On Monday February 12, 2007, a man by the name of Paul Laffoley was interviewed by Mike Hagan on the radio program radioOrbit, broadcast on Columbia, Missouri's KOPN. (Download 16mb MP3 here).

Laffoley makes a number of remarkable claims. The first one is that he was tasked to design a host of interior elements for floors 15 through 45 in Tower II while he was employed at Emery Roth & Sons in Manhattan, during 1963-1964. This, despite the fact that Laffoley has no degree in Architecture, and was kicked out of the Harvard Graduate School of Design, sans Degree.

I think it's highly unlikely that one of the oldest and most prestigious architectural firms in the world, responsible for more buildings than any other architect in Manhattan, would find any need to hire a Grad-school reject as a designer on one of the tallest skyscrapers on the planet, especially considering that at the time, the WTC's design was on the cutting edge. It's more likely that he was getting coffee for an Art Director or keeping tables clean for the Architects.*

Anyhow, he goes on;

"I began to see some things going on there, that were kind of dangerous. Like, they were eliminating asbestos flocking, because they wanted to fast-track it. Meaning, they wanted to design and build simultaneously." - (36:50 mark.)

Sure "they" were. Pretty easy claim to make. A claim that makes experiments like shooting asbestos covered steel with a shotgun kind of redundant, no? The shock from the jet-crash didn't knock the asbestos off, there was no asbestos! How convenient.

"They started doing things like instead of welding steel together, they bolted it. And it turns out that those are some of the reasons why it came down..." - (39:33 mark.)

It doesn't take too much browsing time to find pictures of welders welding steel together during the construction of the WTC. The welding even extended to the floor pans:

The film at this link depicts plenty of steel being welded during the building of the Towers.

But here's the doozy. Here's the "Limited Hangout" trial baloon... you ready?

"When I was there, there were these engineers from Saudi Arabia that were actually part of the Bin Laden Construction Company. Yamasaki had worked with them and built them up. They started in Arabia and worked for Yamasaki who was doing all kinds of things like airports, schools, hospitals, you know, very large projects, and so he just brought them over. And so I see these guys, you know, these swarthy looking guys come around and some of them were asking me "Where would you put demolition devices?" and I said, "Well, I'm not really an engineer, but I'm curious as to know why you would put things in it to demolish it? And it isn't even built!" It was so strange to me... and he said "Well that's they way things are going now." So, in a certain sense the reason why they came down is because the Bin Laden Construction Company knew exactly where all the places were, that they put demolition devices." - (39:55 mark)

Ok.

Of course. That's the ticket. In fact, those buildings were a ticking time bomb!

Please listen to the interview and draw your own conlusions, as this is just my opinion.

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* As an aside, the father of one my college friends was a junior player in the design of the exterior walls of the WTC. He was an exceptional draughtsman and thinker, with serious design and architectural skills, and he was a bit player. Mr. Garden is probably rolling in his grave over this tall tale.