according to a separate report by Brent Blanchard, the director of field operations for Protec. It is available online at www.implosionworld.com.
Asked for comment, Ryan said that his online 911 journal would soon publish an article on those seismic recordings. He also maintained that the Protec paper did not adequately address why puffs of smoke were seen being expelled from some of the floors. However, the federal investigators said that about 70 percent of a building's volume consists of air, and what looked like puffs of smoke were jets of air - and dust - that were pushed ahead of the collapse.
Among those now propelling the argument that explosives took down the trade center is Steven Jones, a physics professor at Brigham Young University, coeditor with Ryan of www.journalof911studies.com, which published his paper, "Why Indeed Did the World Trade Center Buildings Completely Collapse on 9-11-2001?"
In an e-mail message Thursday, Jones did not explain how so much explosive could have been positioned in the two buildings without drawing attention. "Others are researching the maintenance activity in the buildings in the weeks prior to 9/11/2001," he wrote.
He said his investigation was finding fluorine and zinc in metal debris and dust gathered from near the trade center site, and argued that those elements should not have been found in the building compounds. "We are investigating the possibility of thermite-based arson and demolition," he wrote, referring to compounds that, under controlled circumstances, can cut through steel.
The federal investigators at the National Institute of Standards and Technology state that enormous quantities of thermite would have to be applied to the structural columns to damage them. Not so, said Jones; he reported that he and others were investigating "superthermite."
Jones also argues that the molten steel found in the rubble was evidence of demolition explosives because an ordinary airplane fire would not generate enough heat. He cited photographs of construction equipment removing debris that appeared to be red.
In rebuttal, Blanchard of Protec said that if there had been any molten steel in the rubble, it would have permanently damaged any excavation equipment encountering it. "As a fundamental point, if an excavator or grapple ever dug into a pile of molten steel heated to excess of 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, it would completely lose its ability to function," Blanchard wrote. "At a minimum, the hydraulics would immediately fail and its moving parts would bond together or seize up."
"All this would have had to take place without attracting the notice of any of the thousands of tenants and workers in either building; no witness has ever reported such activity."
Wrong. Do I hear a retraction coming?
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While I appreciate your
While I appreciate your optimism, valis, I don't think Jim Dwyer (or anyone at NY Times) is "on our side." This is just more of the same: belittle the alternative theories. They have to write about it, becaus so many people think the OCT is full of shit, but they only write about it to dismiss it.
One thing is becoming clear, based on this article: The use of the words "controlled demolition" attract simplistic rebuttles, like Dwyer's contention that demolition is supposed to be "bottom up" and the towers collapsed "top down". If we simply say "use of explosives," they can't respond with such an inane retort.
Still...
Still, there's a lot of detailed info here, right out in the mainstream. Regardless of the article's conclusion, this is enough data to give your average Joe enough fuel to consider looking into it for themselves. That's all we need, for from there logic should prevail.
Again, I'm totally on board
Again, I'm totally on board with what you want to happen here, but "logic" rarely ever prevails. :-(
Still, thanks for posting this. I really hope people see in it what you want them to see. At the very least, Steven Jones is mentioned in the NY Times. Even if they are belittling his ideas, I'd say that is still something of a coup.
The new State Dept page on 9/11
Here
http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=pubs-english&y=2006&m=A...
Strictly first impressions:
We can practically declare victory. This is a propaganda apparatus in full retreat, repeating itself on auto pilot from three or five years ago.
The original non-official "conspiracy theory" was summed up in the shorthand "Bush Knew." They don't touch it. Nothing about foreknowledge, foreplanning. The many curious warnings from the foreign intel agencies, the warnings to officials. The behavior of the chain of command. Hell, they don't even touch the air defense issue! Let alone advance rehearsals (MASCAL, Amalgam Virgo) or the wargames and drills of the day itself. Nothing about whistleblowers a la Sibel Edmonds and Anthony Shaffer. Nothing about Able Danger, years of surveillance of the alleged hijackers in Germany and the US, hijacker identities in doubt, doubles for Atta and Jarrah, Alhazmi and Alhmidhar living with a landlord from the FBI...
Anthrax? Ha!
They throw in the 4000 Jews canard again. Talk about desperate.
Boeing says remote control is impossible. Well, that's that. Never mind the actual tests on 757s no less.
UA 93 seismic report showing that the the plane crashed 3 minutes after official crash time? Non-existent. Oh, and the NORAD tapes don't reveal a shootdown order (as though only the NORAD fighters could ever possibly bring down the plane). Well that settles it.
Put options? For starters, don't mention the other put options (on the WTC tenants and reinsurers). Don't mention the international trades. Don't mention the transactions at the WTC during the actual attacks, or the reconstruction of the data by the German firm CONVAR. Buzzy Krongrad, Mayo Shattuck? Ha ha. Just keep restricting it to the airline put options and the lame deal about the investors having no connection to "al Qaeda," obscuring the only question that would matter (foreknowledge).
Proof Qaeda did it? Well fat Osama said so on the videotape. And there was some audiotape later. Case closed.
One thing the page (and the NYT article) highlight is the big mistake people make in talking about "controlled demolition." All they do in response is go on about how the WTC tower collapses did not "look like" controlled demolition, how it's normally done from the bottom up, etc.. Well, guess what, that's not what skeptics are talking about, though they usually make the mistake of using this term. Skeptics are talking about bombs in the building. It doesn't have to be "controlled," and it wasn't (with 1/3 of the debris falling outside the footprint, for example). The question is whether explosives were used - yes, to shred it from the impact zones down.
The page is worth reading to understand the mindset we need to get around, and how our official antagonists desire to frame the debate.
These guys would get completely torn apart in a fair court fight. Never mind what a serious prosecutor would do before a grand jury.
The problem as always is venue.
The writer is very very progressive
and interested in the truth
alas, the reality of the world and media is such that this is how it is, for now
the website is in there, thats thusands of further hits
definitely on our side
if there are sides
we all are one
Bush intimidated out of 9-11 appearance at wtc
Bush to Visit All Three Sites of 9/11 Attacks
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By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: September 2, 2006
WASHINGTON, Sept. 1 — President Bush will lay a wreath at ground zero on the eve of Sept. 11, his first stop in a three-state trip to observe the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks.
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The White House said Friday that the president and Laura Bush planned to travel to New York City on Sept. 10 for the wreath-laying ceremony that afternoon. They will then attend a prayer service at St. Paul’s Chapel, next to the World Trade Center site.
They will spend the night in New York and travel the next day to the two other sites where planes crashed on Sept. 11, Shanksville, Pa., and the Pentagon in Northern Virginia. It will be the first time since the first anniversary of the attacks that Mr. Bush has traveled to all three places in remembrance of the victims.
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Marvin Bush had the security contract for WTC...
...Marvin is George Bush's younger brother...this is covered at http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/911security.html
Additionally, the weekend before the event, there was a power-down in the South Tower from the 48th floor up, which could have allowed explosives to be brought in; this is covered at http://69.28.73.17/thornarticles/powerdown.html
Yours truly, "The truth will out".