The "Official Investigation" Blessed by FEMA and ASCE is a Half-Baked Farce - 9/11 Memory Hole
Reading 9/11 related forums and articles, I frustratingly often encounter comments from supporters of the "official theory" stating that WTC debris was investigated and that no signs of explosives etc were found. They always fail to mention that no GZ access was allowed for investigation (including FEMA), investigators were only able to scrutinize what was taken to the Freshkills site, obviously we do not know what was NOT taken to Freshkills.
Anyway, this reminded me of the very honest, yet damning article (Jan 2002) written by the editor of "Fire Engineering Magazine" Bill Manning, including the "half baked farce" statement. Below are a few of those quotes :
- 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.
- Such destruction of evidence shows the astounding ignorance of government officials to the value of a thorough, scientific investigation of the largest fire-induced collapse in world history. 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.
- 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.
Full Article : $ELLING OUT THE INVESTIGATION - Fire Engineering Magazine
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I would also urge all new visitors and those unfamiliar with Kevin Ryan's excellent work, to review [ his blogs ] at 911blogger.com. In particular his very telling and superb blog regarding those involved in the WTC investigations, "Looking for Truth in Credentials: The WTC Experts" (see below link) :
http://www.911blogger.com/node/6765
If you are not much of a reader (even if you are) everyone really needs to watch his 60 minute presentation on Google Video, named "New Standard of Deception ~ NIST & FEMA WTC Report Flaws Exposed by Kevin Ryan"
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7465849608574246153
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Many thanks for your time, the TRUTH NEEDS YOU
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250 Tons of Scrap Stolen from Ruins
I thought this story was VERY interesting, because why would someone want to steel 250 tons of steel from Ground zero. Excuse the speculation, but that steel may have told a story, anyway here's the article.
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By David Sapsted in New York - Last Updated: 10:53pm BST 28/09/2001
THE theft of more than 250 tons of steel from the ruins of the World Trade Centre is being investigated by the FBI and New York police who believe that it was organised by one of the city's Mafia families.
Material from the scene of the September 11 terrorist attack, consisting mainly of steel girders, was discovered earlier this week at three scrapyards, two in New Jersey and one on Long Island.
It appears that the scrap was hauled away by trucks involved in the clear-up operation. But instead of being taken to the FBI-controlled dump on Staten Island where all the material is being stored and sifted it was driven directly to the independently-owned scrapyards.
Police sources said yesterday that no human remains were in the scrap. One detective said: "It does make you wonder, though, how low some people will stoop.
"This was a disgusting crime aimed solely at deriving financial gain from the scene of our nation's greatest tragedy. It is difficult to control the movement of material because there is so much of it.
Even so, it's hard to believe that with more than 6,000 people dead, it would be taken for profit." A grand jury is being convened in New York to look at the evidence gathered by the New York Police Department, the FBI and the state's Trade Waste Commission.
It is estimated that the scrap metal value of the 255 tons so far recovered would be about £10,000. The detective said: "That is not a great deal in itself but the operation to steal from the WTC was obviously not going to be limited to the 255 tons we have found."
Police are understood to be looking at the role of known associates of some of the city's five Mafia families, who have decades-long connections with the waste disposal business and whose stranglehold on rubbish collections in New York was broken by the current mayor, Rudy Giuliani.
Officers working on a tip-off found 75 tons of material at a scrapyard in Deer Park, Long Island, on Monday. They subsequently raided two New Jersey scrapyards and found another 180 tons.
Trucks delivering rubble from the site of the tragedy in lower Manhattan to the Fresh Kills landfill site on Staten Island are now getting official escorts but, until last week, trucks were travelling alone.
There have been other reports of thefts from the World Trade Centre site, including watches stolen from a shop in an underground mall. Souvenir-hunters have also been caught taking pieces of the rubble from the flatbed trucks hauling it away.
So far, about 130,000 tons of the debris have been removed after the recovery of 306 bodies and many hundreds of body parts. Officials now estimate that more than a million tons of rubble remain, almost twice the original estimate.
Mr Giuliani said yesterday that it could take more than a year for the site to be cleared. New and contradictory figures emerged yesterday over the number of people still listed as missing in the World Trade Centre since the attack.
The official police estimate currently stands at 5,960, but the total recorded at the families' centre in New York is 4,260. Mr Giuliani said the true figure, which includes those killed in the two aircraft and the bodies recovered, "probably lies somewhere between the two".
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Article Link : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2001%2F09%2F29%2Fwnyc29.xml
F.B.I. Agents Took Mementos From Rubble Of Twin Towers
By ERIC LICHTBLAU - Published: February 26, 2004
Thirteen agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation took mementos, debris or valuables from the Staten Island landfill that held the rubble of the World Trade Center, and the F.B.I. now plans to formally ban the removal of crime-scene items as a result, officials said on Wednesday.
Among the items taken from the rubble, officials said, were a Tiffany globe paperweight, an American flag, chunks of concrete, bags of dust, bolts and pieces of metal, investigators from the Justice Department inspector general's office found.
The department first began investigating charges of possible theft last year after receiving a complaint that the Tiffany globe wound up on the desk of an F.B.I. secretary in Minneapolis. But the inspector general's investigation found that the removal of World Trade Center evidence was more widespread than previously realized and that the problem was a longstanding one at the F.B.I. at other crime scenes as well.
The results of the investigation, first reported Wednesday night by NBC News, outraged some survivors, who saw the removal of items from the rubble as insensitive to the memories of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the Sept. 11 attacks.
''I would have hoped that the F.B.I. was more concerned with conducting an investigation and gathering evidence, not gathering mementos to sit on their bookshelves as a relic from the worst national tragedy in the country's history,'' said Kristen Breitweiser, whose husband died in the trade center and who has helped lead a group of survivors pushing for more answers about the attacks. ''This speaks to a real lack of focus by the F.B.I. in getting to the bottom of what really happened on Sept. 11,'' she said.
An agent from a field office in Oklahoma who was said to have taken large amounts of World Trade Center debris has been suspended for 10 days, officials said.
In addition, the agent who took the Tiffany globe from the rubble now faces the prospect of disciplinary action, as does Richard B. Marx, the agent who supervised the evidence recovery effort by some 400 bureau agents at the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island, officials said.
Mr. Marx was publicly credited last year for his work in retrieving World Trade Center relics that became part of an exhibition at the New-York Historical Society. His team was responsible for sifting through the vast amounts of human remains, personal effects and other items amid the rubble removed from ground zero to find items that could be returned to survivors or aid in the federal investigation. But in the course of the Justice Department investigation, he was accused of giving misleading accounts to investigators about whether he or his agents removed items from the scene for their own use, officials said. He could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.
None of the other agents implicated in the inspector general's investigation are facing disciplinary proceedings because there was no formal F.B.I. policy in place that prevented the removal of such items, according to a bureau official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
''We didn't have a written policy relative to this type of activity, and that's one of the problems here,'' the F.B.I. official said. ''Obviously we don't encourage this type of thing, and while it was inappropriate, there wasn't a policy we could say they violated.''
Some of the agents who removed items from the scene apparently saw them as harmless mementos that would serve as reminders of the long, difficult hours they spent sifting through evidence at the landfill, officials said.
But in January the F.B.I. put in place a formal policy that prohibits members of evidence recovery teams from taking anything from a crime scene, no matter what its value, and it plans to expand the ban to the entire bureau soon, officials said.
''The policy calls for much greater management oversight and provides F.B.I. employees with clear instruction on the removal of mementos from a recovery site for any purpose,'' the agency said in a statement. ''It effectively prohibits the removal of any debris by personnel at a site.''
The inspector general's report found that the removal of evidence from disaster scenes was a problem long before the Sept. 11 attacks, with F.B.I. agents taking items after the Oklahoma City bombing, the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and other disasters, investigators found.
''Our investigation found that memento taking at recovery sites has been a longstanding practice with F.B.I. agents,'' the inspector general's report found.
Source : http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A07E6DA133CF935A15751C0A9629C8B63
Ground Zero Steel China-bound
BEIJING, China -- China's biggest steel firm says it will receive its first shipment of scrap metal from the World Trade Center wreckage soon and turn it into steel plates -- not, as some newspaper reports had suggested, souvenirs.
Chinese state newspapers had earlier reported that Shanghai Baosteel Group Corp. planned to turn 50,000 tons of Ground Zero steel into souvenirs -- including models of the twin towers.
The WTC towers dominated the New York skyline before two hijacked passengers slammed into them on September 11, triggering their collapse.
The towers' steel outer skeleton was formed of steel beams up to two feet thick.
Workers have been whittling away at the ruins since then, with hundreds of trucks carrying rubble out of the crater each day.
'Steel plates'
But a company spokesman told Reuters news agency on Wednesday that the shipment would not be treated any differently from ordinary purchases of scrap, and would be turned into steel plates.
The Beijing Youth Daily, one of the newspapers to report the purported souvenir plan, said Baosteel was one of the first companies in the world to contact the United States about the scrap and consequently made a good deal.
It bought 50,000 tons of steel scrap at a price of "less than $120 per ton," the newspaper quoted Baosteel executives as saying. It did not give an exact price figure.
The steel is to be baled into large cubes for shipping, and could be used to make office furniture and filing cabinets.
India scrap dealers have already ordered four steel consignments.
Two 33,000-ton consignments have already arrived in the southern port of Madras, a third is on its way and a fourth would arrive soon at the west coast port of Kandla.
The scrap was bought at $120 per ton and is to be recycled into ingots to be sold to various industries, including construction.
Link : http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/east/01/23/china.wtcsteel/
Baosteel Will Recycle World Trade Center Debris
A shipment of scrap steel from New York's collapsed World Trade Center will arrive in Shanghai tomorrow, according to media reports. The steel was bought by Shanghai Baosteel Group Corp. and several other domestic mills, which are always eager to buy scrap metal.
Baosteel Group, the nation's largest steel firm, has purchased 50,000 tons of the scrap steel from "Ground Zero," the ruins of the September 11 terrorist attack, at no more than US$120 each ton, according to yesterday's Beijing Youth Daily.
Most of the scrap will be recycled into ingots, but part of the relics will be mold-ed into WTC souvenirs, the paper said.
Baosteel officials reached by Shanghai Daily, however, denied they will make keepsakes out of the debris, but declined to give more details of their plans, saying only that the scrap will be melted down and reprocessed into new steel products.
Another shipment of 10,000 tons of scrap from the WTC arrived in India earlier this month, reported Shanghai Morning Post. The metal will be melted down and recycled into kitchenware and other household items, the paper said.
India bought its lot at US$120 per ton from the New Jersey scrap processor Metal Management, which purchased 40,000 tons of the debris at an auction held by the New York City government. Dealers estimated that the WTC disaster created more than 300,000 tons of scrap metal.
China, the world's largest steel maker in terms of output, relies heavily on imports of scrap for its steel production. It imported 5.1 million tons of scrap in 2000.
The scrap steel can be melted down into ingots, reprocessed and sold to other industries.
"All in all, China's purchase from the WTC ruins counts for little to its steel industry, given the nation's big consumption of scrap each year," said Qu Li, an analyst with China Securities.
"But the price of US$120 per ton is, if not great, quite reasonable," she added.
The average price paid by local mills last year for scrap steel was 1,250 yuan (US$150.6) a ton.
New York authorities' decision to ship the twin towers' scrap to recyclers has raised the anger of victims' families and some engineers who believe the massive girders should be further examined to help determine how the towers collapsed.
But New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg insisted there are better ways to study the tragedy of September 11.
"If you want to take a look at the construction methods and the design, that's in this day and age what computers do," said Bloomberg, a former engineering major. "Just looking at a piece of metal generally doesn't tell you anything."
(eastday.com January 24, 2002)
Link : http://www.china.org.cn/english/2002/Jan/25776.htm
PowerLOC Tracking Technology Helps WTC Cleanup
By Tiffany Kary - Staff Writer - Published: May 30, 2002, 2:05 PM PDT
NEW YORK--A small company that makes tracking technology is one of the unsung heroes of the recovery and cleanup efforts at Ground Zero that concluded on Thursday amid bagpipes and the ceremonial removal of the last steel column from the World Trade Center ruins.
PowerLOC Technologies, a Toronto-based company that makes "L-Biz" tracking technology, has been credited with dramatically improving the recovery process by organizing the flow of cleanup operations.
Using Global Positioning System (GPS) technology and wireless devices, PowerLOC was able to coordinate and track the scores of dump trucks used in the recovery, track the dump loads for billing purposes, and prevent traffic jams. At one point, over 120 trucks were fitted with tracking devices that communicated with 24 satellites circling the earth, sending the vehicle's exact location to a central dispatcher.
The efficiencies allowed the city to go from using over 120 trucks at a time to less than 50, according to Yoram Shalmon, the company's director of product management. The trucks also went from hauling four loads a day to hauling 10 loads a day, he said. The scope of the destruction was still amazing, Shalmon said.
"I've been in a war, but it was nothing like this, visually," said Shalmon, who fought in the Yom Kippur War of 1973.
Initially it was estimated that it would take $7 billion and a year's worth of work to remove the 1.8 million tons of debris. The work was completed in just eight-and-a-half months and cost just $750 million, according to state and federal officials.
PowerLOC worked with Mobile Installation Technologies, an Atlanta-based company, and International Dispatch Center, a Minneapolis-based company that provided the call center for the operations.
"The city used PowerLOC's GPS technology successfully," said Brian Kavanagh, chief of staff and general counsel for Gale Brewer, a city-council member and the chairman of the city's Select Committee on Technology in Government. "We're interested in exploring other uses of their technology for city services," he said.
PowerLoc's customers include a bakery that ensures fresh delivery of its bread by monitoring trucks, but Shalmon said the World Trade Center job showed it could be used by government agencies to track anything from city meter readers and garbage trucks to vehicles hauling hazardous material.
"We can make sure a truck headed for the border isn't taken over or filled with contraband," he said, citing the system's ability to monitor minute details like the opening and closing of doors, the state of an engine, and even turn off an engine remotely.
Link : http://news.com.com/Tracking+technology+helps+WTC+cleanup/2100-1033_3-929029.html
Link appears to be broked...
Hello 911veritas,
Have you got a mirrored or PDF copy of this? I just tried to check my own facts and got a mostly-blank-C(ia)NN page... ??!
I have recommended to others to install and keep both a .PDF writer and a "screen print" utility (for those "difficult" sites) installed on their main computers for truth and posterity.
Thanks for the input...
The CNN article is there, you need to scroll down a bit for the story...
It views better in the "printable format" which can be found [ HERE ]
Best wishes
Indian WTC Scrap, BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2250983.stm
"Mr Bansal and the other steel merchants at Mandi Gobindgarh said they were unaware of the origin of the scrap metal when it originally reached their yards.
They said they would in future refuse to pick up any more scrap from the WTC.
Mr Bansal explained that memories of the huge tragedy of September 11, and the suffering of thousands of victims was, "far too disturbing."
Nevertheless, builders in north India, who naturally source their steel requirements from the factories of Mandi Gobindgarh, can perhaps now boast that the steel supporting their buildings was once used in some of the tallest skyscrapers in the world."
911veritas
could you please check my info:
http://www.frankames.com/details.asp?id=6
I could barely believe the story that one of the ERV drivers told me as I shuttled him back to his hotel. [B]The forensic devastation engineers are attempting to separate the rubble into Tower One and Tower Two[/B]! Hundreds of tons of the stuff each day makes its way in mammoth dumpsters to what was a defunct dumping ground known as 'Fresh Kills' (sic!) in Staten Island. [B]Nobody within miles is allowed there[/B]. The place is swarming with Federal marshals. Hundreds are dressed in full Type A biological protection suits, painstakingly raking through the debris and separating the stuff into large piles of metal, cement, crushed motor vehicles, and of course, human remains if there are any. This is an area which even in normal circumstances requires full protection to work in, so powerful is the stench of decaying garbage.
24 September, 2001
Sw. Atmo Kabir: a Sannyas in New York after the Terror
DIARY OF A LOGISTICS DRIVER FOR THE AMERICAN RED CROSS IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE ATTACK ON THE WORLD TRADE CENTER
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I believe there were no FEMA teams or other allowed to exmanine the remains to spring 2002. Can you exlain this?
(PS: Some time ago we had a picture of the fresh kills landfill / scrapeyard with a fence and a big no pictures allowed on it posted. I searched for this, but couln't find it anymore. Do you have a clue?)
Thanks Sitting-Bull, I'm hoping that everyone with information..
relating to the first few weeks of the rescue, recovery and clean-up operation adds it to this blog, making this a comprehensive set of information that will hopefully put a few pieces of the puzzle in place.
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Regarding your [ LINK ], below are any thoughts or quotes that caught my eye.
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Anyway, I finally started on Monday after I received my security clearance with a photo ID that allows me 'full access' but not at the actual 'Ground Zero'. My clearance gets me to within one block of Ground Zero but not through the gate and onto the wreckage itself. Ground Zero is a crime scene and access is completely off limits to anyone not actually digging at the site. Fact of the matter is that there's probably too much asbestos still in the air for me. No TV or photo image can ever replace the riveting sensation of seeing the wreckage up front in your face, of feeling your body surrounded by ripped and gutted architecture and at the same time the throbbing heartbeat of a powerful city. You look up at this behemoth, this junk pile of twisted steel and smoke, and the hairs on your arm stand up. How those firemen and construction workers dig there all day long at the risk of their lives is beyond me. And many of them I see without goggles and with only a small white filter over their mouths.
Tight security protects the piers at 54th street where the mayor has his office set up and where many of the police and marshal services have set up their makeshift offices.
24 September, 2001 - Already eight days have flown by since I first began driving for the American Red Cross. Each day I take the One train to 59th Street and change for the A which drops me off at the first stop into Brooklyn, right at Cadman Plaza, which is where ARC has its headquarters. I knew something was up this morning when the security officer refused to admit people. A bomb scare at the Brooklyn Bridge had the whole place on high alert and FBI Marshals were everywhere.
Incredibly after two weeks, wafts of smoke can still be seen rising upwards and they say that fires are still burning as deep as eight stories below. According to one of the workers, they're still recording temperatures of two thousand degrees from several stories below the site, heat from the trapped gases and oils and other chemicals that came from all the machinery that was used to power these monster towers.
Next to this, oxygen/acetylene welders with FBI printed bold on their backs, exploded showers of orange sparks from their torches as they sliced through trunks, clove compartments and hoods, searching for the VIN or motor serial numbers needed for eventual insurance claims. In one of the subterranean parking lots they say that more than a hundred vehicles are still buried.
Anything of importance is quickly inspected and handed over to the specialists, either the bomb squads, Secret Service, CIA, police or whatever agency that needs to be informed.
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Some links found during my research...
- http://www.voicesofsept11.org/dev/index.php
- http://www.epa.gov/wtc/pictures.html
- http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2002/may/freshkills/index.html
- http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0221,carr,34956,1.html
- http://www.nypress.com/20/19/news&columns/feature.cfm
- http://www.americanrecycler.com/11wtc.html
- http://www.911ea.org/PhotoAlbum.htm
- http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/fkl/fkl3.shtml (Fresh Kills Park Project)
Much more on Google that can be researched... [ HERE ]
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No Photographs Sign
More photos : http://hereisnewyork.org/gallery/
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Many thanks and best wishes
Thx a lot
but this was not the picture I remember. It was way more draconian.
BTW: A german "debunker" source has put a list with all hints and evidence to the metal examination.
Most of it is in english.
http://www.werboom.de/vt/html/beweise_beseitigt_.html